Google Pixel Buds

Listen with Big Brother

Pixels go in your eyes, Google, not your ears! To add to this confusion, these are cordless earphones but their most obvious feature is a cord. This just drapes round the back of your neck and hopefully catches any stray Bud that falls out of your ear, although a fiddly sizeadjustment system aims to prevent that.

Like Apple’s Airpods, Pixel Buds don’t squeeze into your ear canal but sit neatly against it. In contrast to Apple’s funny down spike, Google has fitted each Bud’s electronics into a blob which, combined with the cord, makes them feel awkward and unbalanced after a while. An hour in the supplied charging case readies them for six hours of listening.

Audio quality is excellent all the way from bass to treble. Medium volumes sound loud enough, and there’s not much leakage to annoy people nearby. But you could get headphones just as good for under £100. The point of Pixel Buds is Google Assistant. Tap the right Bud and you can ask for the music you want to hear, check information, have incoming texts read to you and dictate messages.

All this works pretty well, but trying to control music and notifications and phone calls with finger taps and swipes often got us in a muddle. Google Translate is a cool feature in theory – think Douglas Adams’s Babel fish – but only works with a Google Pixel phone, which you’d often end up needing to get out anyway.