These are Google's Pixel Buds. They're kind of, sort of, Google's answer to Apple AirPods.
They're wireless earbuds, though not truly wireless, and they cost about
the same amount of money, $159. On one hand they're really good wireless
earbuds that do a lot of the basics well, while also teasing that seemingly
inevitable future of having super computers in our ears.
On the other hand there are a couple of tiny nitpicky flaws that when
added together kind of mar the experience.
Up front though we have to start with one of the features
that Google's hyping the most about the Pixel Buds and that's real-time translation.
Can you tell me where the train station is?
I can, the train station is over there.
It's sort of wrong.
Can you tell me where the bathroom is?
Can you tell me about where the washroom is?
There is a toilet nearby.
That's good to hear.
There's a toilet not far from here.
Can you tell me how to get to the train station?
Are you able to tell me how to get to the train station?
Walk to the next block, go straight and turn right.
Go straight and turn right.
Hello and thanks for helping out.
Is that kind of right?
Yeah it is, it is. It's taking a while to translate it.
Do you know how to get to the train station?
Tell me how to get to the train station.
What's wrong about it?
It would just be a bit like,
you're kind of like, it's using the imperative so he would be a bit like, not very polite
to just stop someone and say, "Tell me how to get to the train station." It would say, "Can you tell me how ..."
So this is as if
I was a rude five-year-old?
Yes.
Hey.
Hey Dami, thank you for helping us with this.
Wait, so am I speaking into the app or am I speaking at the Pixel Buds?
That's also weird, you are speaking into the app, but it's reading it out in English to me.
Oh so you can hear it in English.
So what it's showing up here it's reading to me in English.
Would you rather hear both though?
No.
Can you tell me how to get to the train station?
I told them how to get to the train station.
Wow. This is not super accurate.
Oh yeah?
Yeah.
What did it get wrong?
Just like a lot of grammar, and you're speaking to me in a really informal way.
This seems to be a problem with it is that it's very rude in the way that it's translating things.
I'm sensing a bit of hostility from you.
The one common thread we saw across all the languages is that the translation is
pretty crude so you're probably going to come across as sounding a little bit
rude or maybe even kind of like a five-year-old and that's not a problem
with the pixel buds themselves it's really just a problem with where
translation apps are at this point in time and that's really all this is.
It's not like the pixel buds are doing magic to translate conversations it's just
leaning on the Google Translate app that already, probably, exists on your phone.
The weirdest thing for me is that with pixel buds you're adding a whole nother
device into what is already an awkward situation when you're trying to speak
somebody else's language and it makes it a bit more impersonal. My co-workers
didn't really seem to have much of a problem with it, just testing it out, but
I know for myself I would probably rather just use the app on the phone as
opposed to adding a whole another device into the situation.
Now there may very well be a time one day where everybody is wearing the Pixel Buds
and using them to talk to people across languages and borders but that
future is not here yet. This current version of the project is only teasing
and it's not delivering on it. Google assistant however, is much further
along and here's the best thing about it on the Pixel Buds: it is stupid fast.
You just tap the right earbud and you're already talking to the assistant.
You don't have to wait for it to confirm that it's heard you or anything you just
tap talk and it's off to the races. It's so fast that I found myself begging for
reasons to use it. I usually only use the assistant for things like weather or
alarms, especially on headphones.
That said, I think Google's assistant is the
best of the ones out there and having it less than a second away definitely feels
like a genuine step forward. I found myself using it in ways that I never had,
like asking it to tell me how long it'll take me to get home on the subway or
asking it to read me the news while I walk from the subway back home.
So let's set all these fantastical and futuristic features aside now, because while they
might be useful in a pinch, what you're going to be using the Pixel Buds for the
most is listening to music that's coming from your phone and in the right setting
they do that really well. They reproduce audio really clearly. There's a little
bit of depth to it, more than I expected to find on earbuds this size and they'll
do that for a while too. Google advertises about five hours of listening time and I
found that as long as you're not using the assistant a ton, you'll get at least
four hours of what they're claiming. But the open air design of these earbuds,
Google calls it semi occluded, is a totally double-edged experience.
On the one hand it's good for situations like running where you want to have sound
from the outside world coming in, but on the other hand it means that sound can
totally drown out the music listening experience. Especially if you're in a big
city like New York. I found myself hearing buses, trains, traffic,
people walking by me instead of the music that I wanted to listen to. There was even one
point where I actually heard the music from someone else's headphones instead
of my own music. That's annoying.
That brings us to the last part of the
experience with the Pixel Buds, which is the case. I really want to like this
thing and for the most part I do. It's got a nice soft touch finish to it.
It has a couple extra charges worth of battery in it and it will even quick charge the
Pixel Buds. Ten minutes will give you about an hour, which is awesome.
The problem comes from just how finicky the processes is of getting
the buds back in the case. You have to put them in one by one and then you have to
wrap the cord around just the right way or else the case won't close and Google
even had to put a sticker on the inside of the case to teach people how to do that.
Now the way that you get Pixel Buds to fit in your ears also has a couple issues.
You have to tug on this little loop of the cable that connects the two
earbuds together, which is a nice idea, but that cable tends to slip over time
and so I found that pulling them out of the case the cable has slipped or even
when I have them in my ears the cable slips and I have to constantly readjust
them to keep them fitting in my ears the right way. Now the touchpad on the right
is really fast for Google assistant, which is great and you can tap to play
and pause music and you can even swipe to control the volume, but it's super
sensitive and so you have to be careful. I found myself getting lots of
accidental taps and swipes especially when I took the earbuds out of my ears
and went to put them back in the case. That was really frustrating because I
would hear music starting to play again or I would lose my place in a podcast.
It just seems like an easy problem that Google could fix if the earbuds know
that they're out of your ears. Now these are admittedly little frustrations,
but when you add them all up together it makes for a more problematic experience
than I was expecting with Pixel Buds. There are a lot of good ideas in this
product and I'm excited to see what Google does with that going forward.
It's just painfully obvious right now that this is their first attempt at making
wireless earbuds.