Google Pixel Buds Pro First Impressions

With my recent return to the Pixel 7 Pro, I figured I should examine some other Pixel ecosystem products, starting with the Pixel Buds Pro.

I have high hopes but reasonable expectations.

Google announced the Pixel Buds Pro last May at Google I/O 2022 alongside the Pixel 6a, and not at the Fall 2022 Pixel event—where it also announced the Pixel 7/7 Pro, Pixel Watch, and Pixel Tablet (which still hasn’t shipped, by the way)—which is how I’ve since mis-remembered it. In my defense, that may be because it didn’t actually ship the earbuds to customers until July 28, over two months after the introduction. So it was kind of a weird, staggered launch year for Pixel fans.

Regardless of my memory, the Buds Pro are positioned as a higher-end alternative to the Pixel Buds A-series, and as such they offered more and better features, among them active noise cancelation (ANC), wireless charging, multipoint connectivity, and more battery life. I liked the A-series buds when I tried them, but they didn’t really meet my needs, and of course last year I was using an iPhone most of the time anyway. But I’ve had my eye on the Pixel Buds Pro, in part because I want to experience spatial audio, a feature that Google finally added to these earbuds just one month ago and much later than promised. And in part because I wanted a less expensive pair of ANC-based earbuds for the gym and walking.

And then the stars aligned: I switched back to the Pixel 7 Pro a few weeks back and the Google Store had a sale, dropping the price of the Pixel Buds Pro from their usual $199 down to $149. So I decided it was time to take a look. Or a listen, I guess. And so I ordered a pair.

They arrived today in Google’s familiar, Apple-like minimalist packaging. I ordered them in charcoal (gray) because the other colors—fog (a limp light green), lemongrass (a similarly limp light yellow), and coral (red) are terrible and don’t match my or any other modern Pixel, because Google. This is a missed opportunity, I think, though I will admit that I cover up my gorgeous hazel Pixel 7 Pro with a case because I’m not a crazy person. I just wish Google would figure out colors and apply them consistently across their products. People like to match things that way.

Speaking of not getting colors, the Pixel Buds Pro come in a matte white charging case with a dark gray interior no matter which color earbuds you choose. I don’t have the Pixel Buds A-Series anymore, but this case seems a bit bigger than that one, though is still pleasantly small and would easily fit in the front pocket of any pair of jeans. It has a delightful texture to it, and an equally delightful snap when you open and close its top. In case you’re looking for a fidget spinner.

We still bemoan phone makers for not including power bricks in the box with their overly-expensive devices, but the Pixel Buds Pro don’t even include a charging cable. Instead, the charging case has a USB-C port so you can use the cable that came with your phone. I guess that’s reasonable since virtually anyone who buys these earbuds will already have some form of charging. And the Pixel Buds Pro are only $199: by comparison, the superior Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II do include a USB-C cable (but no charging brick) but they cost $100 more, at $299.

Like other earbuds, the Pixel Buds Pro do include three sets of eartips. And this is the first and most important area in which any earbud can betray you: because our ears are all different shapes and sizes, it can be difficult to find a fit that is comfortable and stays in your ear. And I’ve experienced earbuds in which no eartips worked at all. For example, I ordered a pair of inexpensive EarFun Free 2 wireless earbuds last September because they were highly-rated by the Wirecutter, which I trust. But I couldn’t get them to stay in my ears no matter which tips I used.

So I was curious to see how well the Pixel Buds Pro worked, or if they would work at all. In addition to the general fit issue with earbuds, these are also a bit on the large side and, unlike the A-Series and my first-generation Bose QuietComfort Earbuds, they don’t include little eartip wings to help them stay in your ear.

And … they seem OK. The real test will be when I use them in real-world conditions, at the gym, of course, and on walks. But I wasn’t able to instantly discount them for not fitting well.

With that bit of drama out of the way, it was time to pair the Pixel Buds Pro with my Pixel phone. Here, I was pleasantly surprised: thanks to Bluetooth Fast Pair, a pairing notification appeared on the phone as soon as I opened the Pixel Buds Pro charging case. Bam.

I know the Pixel Buds Pro also support standard Bluetooth pairing as well, and that I can press and hold the small pairing button on the back to initiate a pair, as I do with my Bose earbuds. They can also use multipoint connectivity to pair with two different devices and quickly switch between them. But I’ll check out both of those features later.

I’ve configured my Bose earbuds in a straightforward manner: I can double-tap the right bud to toggle Play/Pause, and I can double-tap the left bud to toggle between quiet (ANC) and aware (audio passthrough) modes. I like this simplicity, and I disable a feature that lets me laboriously control the volume from the earbuds. But the Pixel Buds Pro support a lot of gestures too, and unlike with the Bose, they all work on both buds. So I will have to spend some time to figure out if I want to leave this all configured as is. Long story short, there are single-tap (Play/Pause, answer call), double-tap (next track, end/reject call), and even triple-tap (previous track) gestures, plus swipes for raising and lowering the volume, and touch and hold to toggle between ANC modes. We’ll see.

Speaking of ANC, I didn’t expect the Google Pixel Buds Pro to deliver the same performance as my Bose earbud, and they don’t. The real test will be at the gym: that’s where other non-Bose earbuds, including the A-Series and the Earfun earbuds noted above fell apart for me, though neither of those offer any form of ANC. And that’s the issue: the gym is loud, and I want to hear the podcast or audiobook I’m listening to, not whatever nonsense is pumping out into the open space there.

But I could at least get a sense of the ANC by comparing the Pixel Buds Pro to my Bose QuietComfort Earbuds. And as luck would have it, this was a great day to test this because the apartment complex I now live in was blowing new mulch outside using a rather loud machine. When I put the on Bose, the machine sound instantly disappeared, as expected: these earbuds do a terrific job on planes, so this one was easy. With the Pixel Buds Pro, not so much: the machine sound only mostly disappeared. But I could still hear it, humming away but at a lower volume. I guess that doesn’t surprise me: as noted, the Bose are $100 more expensive.

I was also very curious about spatial audio. This is mostly a non-starter from a music standpoint since I don’t use the services that support it. But it works in some video streaming services I pay for, like HBO Max and Netflix, so that seemed like an obvious place to start. Of course, finding that content can be tedious: neither offers an obvious spatial audio playlist or whatever. Instead, you have to examine individual titles and look for a “spatial audio” (Netflix) or “Dolby Atmos” (HBO Max) notation. On Netflix, I see this with some new movie and series titles, but also with some big Hollywood movies like “The Dark Knight” and “World War Z” (but not movies I’d rather watch, like “Skyfall” and “The Bourne Ultimatum”). Ditto for HBO Max. It’s sometimes curious which videos support it and which do not.

But one soldiers on.

And here I’m not sure what to say: I did test “The Dark Knight” and “World War Z” on Netflix and neither seemed particularly immersive. The sound was fine, but not exceptional, and when I tested my Bose earbuds on the same movies, they sounded cleaner and louder. Ditto for “Elvis” on HBO Max: it sounded good, but not immersive. I suppose part of it could be a pending firmware update that I couldn’t get to install three times in a row. And perhaps some EQ settings.

(And it’s not just spatial audio: the Pixel Buds Pro will also support head-tracked spatial audio so that the sound stage of what you’re watching or listening to will remain fixed in space if you turn your head away from the screen. This isn’t available on my Buds yet, and I suspect that that firmware update will enable it.)

So I have more testing to do. But that’s fine. I’ll see if I can get that update going and bring them to the gym tomorrow regardless.

More soon.