Review: Google Pixel Buds Pro

If Apple's AirPods Pro are the benchmark for measuring the quality of any new pair of wireless earbuds, then Google has them beat with its new Pixel Buds Pro. Not only do they sound better than Apple's flagship earbuds, but they also cost $50 less, have better battery life, and come in cuter colors. 

These earbuds work fine with iPhone devices, but their full suite of features shines through when you pair them with an Android device. For starters, they pair quickly. You can also easily connect them to multiple devices and swap between them, so if you have the buds in your ears while watching a movie on your laptop and a call comes through, you can just answer your phone without having to fiddle with anything. More importantly, these buds never fell out during my plodding runs, they feature wireless charging, and did I mention the cute egg-like case? What more could you need for podcasts and Beyoncé?

The best part about the Pixel Buds Pro is how comfortably they fit in your ears. The medium-sized buds have a form-fitting peanut shape that sticks right in my medium-sized ear canals with ease, but never loses grip. I’ve tried to headbang these buggers out of my ears. I’ve taken them on 7-mile runs in the woods. I’ve showered with them in after said runs. They stay in there perfectly despite the lack of ear fins—they use the same standard silicone ear tips you'll find on most earbuds, but the overall ergonomics just make them hug my ear holes.

The exterior of each bud comes in a few colors. My favorite is the tangerine orange (or what Google calls Coral), but my review unit was a discreet gray, which looks handsome but isn’t as fun. Frankly, a part of the reason to get these instead of AirPods is the aesthetic difference between Apple's monolithic white and Google's playful pastels.

Google Pixel Buds Pro

Photograph: Google

Using them is just as easy as using AirPods. The outside of each bud is touch-sensitive, with intuitive controls. Tap once to play or pause, twice to skip songs, and long-press to turn the active noise cancellation on or off, depending on whether you want to hear the world. I also like that swiping left or right adjusts the volume—oftentimes earbuds with touch sensors forgo volume controls for playback controls. 

These buds are also plugged into Google Assistant, so you can shout “Hey Google” and demand it set timers or play a certain song. It's useful for the few times I didn't want to touch my phone, but it's still a novelty in public, where you might not want to look like you're yelling at yourself. To each their own, I guess.

Like the controls, the case the buds come in is smartly designed. It's harder to put an earbud into the wrong slot, and I like how flat it lays on my wireless charging pad between listening sessions. It's also just nice to hold. Like a little tic tac. 

A single 11-mm dynamic driver inside each Pixel Buds Pro delivers a surprisingly robust soundstage, made possible in large part by Google’s excellent digital signal processing and noise canceling. 

Music comes through with presence and personality, especially in the bass, which tends to have more punch and separation than what I’ve heard from prior Pixel Buds. While listening to my testing playlist, the midrange is the only place where the buds lose some definition. That’s to be expected when a single driver has to handle perfect bass response and shimmery highs (and does so well)—you tend to lose something, somewhere. Still, I’m glad Google’s engineers focused on the areas most people care about.

Hip hop listeners and pop fans will especially be pleased with the tight bass response, but I loved listening to jazz on these things; you can really hear the fingers on the upright bass strings, and the sizzle of the cymbals sounds excellent. These aren’t flat, clinical headphones by any means, but they are energetic and fun to listen to without totally changing the character of the recordings.

As a day-to-day pair for listening to Spotify, YouTube videos, and podcasts? They are easily good enough to earn the “Pro” moniker for the noise canceling and improved sound, and they are worth the premium you’ll pay over the $100 Pixel Buds A-Series (which I also really like).

I also vastly prefer them to Apple’s AirPods Pro. These sound easily as good (if not better down low, thanks to their better seal in my ears), and they have seven hours of battery life with noise canceling turned on—three hours more than what Apple offers. That’s a significant advantage these days since people are starting to travel again. They're about as comfortable as the popular Beats Fit Pro (also owned by Apple), but I'd say you get better bass here. That said, Apple's hardware does have one big advantage: the microphones. When it comes to phone calls, the Pixel Buds Pro sound fine but aren't quite as clear.

The greatest compliment I can give these earbuds is that I simply don't think about using them, because they work so well in a variety of instances. Workouts? Check. Deep listening? You got it. Travel-friendly? Yep. They might not eat into Apple's world-dominating headphone market share, but that's not because Google couldn't make a better product.