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Today we’re taking a look at the Pixel buds A-series. This was my first name brand or premium kind of wireless earbuds. I’m used to buying the cheap no name bluetooth ones you can buy on Amazon for the cost of a nicer lunch. I end up replacing those sort of junky earbuds every few years. They’re generally speaking ok, the fit is usually fine, the sound quality is usually at least passable, and the microphone quality is usually terrible. I really wanted to test drive these A-series pixel buds to see if it was worth spending a little bit more. I switched out my trusty generic amazon buds for the A-Series for the last two weeks. I watch a lot of YouTube on my phone, I have a healthy podcast backlog that I’ll never finish, and I listen to a lot of music. Right off the bat, the sound quality for videos was a huge upgrade. The Podcasts and YouTube videos I watch all sounded a bit clearer, the crispness that was missing in cheap earbuds all of a sudden came back. Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t as powerful as my Corsair HS80 headset but for earbuds, I was impressed. In terms of music, this was also a huge upgrade. The bass was about as good as I could ask for in sub 100 dollar earbuds, the highs sounded good too. I listen to a good range of music, you know, anything from old Taylor Swift to new Taylor Swift..which is old Taylor Swift.. Poppy music was punchy and I was able to raise up the volume a bit and the sound was still good. Once upon a time, I listened to bands like Slipknot, I thought the sound decent for this type of metal music. It was a difficult transition away from wired headsets but eventually we all had to accept that the future was bluetooth. I’ve become really dependent on my wireless earbuds over the last 3 or 4 years. I use these for entertainment and work conference calls. So, I need to be heard on calls. Now I’m switched over to the pixel bud A-Series bluetooth earbuds. I think the sound is decent. I haven’t had any complaints from people on calls and of course, everyone sounds good to me. In terms of the fit, these were a little awkward at first, I normally go for a different type of earbuds but they fit well and never fell out of my ears when I was moving around.
Now that we have my subjective thoughts out of the way, in terms of the actual specs and features on these, we’re getting the earbuds, the charging case, and a usb-c cable. The earbuds should be good for about 5 hours of listening time but when it comes to talk time, we’re looking at just over 2.5 hours on average. That’s not horrible by any means but I do end up on calls that easily go longer than 2.5 hours. You can always do the charge one earbud at a time trick, that can help get you through longer calls especially if there’s breaks in between your talking parts. The case itself can hold about 24 hours worth of charge for the earbuds so, if you are a light or moderate user, one full case charge might last you a week or two. I’m a bit of a power user so, I definitely recharge once a week but I think that’s fine. I like that your Android phone will report the case and earbuds charge levels individually and you don’t need the app for that. The earbuds are sweat and water resistant so you can definitely use these when working out at the gym and you can keep using them if you get caught in the rain. Google did work to integrate Google Assistant with the earbuds, I don’t personally use that but I can see how this can be quite handy to issue voice commands with your earbuds. I was surprised that when I initially sync’d these earbuds, I got the “Setup Find My Device” prompt, this is awesome because people never remember to do this. If you want, Google can use location data and other metrics to help you locate your lost earbuds, very cool. Google does offer the Pixel Buds official app in the play store. The app isn’t required but it gives you a bit more control and organizes information on the pixel buds in a nice way. There’s charge meters, Google Assistant configuration, find device, touch controls and more. The app gives you access to adaptive sound which lets the earbuds automatically raise or lower volume to help battle loud or annoying environmental noise, like if you’re walking in a busy hallway or city street, that’s definitely pretty cool. The “in-ear detection” is also nice, they will just start playing audio when you have them in your ears and they will pause any audio when you remove them.
So, since these earbuds cost at least 300% more than what I usually buy, are they worth it in my opinion? Yea, I think that they’re definitely worth it. The sound quality was a huge upgrade, the mic quality was significantly better, the adaptive sound and in ear detection are super awesome features. It would be hard to go back to a basic lower quality set in my opinion. The only thing that I don’t like or wish the A-series had was wireless charging. If you can live with the charge cable though, these were good enough to be my higher end budget earbud pick.
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