Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 review

2024-12-02

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 are the latest flagship wireless earbuds from Google and the second generation model of the 2022 Pixel Buds Pro. This latest version makes rather big claims of being the most comfortable earbuds while also being able to cancel twice as much noise as the Pixel Buds Pro thanks to the new Google Tensor A1 chip inside each earbud. Priced at $229 MSRP, Google is once again competing with the heavy weights of the industry. Let’s see how they stack up.

Design

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 earbuds have been redesigned compared to the previous generation model. Gone are the bulbous tubers that felt like shoving grapes in your ears and have now been replaced by significantly smaller buds that feel more like tiny ear plugs. Google says the new earbuds have been designed with 45 million data points from different ears and are the most comfortable earbuds.

On the outside, the new earbuds have the same circular disc-shaped design that has been a signature element for all previous Pixel Buds models. However, on the inside, the earbuds are considerably smaller. So small, in fact, that they now feature integrated wing tips that help secure the earbuds in your ears as there isn’t much mass to fill up the cavity.

The earbuds can be worn one of two ways; you can either insert them as is, at which point the earbuds are basically floating inside your ears with very little contact. This obviously makes them susceptible to fall out so the other way is to twist them in. This enables the fin to dig into your ears and lock them in place.

The earbuds have a two-tone color design. The chosen color of the earbuds is only found on the outer disc as the insides are just matte black plastic. As with the previous model, the black inner plastic visibly shows greasy smudges no matter how clean your ears are and demand constant cleaning.

The outer surface of the earbuds is touch-sensitive and supports multiple gestures. These are easy enough to activate once you manage to figure out where exactly the earbuds are on the side of your face, as their small size makes them easy to miss. Google says it uses IR proximity sensor to detect when the earbuds are worn but I couldn’t locate where this sensor was located. I did find a spot where the earbuds responded to physical touch with skin for play/pause detection but that’s not exactly how IR works so I'm not sure what’s going on there.

Google cleverly detects touch input from both the outer touch surface and the inside sensors to detect when you have finished inserting the earbuds in your ears. It’s only when you fully remove your hands from the earbuds does the ANC kick in and the playback begins. This also means you can never accidentally trigger touch gestures while inserting the earbuds in your ears, something that plagues so many other earbuds on the market.

Moving on to the case, there isn’t a lot to talk about here. The exterior design is nearly identical and had it not been for the speaker port on the bottom it would have been impossible to differentiate between our Buds Pro 2 and Buds Pro cases. The speaker is there to play sounds while pairing or charging and can also be made to beep if misplaced. The case still has the same excellent eggshell texture that does tend to stain overtime.

One really nice improvement with the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is how the earbuds are positioned within the case. With the Pixel Buds Pro, the earbuds were a bit annoying to pluck out since they sat nearly flush with the case. The Pixel Buds Pro 2 stick out a fair bit and provide room to pull them out with ease.

Having said that, there is a downside to the tiny size of the earbuds, and that is that they are a pain to handle. Even as someone who’s not usually clumsy, I dropped the earbuds countless times because of how little surface area there is to grab onto once you pull them out of the case or your ears. You have to take extreme amounts of care handling these as they are just unbelievably easy to drop and avoid handling them over things like grates or gaps between train or elevator doors.

In terms of build quality, both the earbuds and the case feel reasonably premium and well-made. The earbuds are IP54 compliant and the case is IPX4. Outside of extreme abuse (perhaps by dropping them constantly), both the earbuds and the case should last everyday use.

Finally, I know this is a nitpick but having four color options and then placing those colors only on one small part of the product feels a bit silly. Sure, it’s the part others see the most but it’s rarely what you get to see yourself. Other products have their colors extend over to the case but not only has the case design on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 not changed, it’s also still just white.

Comfort

Comfort is a big selling point for the Pixel Buds Pro 2 and Google seems to have gone through a lot of effort to ensure it is good. I won’t say much about the whole ‘most comfortable earbuds’ claim; I’m sure even Google realizes it overcooked that one a bit as it’s impossible to ascertain if something is the most comfortable when you consider the sheer number of earbuds on the market, not to mention the different ear types.

I will say that the Pixel Buds Pro 2 were reasonably comfortable in my use. The locking mechanism puts a tiny bit of strain on your ears than if you just let them be but I didn’t like how insecure they felt without locking in so I opted to lock them in every time. I think the previous generation earbuds were a bit more comfortable overall and I also tend to find earbuds with stalks nicer to wear (and handle). But all things considered, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 are quite good in this regard.

Software and features

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 work with the Pixel Buds app, which comes pre-installed on Pixel devices and can be downloaded separately on other Android phones. There is no iOS version, which somehow feels pettier than Apple restricting its earbuds to only its phones.

The Pixel Buds app has been around for some time now and still manages to feel weirdly janky, especially in the way it loads things. The app detects the paired earbuds and only loads features that are specific to them but the way it does this isn’t very fluid and you can sometimes catch it loading some things slower than others. The screen also scrolls up randomly when you tap certain items in the menus and the EQ screen tells you to create a custom EQ every single time you go into the EQ screen. Some items also didn’t respond to taps at times no matter how often the app was restarted.

Through the app, you can adjust things like ANC modes, touch gestures, EQ, spatial audio, multipoint pairing, and more.

The ANC options are rather simple toggles between ANC on, ANC off, and transparency modes. There are no sliders or presets to select the ANC or transparency mode strengths like on some other competing brands.

The EQ offers several usable presets along with a custom five band custom mode. However, the EQ uses nomenclatures like ‘Upper Treble’ and ‘Low Bass’ instead of just using the frequency values like everyone else, which makes adjusting a specific frequency band difficult. The Volume EQ option from previous models is here and automatically boosts bass frequencies when you listen at lower volume levels to compensate.

There’s also a Hearing Wellness section, which provides useful information on your current listening levels. It also tells you if your accumulated listening volume is within recommended exposure level or if you have been listening at high volumes for too long. The app will also give you a notification if your recommended exposure limit is exceeded.

The Spatial Audio feature is also back with head tracking using on-board sensors on the earbuds. The implementation of this feature is still quite poor because Google likes to pretend Dolby Atmos doesn’t exist despite being in almost every major smartphone these days. Google’s spatial audio feature is only implemented in video apps, that too very few at the time of writing (Google TV, Max, Netflix, Disney Plus). This means you cannot use it in apps like Apple Music or Tidal nor can you use it with your own video files. The spatial audio also works only with Pixel devices, which further limits its use.

You can also update the firmware through the app. This is somewhat annoying as unlike in other such apps, the Pixel Buds app doesn’t just let you check if an update is available. It will let you know, at its leisure, if such a thing does, in fact, exist. If it does then it will decide, at its leisure, when to transfer the update to the earbuds. The firmware for Pixel Buds devices is applied to the earbuds as well as the case. While the phone transfers the update to the earbuds, the earbuds decide, at their leisure, when to transfer the update to the case. This entire process is frustrating to witness and tends to take ages to complete.

Now onto more serious complaints. My major complaint with the previous generation Pixel Buds Pro was the litany of software issues that plagued the device at the time of testing. Unfortunately, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 also has its fair share to report. The ANC in the left earbud did not work correctly. When engaged, it would actually slip in some noise from the outside, noise you would not hear if ANC was disabled. This wasn’t some tip or fit issue as flipping the earbud to the other ear presented with the same issue.

When paired with a Windows PC, there was a popping noise that played every now and then while playing audio. There were also instances where the earbuds were clearly paired and connected with the test smartphone but despite that the phone was playing audio through its loudspeaker instead of the earbuds. At one point the single tap gesture on the left earbud stopped working but the other gestures worked fine.

Throughout these issues, the earbuds were factory reset several times to no avail. They were and remain at the time of writing on the latest firmware version, which is 2.117. Looking at the Pixel Buds subreddit, I’m clearly not the only one having issues with these earbuds, with other users complaining about even more things. I’m sure Google will fix some of these issues over time as it did with the Pixel Buds Pro but launching a new flagship pair of earbuds with such basic issues every time is unbecoming for a software company of Google’s size and experience.

Hardware

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 use 11mm dynamic drivers that are quite possibly the same ones used on the Pixel Buds Pro, although Google does claim to have a “new high frequency chamber for smooth treble”.

Powering everything is a new custom Tensor A1 chip that has dedicated lanes for ANC and audio processing. Google claims the chip is 90 times faster than the speed of sound so it should be able to keep up with the demands of the ANC algorithm, which the company claims results in 2x better noise cancellation over the previous Pixel Buds Pro.

Despite all that, the company is still somewhat stuck in the stone age regarding its choice of audio codecs. The Pixel Buds Pro 2 support SBC, AAC, and Opus. Out of these, Opus is only used for spatial audio content, so you’re mostly stuck with AAC for all your regular audio needs. This isn’t necessarily an indictment of AAC, which is a fine codec despite its age and simplicity but you can certainly do better than that in 2024 for the asking price.

Performance

Audio quality

The original Pixel Buds Pro had decent if unexciting audio quality. Compared to everything else about it, the sound felt like somewhat of an afterthought and really was nothing to write home about. Thankfully, that’s not the case with the Pixel Buds Pro 2.

With the tuning of the Pixel Buds Pro 2, Google has chosen to go in a very different direction from the Pixel Buds Pro or indeed what would generally be considered mainstream. While the Pixel Buds Pro had a somewhat typical bassy low-end and warmer overall sound, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 are much leaner and cleaner sounding.

Let’s start with the bass. The Pixel Buds Pro had a very thumpy low-end response, which was really what the entire tuning was centered around. The Pixel Buds Pro 2 come in with a much tighter and leaner overall bass response. The bass shelf now sits much lower and while it is still elevated over what one might consider reference, it has a much more precise and lighter quality to it. You still get punchy attack and slam from drums and the warmth from cellos and bass guitars but it doesn’t dominate the overall sound.

Much like on the Pixel Buds Pro, the lower mid-range on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is pulled back slightly in the mix, making some of the vocals a bit harder to hear over the rest of the mix. However, the overall mid-range clarity on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is much greater in comparison, which means everything still comes across quite well.

What the Pixel Buds Pro 2 lack is the timbre of the Pixel Buds Pro. The original model have a smoother, mellower tone to the vocals and instruments whereas the Pixel Buds Pro 2 tends to sound quite nasal and metallic in the upper mid-range. It’s not something one would immediately pick up on but going back and forth between the two models it’s quite apparent. Toning down the frequencies between 1-2kHz should help a bit but you’re going to need something better than the 5-band EQ in the app.

The treble response is greatly improved on the Pixel Buds Pro 2; the current version of the Pixel Buds Pro sounds quite soft and muted in the treble range, which the Pixel Buds Pro 2 fixes. The downside of this is that on some tracks the Pixel Buds Pro 2 treble response can be quite sharp and sibilant. Still, those instances were rare in my testing and overall I much prefer the treble response on the newer model.

Overall, I consider the tuning on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 to be a big improvement over their predecessors and great overall. Instead of a one-dimensional bass-forward sound, the new model presents a balanced, cleared, and brighter sound. The sound is also much more detailed and doesn’t sound quite as soft and fuzzy as before.

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 also have decent imaging and soundstaging. The sharper, higher resolution sound has much more distinct object placement in the mix and there is greater sense of space around the listener. Even without gimmicky spatial audio features, the sound is wider and more three-dimensional.

Speaking of spatial audio, it was quite poor in my usage, much as it was on the Pixel Buds Pro. For whatever reason, the spatial audio mix is quite soft with a low-resolution, indistinct sound. The dynamic range is also poor and everything sounds roughly the same volume in the mix. The bass is bloated and mostly what you hear in action sequences with the dialog being no clearer than in standard stereo. It’s just a top to bottom failure when you consider its limited uses and the addition of extra hardware for the pointless head tracking feature.

One thing to note is that there is a significant difference in sound between the ANC modes. While there is no real audible difference when you switch between ANC on and transparency mode, switching to the ANC off makes the sound considerably more stuffy with a diffused upper mid-range and treble response and heightened bass response. Moreover, the sound also gets more boxed-in and two-dimensional, and almost sounds monophonic in comparison. Usually, there is some difference between ANC on and off modes but it’s rarely this big. Why the difference exists in the first place is not clear since Google claims the ANC and audio signal take different paths within the chipset. There is zero reason for the ANC to have such an impact on the audio processing and I have to assume this is a bug that someone forgot to test.

Microphone

The microphone performance on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 was a mixed bag. Compared to the Pixel Buds Pro, the new model has clearer sounding vocals. Having said that, the previous model had a more natural and less artificially enhanced voice even if it is a bit quieter.

However, when there is loud background noise, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 just falls apart. It can get rid of the background noise if you aren’t speaking but the moment you speak, you hear your voice along with the source of the noise in the background simultaneously. It’s like it completely gives up on doing any noise reduction when it detects the person speaking and hopes the other party will hear you over the noise. In comparison, the Pixel Buds Pro actually did a decent job of cutting out background noise even while you are speaking.

Just for the sake of reference, I tried the OnePlus Buds Pro 3 again under the same conditions and the difference in background noise reduction on the OnePlus is night and day better than either of the two Google models despite not having a fancy chipset onboard and being half the price.

Noise cancellation

Noise cancellation performance on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is very good. Compared to the previous generation model, the new model has better attenuation in the mid and high frequencies while both are similarly good at low frequencies. I can’t quite confirm the 2x noise reduction claim but it is objectively better in everyday use. The ANC on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 also doesn’t seem to adjust its effectiveness as much or at all compared to some other models based on ambient noise levels so you don’t get some of that fluctuations that you might get elsewhere.

The transparency mode is also good quality. Like Apple, Google aims for a more natural sound over being artificially boosted, which makes it ideal to be just left on while walking around as it doesn’t distract too much from what you’re listening to.

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 have a conversation detection feature, which will detect the wearer speaking and enable transparency mode while turning down any audio being played. It worked well enough and was also smart enough to only activate while I was speaking and not for others around me. It deactivates itself if you stop speaking for a while so you sort of need to keep speaking.

The ANC on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 doesn’t seem to react to wind much; in a heavy wind simulation test (a.k.a. desk fan) the Pixel Buds Pro 2 ANC did not drop out as it usually does in other models, which meant the buffeting noise was quite apparent. Interestingly enough, the earbuds will tone down the transparency mode in heavy wind to avoid the buffeting but not in the noise cancellation mode. I decided to check the first gen model and it too exhibited similar behavior.

Compared to something like the OnePlus Buds Pro 3, which also has very good ANC, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 are a bit better overall. But what’s impressive about the ANC on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is how quick it is. The OnePlus Buds Pro 3 take a couple of seconds to activate their ANC and then another second or so to slowly adjust to the ambient noise. The Pixel Buds Pro 2 ANC kicks in instantly and is also quick to switch modes. It’s clear the A1 chip is pulling its weight and makes the overall experience snappier.

However, when it comes to ANC tech, it’s clear Apple is currently light years ahead of the competition. Not only do the AirPods Pro 2 have outstanding ANC, the transparency mode is so good now it can rival medical-grade hearing aids. Apple has also expanded a lot in this space, positioning the AirPods Pro 2 as a health and fitness product. Unfortunately for Google, it’s not quite there yet and while the A1 allows the company to potentially expand the Pixel Buds Pro 2 functionality through software updates like Apple has on the AirPods Pro 2, the current product feels much more basic compared to Apple’s offering.

Latency

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 have okay latency performance. On the smartphone, there is no noticeable latency in video playback as video players can automatically adjust to mask that. Some games had slightly more noticeable latency than others but they were generally playable.

However, if you play something in the browser, for example, then you will get significantly more lag. This also applies to things like tapping sounds for the keyboard, which have an annoyingly long delay to them.

When paired with a Windows PC, the audio latency was quite decent. Usually, earbuds with poor latency performance get exposed when paired to a PC as the tricks they can employ on phones to mask the delay don’t work on the PC. However, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 latency was fine for watching videos and even for casual gaming.

Connectivity

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 have decent connectivity performance. I didn’t come across any disconnections or large audio dropouts when paired with a phone. However, there were occasional popping sounds when paired to a PC. This didn’t happen every time so it was hard to tell what was causing it.

Battery Life

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 have a claimed battery life of 8 hours of continuous playback with ANC enabled and 12 hours with ANC disabled. Google also claims 1.5 hours of playback with ANC disabled after a 5-minute charge.

It wasn’t possible to do our usual battery life test with ANC enabled as the earbuds require contact with skin to enable ANC or it gets shut down completely. As such, testing was only done with ANC disabled.

In this mode, I got almost exactly 12 hours of playback on a full charge. After a 5-minute charge, I got almost two hours of playback, which is a bit over what Google claims.

Assuming the ANC figure continues this trend of matching claimed numbers, the battery life on the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is very impressive. These numbers are higher than what most of the competition is capable of and only Sony is able to match Google in this regard.

As with the previous generation model, the case supports both wired as well as wireless charging.

Conclusion

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 are priced at $229 but had already dropped to $179 at the time of writing. They are available in four colors, Porcelain, Hazel, Peony, and the Wintergreen pictured here.

The Pixel Buds Pro 2 are a notable improvement over their predecessor. The new model is more comfortable, has much better audio quality, and better active noise cancellation. The battery life is similar, which means it’s still great and better than most of the competition.

Where the earbuds disappoint is in the quality of the microphone audio, which is quite poor in noisy environments. The small earbud design also makes them difficult to handle and easy to drop. The audio quality with ANC disabled is quite a bit worse and the janky Pixel Buds app is not available on iOS. The spatial audio feature is also abysmal in both implementation and quality.

But like with the first generation model, the main issue with the Pixel Buds Pro 2 is the myriad software issues. Three months from launch, the earbuds still feel like they are in a pre-release state running on beta firmware. Google has a track record of fixing these issues over time but it also has a track record of having them in the first place. None of the other earbuds I test are anywhere even close to having as many issues as Google products do at launch and most of them are from smaller brands selling cheaper products.

That aside, I do still quite like the Pixel Buds Pro 2. The comfort is good and the sound quality is one of the best on the market. I do hope the company gets its act together and not just fixes the current issues but also makes sure they don’t happen in the first place as otherwise these earbuds really are worth buying if you can get them at the current discounted price.