Google Pixel Buds Pro 2
- Processor: Tensor A1
- Audio: 11mm dynamic driver
- Battery life: 12 hours with ANC off / 8 hours with ANC on
- Battery life (with case): 48 hours with ANC off / 30 hours with ANC on
- Weight: 4.7g (buds) / 65g (case with buds)
- Why we love it
- Incredible noise-cancellation
- Great audio quality
- Comfortable and snug design
- Speaker on case makes it harder to lose
- Take note
- Gemini on earbuds feels like a work in progress
Google launched the original Pixel Buds Pro back in 2022, and while they were perfectly decent-sounding earbuds – I wore mine daily until dropping them in the toilet, after which I switched to the Sony WF-1000XM5s – they fell short of the best wireless earbuds in a few key areas.
The Pixel Buds Pro 2 improve things in all the right ways. For one, they’re fully 27 per cent smaller, lighter and don’t stick out of your ears as much. They still feature the distinctive, round, touch-sensitive cap adorned with the subtle G logo, but gone is the awkward mini-egg shape, replaced by a far more ergonomic and compact design. A new “twist-to-adjust” wing tip holds them snugly in place too, so they’re a lot less likely to end up in the toilet bowl.
The case gets an upgrade too, adding a speaker that can help you find your earbuds using Google’s new Find My Device network. Previously you could only make individual earbuds ring out, which wasn’t much use if you’d popped them in the case before losing them. The case also makes a sad little sound if you close it when it’s running low on battery, reminding you to charge it.
Sound quality
Design tweaks aside, the sound quality is great out of the box. Google has made huge improvements to the acoustics, adding 11mm drivers and a high-frequency chamber to give the earbuds impressive clarity and volume from bass to treble.
The upgrade from the original Pixel Buds Pro is noticeable from the moment you pop them in – the default EQ produces a wonderfully wide and detailed sound across genres. The Pixel Buds A-series sound flat and compressed by comparison, and while the Sony WF-1000XM5 offers a more bassy soundstage, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is brighter sounding at the low end without losing detail.
Active noise cancellation
Active noise cancellation (ANC) is where the biggest improvement has been made. Google calls its noise-cancelling tech ‘silent seal 2.0’, claiming that the Pixel Buds Pro 2 adapt to your surroundings three million times per second and with a greater frequency range to cancel twice as much noise as before.
Your mileage may vary depending on the shape of your ear canals, which naturally affects the fit, but the results are seriously impressive. The Pixel Buds Pro 2 have the best ANC of any wireless earbuds I’ve tested – better even than the current frontrunner in noise-cancelling, the Sony WF-1000XM5. The boosted ANC frequency range does a noticeably better job of tuning out a wider variety of environmental noise, from ambient indoor sounds to clattering commuter train carriages.
The new Tensor A1 chip in the Pixel Buds Pro 2 uses an additional signal path for your music to bypass the ANC filter in the earbuds, meaning whatever you’re listening to retains more fidelity when active noise-cancellation is switched on. That slight drop-off in sound quality when using ANC isn’t very apparent in most other wireless earbuds, and it’s not noticeable here either, meaning better-sounding audio for those of us who tend to leave ANC on around the clock.
Features
Like the originals, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 gives you the option to turn on conversation detection, which pauses your music when it reckons you’ve started speaking to somebody and resumes playback when you’ve finished. And like the originals, it’s still too easily triggered by the occasional cough, or when you start singing to yourself around the house. It also feels rude to chat with somebody while wearing both earbuds, but hey, the feature is there if it’s useful to you.
A few other returning features of the original Pixel Buds Pro are present and accounted for. Clear calling, which does an impressive job of cutting out background noise in phone calls to focus on the voice of the caller, and the ability to seamlessly switch audio sources when you go from using your phone to your Pixel Watch or Pixel Tablet.
Battery life
In spite of their smaller size, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 get a slight boost when it comes to battery life. With ANC switched on you’ll get around eight hours of playback from a single charge. The case can recharge the buds three or four times before it needs recharging itself, giving you an overall battery life with ANC of 30 hours. Those are the numbers Google gives, and it’s broadly the kind of performance I got in real-world testing.
Switch ANC off and you’ll squeeze more life out of them: 12 hours for the earbuds and 48 hours overall with the charging case. The new speaker in the case gives the buds a small but important quality-of-life improvement: gently reminding you with a polite sound effect when the case is nearing the end of its charge.
Gemini on earbuds
Whereas the previous earbuds relied on the Google Assistant to carry out hands-free voice commands, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 use Gemini by default. The AI chatbot might be adept at writing your science homework, but it’s a frankly terrible virtual assistant. Gemini’s shortcomings are only made more apparent when it’s right inside your ear.
Simple commands like “resume my podcast” are met with “I can’t do that”, presumably because Gemini can’t interact with or launch Spotify. Ask her for walking directions and she’ll send the map results to your phone, defeating the purpose. Rephrase or repeat your request and she’ll sometimes deliver, but will occasionally mishear you in noisy environments and give you kooky answers to questions you didn’t ask.
These are things that the Google Assistant could easily handle in 2017, and while it’s expected that Gemini will improve as a virtual assistant over time, right now the voice-command experience on Pixel Buds Pro 2 is unreliable at best, and broken at worst.