I’ve been a long-time headphones user, but a few times I’ve thought about just how convenient wireless earbuds are. I’ve caught myself thinking, “Man, it would be great to have some earbuds or something right about now!” So, this week I got my hands on some Pixel Buds Pro. I picked Pro over A-series because it advertises more features, like Conversation Detection, and I got it on sale so I didn’t have to fork out the full $200 for them. I’ve been trying them on and comparing them to my current Bluetooth/ANC headphones, the Bose NC 700, and here are my thoughts.

Noise cancelling

The noise cancellation features on the Pixel Buds are under the title “Active noise control.” It has three settings: Noise cancelling, Off, and Transparent (or Transparency Mode). The transparent mode is quite usable, although it’s not perfect, and you probably shouldn’t use it in a particularly loud environment. It basically makes it so you can imperfectly “hear through” the earbuds while you’re wearing them.

The Pixel Buds Pro also have Conversation Detection, once you’ve updated them for the first time. This feature detects when you are talking, then tries to pause your media, and switches to Transparency Mode. This makes it so that you don’t have to take out your earbuds to talk to people. If it activates when you don’t want it to, you can tap one of the earbuds and it switches back.

The passive noise cancelling is already pretty good on these, but not perfect. It’s like your ears are plugged (because they are). It makes everything around you sound a little quieter but mostly muffled.

My headphones have 11 degrees of noise cancelling, zero through ten. I’ve remarked that with “zero” noise cancelling, I can almost hear better than I can without. This is basically its transparency mode, and it works quite well. I think I can turn off active noise cancelling altogether but I’ve never done that, it might be a setting in the app.

(Side-note about my headphones’ app: apparently it’s absolutely loaded with trackers, which seem to be running even when the app is closed. This should never happen, but considering the app is not required to use the headphones, but only to configure them, it does not need to run at all when the app is closed, but it does anyway.)

I think the active noise cancelling is actually a little better on the buds than on my headphones, but I’m not completely sure.

Fit

The earbuds are difficult to get on, mostly because I can’t tell which way to put it in when I’m holding them outside my line of sight. If you have ANC on, you can try to find a good fit where it’s quiet but not slamming into your eardrums or something, but it’s difficult and potentially dangerous.

Whereas with my headphones, I can find where they go by making sure my ears are covered. Nothing special about it, and there’s more area covered so there’s less possibility of making mistakes. Plus, you’re not risking damaging your ear.

The Pixel Buds Pro are surprisingly secure. No amount of head-shaking or bobbing or even thrashing seems to make them come out. I’d probably get a concussion before they come out from head movement alone.

My headphones come right off if I shake my head too far or lean too far forward, though.

Comfort

Besides the difficulty finding the right fit, this is the biggest reason I’ve never liked earbuds, and the Pixel Buds Pro are still no exception. I’m sure millions of Americans and people worldwide disagree, but in my experience, earbuds just cannot be comfortable to wear. You do still have to “jam” it in there to get it to fit right or stay in place, and for the Pixel Buds Pro with its In-Ear Detection, it doesn’t even activate until you put it in right. It’s actually a little painful to wear for long periods of time and I have to stretch my ear to get it to fit (I think AirPods actually don’t have this problem).

And my headphones are like wrapping a cloud on my head.

Convenience

The Pixel Buds Pro can charge with a USB-C cable or any Qi-compatible wireless charger (which is almost all of them). Something I think is really clever with the AirPods and the wireless earbuds that come after them is that the case is an extra charger and the power button replacement. So not only does it prolong the battery life, you never need to press a power button to make it ready to use. You just take them out of the case and put them in your ears. Google advertises that the Pixel Buds Pro can last up to 30 hours on one full charge.

My headphones only charge via USB-C. It comes in a case that also has (a space for) an aux cable compatible with the unstandard port on the headphones and a USB-C to USB-A cable for charging. It lasts up to 20 hours on one charge.

One thing that all major wireless earbuds right now are missing, and probably won’t have, is aux jack compatibility. It’s useful on occasion, such as for testing a guitar pedal, using school or work computers, or playing video games. I think they could put a port on or in the case somewhere to add this as an option for those who might want it.

Conclusion

I don’t expect to use these regularly. I haven’t figured out if there’s a trick to putting these in or not. Maybe the pain goes away after my body learns to adapt to it? In any case, my headphones are far more comfortable to wear and far easier to put on. I wouldn’t even consider using the Pixel Buds Pro for gaming. I have yet to have a voice call with them so I don’t know if it has solved the severely-degraded audio issue that Bluetooth has always had (which I believe is because it has to split the stream into two, microphone and headphones, so it has less bandwidth).

I expect that they’ll be useful in a pinch, though.