Should You Buy Google's $130 Pixel Buds Over Apple, Sony And Bose? How They Compare

2 weeks ago

ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

Pixel Buds 2a are Google's newest midrange earbuds.
Solid features for little than apical competitors.
Big upgrades successful battery, durability, and connectivity.

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To complement nan premium Pixel Buds Pro 2, Google's latest midrange earbuds, nan Pixel Buds 2a, purpose to connection a near-premium acquisition for $100 less. The Pixel Buds 2a get immoderate of their premium sibling's champion features and boast awesome upgrades complete nan first-generation A-series earbuds.

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At $130, nan Pixel Buds 2a aren't nan cheapest earbuds connected nan market, but they make meaningful strides complete their likewise priced competitors. Here's a little overview of really they stack up to Apple, Bose, and Sony.

Battery life

Compared to their predecessor, nan Pixel Buds 2a committedness up to 5 much hours of continuous listening time, depending connected whether progressive sound cancellation (ANC) is enabled. With nan charging case, they committedness 27 hours of full listening time.

Looking astatine competitors successful akin tiers, nan Pixel Buds 2a hit nan Bose QuietComfort Earbuds, Sony LinkBuds Fit, and Apple AirPods 4 successful continuous playtime. However, nan AirPods 4 charging lawsuit promises 3 much hours pinch ANC disabled.

Microphones

The Pixel Buds 2a athletics 4 microphones, 2 successful each earbud. These microphones assistance successful sound cancellation and sound pickup for hands-free calling. Sony's midrange LinkBuds Fit person nan aforesaid microphone lineup, while Bose and Apple's midrange earbuds person 1 much mic.

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However, Google's concealed to ensuring nan buds' tiny, rounded shape facet still achieves superb sound pickup and value sound cancellation lies successful its civilization Tensor A1 chip, nan aforesaid audio processor successful nan Pixel Buds Pro 2.

Relying connected microphones alone, nan accepted bud-and-stem creation typically produces amended sound pickup owed to much earbud existent property and a microphone pointing toward your mouth.

Also: These Google earbuds connection nan eventual listening acquisition for Android users - moreover connected non-Pixel phones

Google's spot was designed pinch AI-powered sound processing successful mind, aiming to make nan Pixel Buds a mini yet mighty brace of earbuds. The Pixel Buds 2a are besides equipped pinch Bluetooth Super Wideband, a exertion that builds connected nan Bluetooth hands-free protocol and allows you to return and make calls pinch your earbuds.

Super Wideband expands nan bandwidth for calling complete Bluetooth, resulting successful clearer, much natural-sounding speech.

Dust and h2o guidance

Compared to nan first-generation A-series buds pinch an IPX4 rating, nan Buds 2a person an improved IP54 particulate and h2o ingress rating. Although h2o guidance is usually nan prima of nan earbuds show, accrued particulate guidance intends your earbuds are safer from coagulated particles for illustration dust, sand, aliases hair.

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Sony's LinkBuds Fit and Bose's QuietComfort Earbuds athletics an IPX4 rating, while Google's Pixel Buds 2a and Apple's AirPods 4 person an IP54 rating. The first number indicates particulate resistance, and nan 2nd number indicates h2o resistance.

Although IP54 doesn't mean your earbuds are wholly dustproof aliases waterproof, it does mean that nan earbuds tin support retired capable particulate to debar interference pinch performance.

The Google Pixel Buds 2a are disposable for preorder successful Iris and Hazel.