Google has incorporated many of its flagship earbud features into the new Pixel Buds 2a, making them a really appealing wireless earbud package. For $179, you get Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), pretty decent sound and all in a really light package.
However, as the embargo lifts for these, there are lots of sales on and the Pixel Buds Pro are discounted to $179 as well. These offer more features, better sound, more battery life and the list goes on.
I wanted to like the Pixel Buds 2a, but next to the rest of the competition, there is little that makes them stand out at this price. I think if they can drop down to $115 in Canada, the Buds 2a would be a much more appealing package. At the current price, it’s a really hard sell.
A hard market to crack
At $179, the Buds 2a are competing with a ton of other mid-range earbuds. I would say they stand out for their small size, but the Pixel Buds Pro are almost exactly the same design, negating that advantage, if you can get the Buds Pro on sale, of course.
On Android, you have full control over the EQ and an EQ balancing feature that maintains a level sound across all components at lower volumes. While this is nice, I’ll say this is one of the first set of earbuds that I’ve worn in a while where going into the EQ settings was worth doing.
When I started these up, the treble was boosted, and I needed to tone down both treble options in the settings to reduce the harshness on some instruments. Bass was a lot better, and I left that EQ untouched. Is this enough for most people to notice? I don’t think so, but it’s strange Google hasn’t tuned these as well as the Pixel Buds Pro 2.
Typically with wireless earbuds, they very squarely fall into one of three camps: terrible, good, and surprisingly good. These fall just into the good category, but I’d even go as far as to call the audio quality just fine. It’s the rest of the components that bring the score back up on these. If audio quality is your main concern, the Nothing Ear (a) are better and cheaper while the Nothing Ear is only another $40 and sounds even better.
The mic is also a nice upgrade to these buds and works really well in quiet environments. However, once a fan or some consistent noise is rumbling in the background, the audio isolation works too hard and the mics struggle to pick up full words. They’re great in a pinch, but taking calls on a busy street might not work as well as you want it to.
The touch controls are okay, and a caveat needed to make these buds so tiny, but as with most touch controls, it leads to misspresses. I find the design is good enough that this doesn’t happen when I need to adjust the fit, but when trying to play/pause sometimes it will double register a press and skip the track or trigger ANC/Transparency. With that said, if you really like the small size, it’s worth the tradeoff, but for most, the stem-based controls of Galaxy Buds or Nothing earbuds will be easier to use.
Who are these for
If you’re an Android user and want a small and light set of earbuds, the Pixel Buds 2a are a great option (as long as the Pixel Buds 2 Pro aren’t on sale). To caveat that, I will mention that I expect Google will also discount these buds in a few months to closer to $115 or so and at that price they’re a great deal.
The small size and decent ANC also make them really nice for working out. That said, the small size might also make them less stable in big ears.
iPhone users will need to look elsewhere since there is no Pixel app there to make these fully functional. They’ll still work, but you can only control ANC with the on-bud controls.
Power users who take a lot of meetings may also want to look at Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 3 series. The lower-cost options don’t have silicon tips so the ANC is a little worse, but the mics are better and they switch between Windows and Android better than most buds.
Pixel Buds 2a are available from the Google Store for $179, however, as I mentioned above, at the time of writing, so are the Pixel Buds Pro 2.
