

But with these new earbuds, Google will once again be hoping to provide some serious competition for the AirPods range. Google launched the original Pixel Buds back in 2020 and followed them with the more affordable A-Series variants mentioned above.

The thumb-shaped earpieces just don't feel particularly secure… (Image credit: TechRadar) AirPods Pro-killers though? The jury's still out… You cannot tweak the levels of either further than 'on' or 'off', but that's acceptable here given the efficacy of each. Active Noise Cancellation? Yes, it's good, as is transparency. Now, some good news: the touch controls are very good here, and there's on-ear volume control by swiping forward or back which works very well – so there's a feature you won't find on the AirPods Pro, Apple users – plus you can customize it so that a long press on the left earbud is a physical way to summon Google Assistant, and the right scrolls between noise cancellation profiles.Īnd the big news is that, even after only a few hours of listening, the sound quality when listening to music is an improvement over the cheaper Google Pixel Buds A-Series. Also, for a Pro-suffixed set of headphones costing $199 / £199 / AU$299 (Pro means added noise-cancellation and stepped up features, we all know that in 2022 – see the new Honor Earbuds 3 Pro or Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2), the feel here isn't exactly premium: there's not even a USB-C cable in the small and unremarkable packaging, so that particular rumor has proved genuine.
