- Pixel Buds.
Doesn't say Pixel Buds Two, maybe 'cause Google knows
that this is basically what everyone expected
the first time around.
These are truly wireless earbuds made by Google,
they go great with your Pixel phone or other Android device.
They're basically like AirPods for Android.
Let's check it out.
Now I will admit that the Pixel Buds is bigger,
it's a little fatter, it's a little taller.
Basically every dimension it's a little bigger
but it's still really small.
This really has a Portal vibe to it,
is anyone else getting it?
Yes.
(lid snapping)
Pretty satisfying, also has a bit of a rattle.
There's indicator lights on here to tell you
if they're charged or charging and it's nice and soft
inside and outside and USB-C charging, that is wicked.
They advertise five hours of playback on the headphones
and then all together
with a fully charged charge case, 24 hours.
Looks like they give you an additional two sizes,
this is smaller and larger sizes of silicone ear tips.
No wall wart but they do give you a cable.
Little instruction book and this is just telling me
how to pair.
So there's two different sections here, there's how to pair
with a Pixel phone that's running Android 6.0 or higher
and any other device.
It's the Pixel phone pairing which we're gonna see today
on my device and that is the magic type,
if you look at the other devices' section,
it pairs just like any Bluetooth headphones.
On a lot of headphones, you have to hold down a button
on the earphones and you'll hear in your ear,
it'll say pairing
but on this one the pairing button is not on the headphones,
it's here on the
case.
Oh it's on the back, there it is.
Here it is on the case
and I actually like the pairing button being on the case
because having it on the headphones just adds complexity.
Usually you hold down the button on the headphones
to get into pairing mode but you also usually hold
to hail a virtual assistant and one hold is just longer
than another hold.
It's way simpler just to have that on the case, I like that.
Okay so I am just going to open the case.
I already paired this, so I don't know if its going to do
the magic thing anymore.
Tap to pair with this device, it's right at the top
of my Bluetooth devices screen.
James' Pixel Buds, it just named them for me
based on my device's name I guess, that's pretty sweet.
It's almost like an integrated app right in the settings.
I get the battery level for left and right and the case.
All the settings in the app are right here,
I don't have to download a separate companion app,
that's cool although that is gonna limit
the functionality of the app a bit.
There's no EQ setting or, actually these aren't
that fully featured to begin with,
so it doesn't really matter.
For example, these are not
active noise canceling headphones.
That's why I'm comparing them to the AirPods
and not the AirPods Pro.
So therefore, because they're not active noise canceling,
you don't need additional settings for things like
how aggressive do you want the noise canceling to be,
how transparent do you want it to be for ambient noises.
There are some things you can fiddle with in here,
like check this out, find device.
Let's say I left this one over there, I can't find it.
I can ring the left or the right one.
Ding ding ding ding.
I don't know why they don't just start it
at the highest volume but
(electronic ringing)
maybe if you're looking for it and it's already in your ear,
they don't wanna blast you.
This is an amazing feature, I love this
and you can see that they're smaller than they used to be.
The original Pixel Buds, I think were
kind of a bigger disc than this
and they were so weird to fit in your ears.
You can check out the touch controls in here
but you can't change anything
and I don't actually fault it for that
because the way they set it up, makes sense.
It follows all the normal conventions
and as I alluded to earlier, there's not
so many features on here that I have to choose anyway.
So you can raise the volume by swiping forward
and backward to lower it and that's nice
'cause not all Bluetooth headphones actually have
volume controls on the earphones
but because this is fully capacitive, they can do things
like swipes instead of just having
to click, triple click, double click, sick.
There's also the assistant which you can
interact with two ways, you can hold down ba-dunk
or you can say the hot word verbally,
which I actually prefer, although in lots of situations
you're not gonna want to talk at all.
The reason I prefer saying the hot word is that
when you hold it down to hail the assistant,
it doesn't just go ba-dunk and listen to you,
it actually gives you this little report.
It'll say the time, it's 10:47AM, no new notifications
or one notification from Jake Tivy, so it gives you
this little report before you're allowed to talk,
which is kind of a bit annoying.
Adaptive sound is kind of like that feature in your car,
if you have a nice car, where if you drive faster,
the stereo turns up.
Basically uses the mics on the headphone
to see what's around you and raise the volume
if you suddenly walk into a loud subway
or something like that.
In-ear detection, of course, you pull out one earphone
and the playback pauses.
Very nice, AirPods have had that since the beginning.
The thing that kind of sucks though is
there's quite a bit more delay than I would like.
I'm listening to music, this is great.
Excuse me?
Oh damn, that was instant.
Huh, proved me wrong.
Maybe it's because I actually have the app open.
Let me try not being in this settings app
and just being in my music app.
Music's on,
on, on, on,
off.
On
off.
That's a pretty big delay and of course,
because it's Google, they really are
pushing the assistant on these
and it's actually great integration.
You can use your voice match settings, of course,
so that it knows who you are and what's cool is
when someone messages you, you can just respond to them
without having to pull your phone out of your pocket.
So I was messaging Jake earlier and I'll just hear
(impersonating message alert)
and then it'll say "message from Jake Tivy"
and it'll just read it out.
It doesn't ask me "do you want me to read it?"
I don't have to do any kind of high friction flow,
it just says "message from Jake Tivy,
"penis, penis, penis, 420, 69,"
or you know, the kind of stuff that we talk about.
Now if it is a really long message or an email
or a message from an app that's weirder,
like Microsoft Teams, in those cases it will just say
"message from so and so, do you want me to read it?"
Or I think I've also heard "message from so and so"
and they'll even give you a little tutorial like,
"when you get a message like this, just hold down
"and I'll read it or you can reply."
Okay, let's talk about how they sound,
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I'm keeping the medium ear tips in 'cause I'm getting
a pretty good seal with those
and this little fin that they have on it,
you can't remove those and they don't have
different sizes of those, which they do on other,
like, Jaybirds for example, but I'm not mad at it,
I find it comfortable and it makes me orient this
the correct way and keeps them in my ears pretty good.
Now when I had listened to
the previous generation of these earphones,
my impression with those original Pixel Buds was
that they were kind of distant sounding
but quite bassy.
With these ones, I feel the bass is less pronounced,
especially the high bass but there's actually more low bass
and you can see this if you look
at the frequency response curve.
They're way more forward,
they're more of like, playful and immediate,
they're kind of right there, they're very clear
and articulate, which means I can hear
all the different sounds in a track, all the little chimes
and bells that are kind of lower in the mix,
I can still hear those.
There's good separation between all the instruments,
so they're pretty pleasant to listen to.
They're pretty good.
There is a bit, again, looking at
that frequency response curve, there's a bit of a dip
in the highs where you can hear the really high trebles
but kind of the mid treble, there's a dip there.
One result of that is when you hear cymbals,
they sound a little more
(impersonating cymbal)
than shh.
Don't get me wrong, these sound fine.
I'm kind of like, nitpicking but if you compare
this response curve to what you get on AirPods,
these have way more bass and they're closer to neutral
across the spectrum than they were compared to AirPods
or than they were with the original Pixel Buds,
so I'm really impressed with these.
They sound great.
Let's see how loud these things go.
Yep, okay.
Okay!
They definitely go louder than I would ever want
to listen to, actually kind of damaging
but maybe you're more deaf than I am
or in a louder environment, so that's fine.
They have quite a bit of isolation, it almost feels
weird to talk with them in.
It's like wearing ear plugs, my voice sounds different
with them in
and I just like how small and discreet they are,
they look awesome and there's also a version in black,
this is kind of like the panda white and black version
but I think you can get all black as well,
more executive feel.
So the AirPods without the wireless charging case
because there are two variants of AirPods charging cases,
the most basic ones are $160, these are $180.
However, this case does wireless charging.
You can put it on a wireless charger
and charge your earphones.
To get that on the AirPods is $200.
So combined with the fact that it's cheaper
than the comparable AirPod and in my opinion,
sounds quite a bit better,
I think these actually are pretty good value.
I'm not gonna say they're the best Android headphones to get
until we do a deeper dive on LTT, where we compare them
to the Samsung buds, Sennheisers and AirPods side by side
and just see what you're really getting for the price
but my initial impression on unboxing is
these are pretty sweet and I wish Google had made these
two years ago!
But they're here now, so I'm happy with it.
If you liked this video guys, get subscribed and stay tuned.
We've got lots of other headphone reviews coming up,
I know Linus is checking out some, I think LG ones
or something like that and of course, I just checked out
those weird Grado Hemp headphones, which are over ears.
Lots of good stuff, check it out.