It’s pretty simple to sum up the target demographic for the Pixel Buds Pro from Google: If you own an Android phone, these are the buds for you. That’s how it’s been since they came out last year, and now that we’ve gotten a chance to review them, it’s fair to ask if that still rings true.
Now there’s increased competition from the likes of the Sony WF-1000XM5 (our best wireless earbuds pick), the Nothing Ear (2) and the Beats Studio Buds+, among others. But for $199, the Google Pixel Buds Pro continue to provide a well-rounded experience with excellent audio quality, top-notch software features, long battery life and tight integration with the Android ecosystem.
You’ll just have to be okay with a few minor inconveniences.
If you’re an Android user (and especially a Pixel owner), the Pixel Buds Pro are the high-end wireless earbuds to get.
What we liked about them
A comfortable, unobtrusive design
The Pixel Buds Pro look less like the stem-based AirPods and more like elongated Galaxy Buds, which isn’t a bad thing. You put them in your ears by sliding them down into your ear canal instead of a slot-in motion, which helps them not only avoid falling out but blend in. If these came in neutral skin colors, you’d hardly be able to tell you were wearing them.
For 2023, Google introduced a new Bay Blue finish that draws attention, but I don’t mind it. It’s a great colorway, one that perfectly matches my Pixel 8 Pro review unit. You can also get them in Porcelain, Fog, Lemongrass, Coral and a more boring Charcoal.
It’s easy to forget the Pixel Buds Pro in your ears after a little while. Google managed to nail the shape of them to conform to your ear canal perfectly, and their weight was kept down so your ears don’t grow tired. I’ve done everything while wearing them, from writing reviews at Starbucks to working out at Planet Fitness (thanks to their IPX4 certification, which is just enough for sweat protection).
Touch controls live on the colorful portion of the earbuds, while the eartips on the bottom can be swapped for smaller or larger ones (which are included in the packaging). The case you store them in looks more like a flattened egg than anything else, which helps make them unique among the sea of rectangular earbud cases out there. Unfortunately, the case doesn’t match the color of the Pixel Buds you buy, which is really the only downside to the design I’ve found.
Excellent sound quality backed up by ANC, transparency and spatial audio
I’ve spent a lot of time listening to music, podcasts, YouTube videos and movies on the Pixel Buds Pro. Compared to the other high-end earbuds in my arsenal, these are easily some of the best you can get.
The Pixel Buds Pro come with custom-designed 11-millimeter drivers that offer a very unique downstepping design to deliver sound through the low-positioned grille. The result are earbuds that sound nothing short of excellent. I’ve listened to all sorts of different music with the Buds Pro, from Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” to the latest “Sinatra Platinum” collection to Post Malone’s “Austin.” Each track I fired up had good depth and clarity, and there was plenty of bass to go around for the hip-hop heads out there.
Is sound quality better than the big dogs like the AirPods Pro 2 or Sony WF-1000XM5? Not necessarily, but it’s in the same ball park. That’s quite impressive given the previous Pixel Buds’ lackluster audio quality.
When I listened to podcasts and movies, the Pixel Buds Pro did a great job balancing the higher frequencies of voices and any background music that would play. They also had good stereo separation, which leaves you with an impression that you had the music playing live right in front of you.
Speaking of which, the Pixel Buds Pro also come with spatial audio support, which uses head tracking to determine where to put certain instruments so music and movies sound like they’re playing on surround sound speakers. It worked pretty well in my testing. I’ve never been a fan of spatial audio mixes for movies or music, but if it’s something you’re personally into, you’ll be happy to know it’s here.
Of course, if you want to tweak the sound quality at all, Google supplies plenty of EQ settings for the Pixel Buds Pro. I’ll admit, there were some scenarios where midrange sounds had gotten a little buried with certain content I was listening to (mostly podcasts that used poor microphones), so it was nice to have the ability to bring them up and strike a better balance.
You also get active noise cancellation and transparency mode, which at this point, is almost a given with high-end earbuds. I’ll get to transparency a bit later, but ANC managed to serve me well in my testing. Not only did the earbuds do a good job at creating a seal inside my ears but the ANC blocked out a lot of external noise to the point where you really can’t hear almost anything around you. It too is in line with the quality of other ANC algorithms from brands like Sony and Apple.
One more note about ANC: The buds actually have a feature that automatically alleviates the pressure in your ear canal. It uses a sensor to read it and adjusts the ANC strength accordingly. I can’t say that I’ve ever had that annoying pressure feeling when wearing Pixel Buds Pro, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it works.
All the software features you could want — and more
There’s no shortage of software features on the Pixel Buds Pro. From Google Assistant integration to quick pairing on Android, you’ll not only get all the basics that you’d expect from a modern pair of earbuds but a bunch of extras as well.
Take Clear Calling. When paired with one of the new Pixel 8 phones, the Pixel Buds Pro utilize double the Bluetooth bandwidth to make voices sound clearer when on a call. It works for your voice too. I tested this during a handful of phone calls, and it was evident that there was an improvement in overall clarity.
Conversation Detection was recently added to the Pixel Buds Pro, which will automatically lower the volume of any content you’re listening to and enable transparency mode when it detects you’ve started talking. This removes the need to manually pause your music and switch to transparency mode yourself, which is really handy. I tried it a bunch, and it worked well. Whenever I started speaking to someone, Conversation Detection would kick in and I could understand everything they said. Then, about five seconds after I stopped talking, my music returned.
You also get an ear-seal test, which can help you pick the right silicone ear tip to maximize noise cancellation and sound quality based on the size of your ear. The test takes a couple of minutes to complete, and when you’re done, it’ll recommend the tip that’s right for you. This feature has crept into other wireless earbuds over the past year, but it’s great that Google included it here.
There’s also multipoint connectivity, which lets you pair the Pixel Buds Pro to more than one device at a time. This is super helpful when I’m working and want to switch from streaming SiriusXM on my Pixel to listening to a video on my MacBook.
And of course, you can tweak the touch controls to your liking. I have ANC/transparency mode assigned to one earbud with a long touch and the Google Assistant assigned to the other. Both buds can control volume, skipping tracks and more through swipes, and you’re just a tap on either bud away from answering a phone call. It’s all very intuitive and easy to navigate.
Long battery life
If you’re always worried about your earbuds running out of power, the Pixel Buds Pro are for you. Google states that they can last up to seven hours with ANC on and up to 11 with it off, and I can attest to these numbers — they’re very accurate.
I’ve never had a day where the buds died before I was done using them because they last so long on a charge. And if I knew I’d have a particularly long day, I’d disable ANC for a bit to stretch it out. Because of that, the Pixel Buds Pro always last around eight to nine hours, which is simply perfection. The case supplies up to 31 total listening hours, so you’ll always have power wherever you are.
When it’s time to recharge, you have a handy USB-C port on the bottom for faster charging, as well as Qi wireless charging. The shape of the case can make it a bit awkward to prop up on some standing wireless chargers, but it never was a huge deal for me.
The perfect complement to any Pixel or Android user
The Pixel Buds Pro kept a consistent theme in the back of my mind as I reviewed them: They’re perhaps the best wireless earbuds available for Pixel and Android users.
Their tight integration with the Google Assistant, the Android settings app, Fast Pair and their consistent software updates make them a great complement not just to Pixel users but to owners of other popular devices like the Galaxy S23, OnePlus 11 or even the Nothing Phone (2). You’ll miss out on some features like higher-quality phone calls and lower latency when gaming, but everything else remains the same regardless of which Android phone you pair them to. Plus, their friendly design makes them accessible to just about anyone.
What we didn’t like about them
Transparency mode could be improved
Google has some work to do to make its transparency mode as good as the competition.
Compared to other earbuds I’ve tried, the Pixel Buds Pro don’t feel as airy when in transparency mode as others, which is distracting and reminds you that you still have your earbuds in. With other transparency modes (most notably the one on the AirPods Pro), it sounds more like what you’d hear if you took your earbuds out. But on the Pixel Buds Pro, it just sounds like they’re recording sounds and pumping them into your ears.
I’m not sure if it’s a hardware thing or if Google just needs to improve its software, but whatever improvements need to be made, I hope they arrive for the next generation of Pixel Buds.
Microphones sound a little muffled
I noticed that the microphone quality of the Pixel Buds Pro isn’t very good. My voice sounded muffled when I recorded myself, and callers were quick to point out that my voice sounded washed out. Of course, Google’s double bandwidth feature on the Pixel 8 can help in this case, but other smartphones won’t have that advantage.
Compared to my second-generation AirPods Pro, they were much wetter than I was expecting, while my Galaxy Buds 2 Pro afforded a fuller sound with their mics than what the Pixel Buds Pro could pull off.
No lossless audio support
More and more wireless earbuds are quickly adopting lossless audio codecs, which can deliver higher-quality audio through music streaming services services like Apple Music and Amazon Music. But while it’s increasing in popularity, the Pixel Buds Pro remain complacent with standard audio codecs.
You can crank Spotify’s streaming audio quality way up, enable lossless streaming in Apple Music or download hi-fi tracks to your Pixel and play them through the Pixel Buds all you want, but nothing is going to give you true lossless streaming. Google will need to add the necessary codecs in a future version of the Pixel Buds to get it to work, so if that’s important to you, the Pixel Buds Pro might not be right for you.
A hard pass for iPhone owners
If your primary device is an iPhone, let me get right to the point: Don’t buy the Pixel Buds Pro.
There’s really nothing platform-neutral about Google’s earbuds. They won’t work with Apple’s fast-pairing process, you can’t sync them to your iCloud account, there’s no app for controlling all their various features and functions and you can’t talk to Siri through them. At best, you can manually pair them to your iPhone and play audio from your phone, but that’s it. You won’t be talking to the Google Assistant or enjoying super-clear phone calls anytime soon.
By the way, this is nothing new for Android-friendly earbuds. Many wireless earbuds are happy to support any device you own (like those from Sony or Bose), but any buds that carry the same logo as your phone (Google, Samsung, Apple) will work best with that particular phone. The Pixel Buds Pro work best with Pixel phones and are completely fine on other Android devices, while iPhone owners are left in the dust.
Long story short, just stay away. If you want all these smart features from your earbuds paired to an iPhone, there’s a pair of AirPods for everyone.
Bottom line
At $199, the Pixel Buds Pro are the best earbuds for Pixel phone owners and some of the best for Android users. From their excellent sound quality and long battery life to the smart features and comfortable design, these earbuds still hold up strong, even a year after release.
Of course, if you have niche feature requirements, these might not be for you. Anyone searching for a good transparency mode, lossless audio or high-quality mics will want to look at options like the WF-1000XM5 or Bose QuietComfort Ultra. It’s also worth mentioning that earbuds like the Nothing Ear (2) offer a very similar experience to the Pixel Buds Pro but cost $50 less.
In the end, the Pixel Buds Pro are the right choice for any Pixel phone owner and should be considered by anyone who uses an Android phone.
