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Google Pixel Buds 🎧 Real World 🎧 Review: Are they worth half the price of the Pixel 4a?
It's time for the Google Pixel Buds Review. I have been using every day since the for the last two months. The Google Pixel Buds are packed with useful features like adaptive sound, in ear detection, touch control and the Google Assistant. They also have pass through audio which was a must for me when I was looking for new earbuds. The one downside is that they are expensive, very expensive, at just over half the price of the Google Pixel 4a. Are these buds worth the price? I will answer this in this video.
✨ WATCH NEXT ✨
- Google Pixel 4a Review https://youtu.be/7wNDXsDKoCg
- Pixel 4a VS a DSLR https://youtu.be/4KY9rIr0ifE
- Capturing the stars with your phone https://youtu.be/LwnMOsq0Mpk
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📖 CHAPTERS 📖
00:00 - Introduction
00:49 - Why I decided to buy these earbuds?
01:51 - Battery life & charging
02:24 - Charging case
03:19 - Pass through ambiant noise (noise cancellation)
03:49 - Attention Alert
04:27 - In-Ear detection
04:53 - Adaptive Sound
05:21 - Microphone Test (+noise reduction)
05:59 - Touch gestures
06:22 - Google Assistant
07:23 - Bluetooth Pairing
08:16 - Fit & Comfort
08:59 - Sound quality
09:42 - Connectivity Issues
10:40 - Final thoughts
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- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo https://geni.us/dji-pocket-2-combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card https://geni.us/sandisk-extreme-128gb
- Canon 6D Mk https://geni.us/canon-6d-mkii
- Google Pixel 4a https://geni.us/google-pixel-4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM https://geni.us/canon-lens-24-105
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-16-35
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-70-200
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#googlepixelbuds #earbuds
- 0:00 Introduction
- 0:49 Why I decided to buy these earbuds?
- 1:51 Battery life & charging
- 2:24 Charging case
- 3:19 Pass through ambiant noise (noise cancellation)
- 3:49 Attention Alert
- 4:27 In-Ear detection
- 4:53 Adaptive Sound
- 5:21 Microphone Test (+noise reduction)
- 5:59 Touch gestures
- 6:22 Google Assistant
- 7:23 Bluetooth Pairing
- 8:16 Fit & Comfort
- 8:59 Sound quality
- 9:42 Connectivity Issues
- 10:40 Final thoughts
Let's go for a run. Hello everyone these are the Google Pixel Buds and at half the price of the Google Pixel 4a, they're very expensive. In this video, I want to answer if they're worth their price and you're gonna see the answer is quite complicated. For those of you who are new to this channel, i'm Loïc Bellemare-Alford, a young photographer and filmmaker on the journey to become better at this art. i've been using the Google Pixel Buds for the last two months and I really enjoyed them but I don't think that they are for everybody. I decided to buy the Google Pixel Buds because I used to buy cheap 30 or 40 dollar earbuds on Amazon but they weren't very good for a few reasons. The first one was that the battery life wasn't very long, so after 40 minutes i had to charge them all the time and that was super annoying because when taking my walks with my dogs every day, that are usually one hour to an hour and a half, I had to charge my earbuds in the middle of the walk, which wasn't a pleasant experience at all. The second thing was that they weren't very comfortable inside of my ears and they would fall out all the time which was super annoying because I never knew when I would go for a run and the earbud would just fall out which was a huge problem. And the last one was that I wouldn't hear anything from outside of them, even though they didn't have active noise cancellation. The passive noise cancellation was actually pretty good and it was a problem because I wouldn't hear if a car would come by or something like that which is kind of dangerous when I walk around, especially late at night here where they don't necessarily see me too well. I definitely do not get the five hours of advertised listening time. I get around three to four hours but what is pretty neat is that if you put the earbuds inside of their charging case for 10 minutes you get another extra two hours, which is nice when I'm walking around. And the charging case provides about 24 hours of listening time so I only charge the charging case about once a week, which is pretty good. Also when you open the charging case beside your phone, Android phones are going to pop up with a little display to show the remaining battery of the charging case and each earbud. Now let's talk about the charging case because it's really great! It's tiny and it has a top-notch build quality If we come inside and take out the earbuds they're holding with magnets and if you put back the earbud here it's going to align perfectly because of the magnets. So this is great. And also, if you come and by accident you open it upside down the magnets are good enough to hold them in place which is really great because you don't lose the earbuds once they're inside of the case. The case can charge using a usb-c port on the bottom here so this is really great because everything should be usb-c these days! It also supports wireless charging, so if you have a wireless charging pad you can just put it on there and it should work. If you want active noise cancelling these are definitely not the headphones you should be getting because they literally have a hole inside of them to allow noise from the outside to come inside. And I love it, because it allows me to talk to people if they pass beside or if to hear if a car is coming by or if my dog needs a break when taking a walk. They also have passive noise cancelling so you still get some protection from the outside so you can still hear your audio nice and clear. This brings me to an interesting experimental feature: attention alert. If there's a dog barking, a baby crying, or an emergency vehicle passing by, it's going to lower the volume and play a gentle notification to get your attention. And in my test, it works quite well if my dog is barking right beside me or a few meters away but if it gets further away or if the emergency vehicle is quite far it doesn't work at all. So, I think it's good for some use cases but it doesn't work all the time which doesn't make it super useful in the end. Now let's talk about my favorite feature which is the in-ear detection. So when you take out the earbuds it's gonna pause automatically the content you're listening whether it's on your phone or your computer. And this is good if somebody's passing by and you don't have to struggle to find the pause button on your phone or on the earbuds. You can just take it out and it stops and when you put it back in it actually starts the content again. This is really a useful feature that I use all the time There's another really useful feature which is adaptive sound. It listens to the ambient sound around you to adjust the volume automatically. If you start using a leaf blower or a vacuum cleaner, you're gonna notice the sound going up and going back down when you stop. And this is very useful because you can always have clear audio inside of your ears with the perfect volume all the time without having to touch the device to change the volume or touch your phone to change the volume. Now let's test the microphones inside of the Pixel Buds. The audio you're hearing right now is coming directly from the pixel buds and if I start the leaf blower you should still be able to hear what I'm saying even though this is producing a lot of noise right beside me. This is kind of incredible because it's very useful when you're in a call or a Zoom meeting or whatever, to be able to still hear your voice even if there's a noise all around you. So it works quite well even though your voice might sound a little bit robotic. But I don't really mind it. I prefer having a robotic voice and still hearing what I'm saying than having all the noise around being distracting. Like most earbuds, you can use a few gestures to control the content you're listening to. So a single tap is going to play or pause the content. A double tap is going, to skip forward. A triple tap is going to go back and then you can use swipe up or swipe down to change the volume. And this is so useful to be able to change the volume without having to reach to your phone to make a quick change. Then you can also long press to talk to the Google Assistant and I thought this would be totally a gimmick that I would never use but you can also use the Google Assistant keyword okay hum hum magic keyword to invoke it. When I was doing renovations here, I actually used it all the time. So I'd ask simple questions like what is the time or let's play this music or this playlist but it's also very useful when you have notifications that come in and you cannot touch your phone, where you can just read out loud notifications and you can answer to some messages. So this is super useful when you need to interact with your phone but can't access it. And I end up using the assistant a lot more than I expected even when I'm taking walks and I am listening to a podcast if I have a question I just ask the question to Google Assistant and Google gives me an answer right away in my ears, which is super useful. Let's talk about how to pair these earbuds. So it's quite simple. You open the case here make sure that the earbuds are inside of the case. Then you go on the back of the case and long press this little button for a few seconds. And the little light in front of here is going to start flashing. Once this is done, you can go into side of your Bluetooth menu on your device, so your phone or your computer, and select the Pixel Buds to connect to them. One thing that is a little bit annoying is that my Bose headphones automatically switch between multiple devices which is very useful when you have them connected to your phone and also your computer at the same time. These little earbuds don't support this so each time you want to change a device you need to go in the Bluetooth setting of that device and select the earbuds, which is just one step that is a little bit annoying when you're using them with multiple devices. In my opinion the most important thing about earbuds is that they need to be a good fit inside of your ear. And these ones at the beginning would hurt a little bit, so the first few days I had them, they really hurt when I had them inside of the ear but the good news that the pain completely goes away after wearing them a few times. Another really weird thing is that the one on the left is always perfectly in place, but the one on the right sometimes gets a little bit loose I'm not sure why one ear is okay and the other one isn't. But I'm kind of scared that the one on the right might fall out of the ear one day. But up to now it never happened so i hope it just stays like that! I'm not an audiophile but the audio they produce is pretty good especially when listening to podcasts. I think that for music they're lacking a little bit of bass especially compared to my bigger Bose headphones. Overall I think they're pretty good, but if you really want to have the best audio for music these are probably not the ones you want. The positive side is that they're sweat and water resistant, so if you're under the rain or if you're having a workout and you're all sweaty, you don't have to care too much about it because these are water resistant. Let's talk about the worst part of these headphones, and it's by far the connectivity issues. I haven't gone a full day without any connectivity issues, which is pretty annoying most of the times. It disconnects for like a second or not even. Sometimes one of the two earbuds become really echoey and sometimes just one of the two earbuds stops working completely, which is pretty weird. Most of the time simply putting the headphones inside of the little charging case fixes the issue. Or if that doesn't work you can simply reconnect them to your phone or computer and it should work, but it's just really annoying to have to do this every single day to get them working. I don't know if it's a problem with the earbuds or if it's Bluetooth but whatever the problem is I really hope they have a software update or a firmware update to fix this in the future. Here's the answer to the question I wanted to answer this video, which was: "Are these little buds worth their very high price?". If you're buying them for the software, I definitely think they're worth it. With features like adaptive sound, which are very useful for me as a photographer when I go outside and I want to make sure that the sound is always at a good level wherever I go and also things that get my attention if my dog is barking or if an emergency vehicle is passing by. If you want to get the best sound at a cheaper price, or you want to have something that fits a little bit better in the ears, it might not be the best headphones for you. If you enjoyed this video please leave a like below, and also think about subscribing! I'm going to be coming back with photography videos next week. See you in the next one! Bye bye!
Video Links
- Google Pixel 4a Review
- Pixel 4a VS a DSLR
- Capturing the stars with your phone
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford ()
- 📸MAIN CAMERA I USE
- My online store
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound
- https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card
- Canon 6D Mk
- Google Pixel 4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD
- DJI MAVIC AIR
- http://bit.ly/loicba
What is this video about?
I finally got around to testing the Google Pixel Buds over the last two months, and I wanted to figure out if they're actually worth their steep price tag. Since they cost about half of what I paid for the Pixel 4a, that's a serious investment for earbuds.
I originally bought them because I was tired of cheap $30–40 earbuds from Amazon. Those would die after 40 minutes, fall out constantly during my daily walks with my dogs, and ironically, their passive noise isolation was so good that I couldn't hear traffic—which felt genuinely unsafe. The Pixel Buds promised to fix all of that.
On battery life, I'm getting about three to four hours per charge, not the advertised five. But what saves this is the charging case: ten minutes inside gives you two extra hours, and the case itself holds about 24 hours total. I only charge it once a week. The case is genuinely great too—it's tiny, beautifully made, uses USB-C, and has wireless charging. The magnets hold the earbuds perfectly even if you flip it upside down.
The software features are where these really shine. The in-ear detection automatically pauses when you pull them out—incredibly convenient. Adaptive sound adjusts volume based on ambient noise, which is essential when I'm outside doing photography work. The attention alert feature listens for dogs barking or emergency vehicles, though it's inconsistent at range. The microphone noise reduction during calls actually works well, and the Google Assistant integration (both button press and voice activation) has become surprisingly useful for quick questions and notifications.
Sound quality is solid, especially for podcasts, though they lack bass compared to my Bose headphones if you're into music. They're water and sweat resistant, which matters for my lifestyle.
The biggest issue? Connectivity problems. I haven't made it through a single day without disconnects, one earbud acting echoey, or drops in audio. A quick reset usually fixes it, but it's annoying to deal with daily.
So here's my answer: if you care about the software features and always having seamless audio outdoors, they're genuinely worth it. If you prioritize sound quality, comfort from the start, or rock-solid reliability, look elsewhere. These are solid earbuds built around smart features rather than audiophile credentials.