Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Pixel Buds Review: WAY Better!”.
Hey, what’s up guys mkbhd here so wireless earbuds, if you’re going to get rid of the headphone jack, you might as well make them good right. But as far as like the de facto standard wireless earbuds for android you’d think google would make the best ones and when they finally got rid of the headphone jack in the pixel, they did make the first pixel buds. But they weren’t that good. They were pretty disappointing. Honestly, they had the cable between them.
They had missing features, they weren’t very comfortable, so i never really recommended them, but now these these are the new 2020 pixel buds. Maybe you’ve seen them by now and they are way better. They are miles better than the previous ones that wasn’t a very high bar to clear, but they vaulted so far up they’re. Now in my top three favorite wireless earbuds period, so i’ll share that list at the end of this video.
But let’s talk about what they did so much better and why so the big bullet points for these are they’re 179. They have a five hour battery life and they don’t have noise cancellation so actually, on the surface with just those specs they’re, not that impressive at all right, you know pretty average battery life and no noise cancellation like some of the other premium buds. So what makes them so good and honestly it’s just that they nail all the fundamentals like really well and they’ve just been rock solid to use, so you can start off with the case here. It’S a sweet, soft touch, matte finish, and i like this white one and it’s got a black and white contrast like a like the panda pixel.
Basically, there’s matching lights, one on the inside and one on the outside and the buds just go right in and snap satisfyingly into place with the magnets pretty easily and they’re strong magnets, so they’re easy to get out. But once you snap them in they’re not going anywhere, and it’s got this satisfying snap shut with the magnets and the hinge a lot of them have this, but not all of them do the old fabric ones definitely didn’t so this is sweet and it’s just small. It’S just a little small little pebble case. It’S really pocketable, it’s around the same size, same volume as an air pods pro case, if you’ve seen that before and it’s just as thin so on the spectrum of different case sizes for wireless buds.
These are really nice. That makes a big difference for me as far as how often i want to carry them around and actually use them, basically if they can fit in the tiny pocket inside the main pocket in my jeans, i’m in i’ll carry these, but then, on top of all Of that, it’s a usb type-c port on the bottom for wired charging and there’s also wireless charging. So you can drop them on a wireless charger where the coils line up like this, nomad one or any flat one. But, ironically, not the pixel stand by google or on the back of any phone that supports reverse wireless charging.
Okay pause just that right there. Just in this new case is a lot more than many other wireless buds can say you know so many times. The case is too big or it’s not a high quality. Build like this is a nice case.
Wireless charging usb type-c all this together, that’s nice, so then we get to the buds. These are also white. If you want to go a little more low-key, there is also a black version and some other colors coming soon, but they’re also very small to the point where the super low profile in my ear is a nice selling point. They don’t stick out very far at all, like it basically just looks like a little disc in your ear, there’s no stem and they stay in my ears really well, thanks to these little mini wingtip things now these are permanently attached to the buds.
So they’re part of the actual earbud, unlike some of the jaybirds i’ve liked in the past, that are much more adjustable and you know, everybody’s ears are different. So it’s hard to say if this will work for everyone, but they’re a great fit for me. You set them in place and you just kind of twist them into your ear and they lock into your ear and they’re not going anywhere and comfort is also very good, i’m using the medium sized rubber tips that came with them and they work great the longest. I usually have you know: headphones in in a row is maybe three or four hours tops for like a flight or something, and that’s that’s about as long as i’d wear these, although i know some people keep their headphones in like all day to work in a Coffee shop and i think that’s pushing it for these – the wing tip at that point starts to feel like kind of a pressure point.
But as far as others, i’ve tried the rock solid lock in my ear, and the shape of them is great and again way. Better than the previous pixel buds, but then the other scenario for me is working out in them and i’ve gotten really picky about workout headphones and i tried i did i worked out in these. I went running in them and they stay in my ears. 100. That’S true, but i still prefer the jaybirds with the bigger soft wingtip. Those just feel more secure and comfortable in my ear. But if you do want to double these as workout headphones, they do stay in the ear and, of course the upside is the pixel buds. Are also ipx4 water resistant, so if you want to go work out on them, they’ll survive some sweat or some rain. If you go running outdoors, so all that is great. So how do they sound? That’S the big question with these: a lot of people have had some mixed opinions on them to keep it perfectly simple: they sound pretty great, i’m a fan of the sound. These guys have 12 millimeter drivers that give great detail and volume, even some impressive instrument separation. If you’re, just like sitting still and just listening, which i did for a while, no weird issues or anything with the sound and they’re compatible with a great variety of stuff, now i think the downside some people will have is the bass is lacking a little bit Of punch, you know it’s a little bit lighter on the bass now this is fine for watching videos and phone calls and podcasts, but a lot of people are used to more bass when listening to music, you know if you’ve come from like beats or something else With heavier bass, so you might prefer a bit of a different sound now.
This is typically where i’d say: okay, go ahead and head into the eq and add some bass back, but there is no eq built into the pixel buds app. So that’s definitely something to keep in mind if you know what kind of sound you really like, but i think the main thing to keep in mind here as far as sound is these are not active, noise-canceling headphones uh, they are what’s called passive noise, isolating which Basically just means uh, the physical seal that it makes in your ear. Is all you get, and i guess really. I don’t mind too much that they don’t have it like.
It would be nice. You know on one hand the noise cancellation i’ve heard from the 2 to 300 350 earbuds, like airpods pro sony wf-1000xm3s. You know those those more expensive ones, it’s really nice and they sound better, but these do undercut them quite a bit in price. So i guess i can’t be too mad, especially when i do everything else so well: okay, extra features, so there’s a lightweight pixel buds, app that you install during the setup process when you first pair these buds on your phone and you get some nice little extras Down in there, first of all, it lays out and lets you learn all the swiping and tapping controls on the buds works on both sides for media and they’re, pretty easy to learn, swipe forward or backward for volume.
One tap to play pause two taps to skip forward triple tap, to go back and a long press to pull up. Google assistant, i found this pretty intuitive. The only downside is the buds are so small that you know when i was first learning these headphones.
I would like miss the earbud and i’d like kind of hit, the back of it and almost knock it out of my ear when i’m trying to swipe uh. But i’ve gotten used to that over time. And let me tell you having the google assistant in your ear, all the time pretty sweet. You just say the keyword, i’m not going to say it out loud, but you just say that and suddenly you’re asking it questions all the time and there’s just something that feels like the future, about putting your finger up to your ear like an fbi agent and Just asking it a random question and getting an answer in your ear, even if i do just keep asking it the weather over and over again, i love it. There’S also a feature called adaptive sound, which is basically supposed to change the volume of your media automatically based on the loudness of the environment you’re in, but i haven’t been in an environment loud enough to see if this really works well, so i don’t know i Just leave this off and i swipe to change the volume myself and the awesome case i talked about also does quick charge.
So if you find the battery is about to die, and you have a little bit of a quick break pop them in the case for 10 minutes and you get two more hours of listening time out of it, and that gives you a 24 hours total with The buds and the case battery when it comes down to it. I really like these earbuds. I think they’re enough to to turn me into the wearing earbuds everywhere i go guy. You know, i’ve never really been that person.
You see people walk around with airpods, like 100 of the time um. I guess it’s something about this quarantine life of being able to walk around the house with your earbuds in, but your phone’s upstairs. But you can still call up the assistant and listen to a podcast, it’s kind of nice and as a bonus, there is no noticeable bluetooth lag when watching videos with the headphones or playing games, or anything like that, which is awesome. And you constantly also know your battery life thanks to the app which may give you a bit of anxiety, but i find it helpful, but it really just nails the fundamentals across the board.
Biggest downside, i think, is no noise cancellation, but you know for people who have used passive noise isolating earbuds before we know. If you turn the volume up loud enough, you can’t really hear anything else around you anyway. I wouldn’t fly with these because it doesn’t have noise cancellation, but that’s just me also. The battery life is average-ish and i think if they did do noise cancellation with these, the battery life would have gotten even worse and that would have been pretty bad. Maybe later they’ll do a some next-gen or a more premium, pixel buds pro and they’ll be 279 and the noise cancellation and bigger battery. I could see that, but until then these new 2020 pixel buds nice uh.
There are some of my favorite airpods right now right alongside i’ll go. This is top three along with airpods pro and galaxy buds, plus from samsung. They are above the sennheisers that i love so much, even though the sennheisers sound better um, because this is so much smaller and more portable and more likely for me to use it so well done google thumbs up for the pixel buds. This is my review unit.
I’M gon na be sending it back, but i will be buying a pair and i think making them my everyday headphones um. But let me know what you think are you: are you a headphones everywhere kind of person and if so, would you get pixel buds or let me know what you think in the comment section below thanks for watching catch, you guys the next one peace .