Google Pixel Buds A-Series Earbuds Review

• Touch controls. Some headphones have controls that are hard or annoying to use, but the Pixel Buds A-Series touch and tap controls make it easy and intuitive to pause, skip tracks, and call up a digital assistant
• Small size. These earbuds come with a small, lightweight carrying case that’s easy to slip in a pocket or a bag, about the same size as the case for Apple’s AirPods. The earbuds themselves are also tiny, unobtrusive, and relatively light.
• Built for Google Assistant. The Pixel Buds are built with Google Assistant in mind, and you can call it up with a tap or just by saying “Hey Google.” That makes it easy to hear your notifications, check the weather, make a call, and more. There are other cool features, too, such as real-time language translation.
• 24 hours of battery life total. Google says the A-Series has a 5-hour battery life, but the charging case adds 19 hours of extra power, and charges the headphones when they’re stowed away. In our tests, we find these earbuds have audio quality that’s decent, but far from great.

Thanks to their mediocre audio quality rating, the Google Pixel Buds A-Series just miss the cutoff for a CR recommendation. They reproduce music and voices very well, although they have some noticeable sonic flaws that get in the way of a truly great listening experience. For instance, our testers find the Pixel Buds A-Series to have bass that’s a bit too boomy, and a somewhat grainy midrange. (It’s hard to describe sound using words.) Still, the bass is deep and impactful, and you can hear the higher frequencies in the treble range, which includes sounds such as cymbals and the upper range of a violin. 

These earbuds aren’t designed to block out external noise, so your audio may be hard to hear in noisy environments. That’s an intentional design choice, and a plus if you prefer not to cut off the outside world, but it’s a drawback when you really want to focus on the music. That’s a bit unusual, but Apple’s AirPods are designed the same way (except for the AirPods Pro, which are noise-canceling).

The features are convenient, but I experienced some occasional glitches. The touch controls work perfectly, and are easy to use once you learn them. There’s a handy “in ear detection” feature, which automatically pauses your audio when you take the earbuds out—though every once in a while this didn’t work right. I also had to unpair the headphones entirely and repair them to get the settings app to work correctly, even when I was using a Google Pixel phone. When I got the settings app working, I tried a a useful Bass boost feature which you can use to add depth or dial back the low end. The Pixel Buds work just as well on iPhones, but there’s no app for customization.

The coolest feature is the translation function. Say “Hey Google, help me speak Spanish” (or the language of your choice) and you’ll hear a translation of any compatible language that you’re hearing in the real world. The feature is a little finicky, but works surprisingly well. 

The Google Pixel Buds A-Series are a decent option for people looking for a less expensive pair of truly wireless earbuds. We’ve found a number of other models with far better sound, and some are even cheaper. The sound is good enough for casual listening, especially when you’re on the go, but you can do better. Still, the A-Series are convenient, they feel and look great in your ears, and the case is easy to carry around. 

They aren’t good enough to call them the perfect AirPods alternative for people with Android phones. Part of what makes the AirPods great is their streamlined compatibility with Apple products. Using the Google Pixel Buds A-Series wasn’t seamless, even on a phone designed by Google. These problems weren’t terrible though, and the headphones were a joy to use when they were working properly. The bottom line is these headphones are a decent choice for Android users, but we’d recommend some other headphones first. 

Every year, CR tests dozens of headphones in our labs. A panel of trained audio technicians assesses each pair by listening to the same set of high-quality music recordings. These tracks have been selected to highlight different parts of the audio spectrum—think of more detailed aspects of bass, midrange, and treble. Other tracks are used to test the reproduction of additional aspects of sound, such as the spatial ambience of the room the music was recorded in, the delicate nuances of the human voice, and audio passages crowded with tons of different instruments. We use the same songs to compare the model we’re testing with a standard set of reference headphones that represent different levels of audio quality. That gives us a clear, consistent picture of how each headphone measures up.

Personal preferences will influence your feelings about what makes for great audio quality. For example, some listeners want the guttural hit of a loud bass note above all else, while others prefer a more clinical sound that lets you pick out all the fine details. At CR we emphasize “accuracy” in audio products, or how well the headphones reproduce the sound of an original recording. In other words, the better a pair of headphones rates in our tests, the closer it’s going to get you to what the producers created in the studio, with the fewest distortions and sonic quirks.