 All right, buds. Let's talk buds. I had to do it. I just had to do it. It was too easy. ["Bad Boy"] Wireless earbuds are the piece of tech I use only second to my phone the absolute most. And you know the feeling of when you forget your headphones at home. It's the worst. It's like the worst. From phone calls to music, they keep me entertained and connected while on the go. And the good ones, they do it without feeling like extra bulk. Now, while the Google Buds 2 have their flaws, there's one thing I didn't realize that all of my other wireless earbuds were missing. A hands-free Google Assistant available to you at all times. Grab some popcorn for you and me both. Let's get into it. ["Bad Boy"] Pixel Buds 2 are a speech bubble shaped in-ear bud with a flexible in-ear arc thing coming off the top. They're available starting today in clearly white for $179 with almost black, quite mint, and oh so orange. Coming later, says Google. I am not sure what later means, but hopefully they're quicker than Microsoft has been with launching the Surface earbuds. The buds pop into the oval matte case with a magnetic click. And that pop of opening and closing the case. ["Bad Boy"] Like, I'm a sucker for a good click, but like, this is some quality click. Oh! ["Bad Boy"] Wow! ["Bad Boy"] In terms of design, these buds feel solid, they look great, and they don't come out even when taking off a sweatshirt or biking or dancing or even chewing. They are truly not moving. And they're IPX4 water resistant, so you can feel safe wearing them in light rain or while working out. Overall, it's a huge improvement from the last Pixel Buds. Y'all, that cord thing. I don't have any words for that. Bad, bad, bad's the word. These buds fit really securely in your ear, but that comes with a cost. See this like, pointy, arc thing? Well, it looks like a thorn, and after about hour three of wearing these, it feels like a thorn. And I was wishing that it was just a little softer and more of an arc, kind of like on the Galaxy Buds. But let's get right into sound quality. The Pixel Buds 2 have 12 millimeter drivers that provide really good audio quality. I've been jamming to everything from the pop funk of Still Woozy to the EDM of Flume, and then that acoustic goodness of Ben Howard. I even sprinkled some Frank Sinatra in there, and I found these buds can produce a sound much bigger than I expected, with good separations of the highs and the lows. I put together all the songs I've been listening to while testing these in a playlist, and I'll link that down below. But Amy Winehouse's Valerie, and more specifically the Live Lounge version. If you listen to the song on these buds, you can really tune into the shaker at the top, or that bass line, or her vocals. The point being that it doesn't get mushed together in this garbled kind of mess. It keeps everything really separate. And then there's music from bleachers that is really big and loud, and these buds can handle that too. Ugh. The only downfall though, they don't have that real thick bass, and there's no EQ settings for it within their app either. So if you're looking for that real big bass, this ain't it. There's also no active noise cancellation to block outside noise. For this price point, that isn't a feature I totally expected. And if you've worn in your headphones before, these block out sound in the same way by physically blocking your ear canal. The vent works really well on these though, so your ear doesn't feel like it's being suctioned. There's also a feature called adaptive sound. Google claims the Pixel Buds 2 can optimize volume levels based on the environment around you. I felt this working on my bike rides the most. I never once had to adjust the volume, no matter if more traffic was coming or I entered a quiet street. Oh, I can't wait to test them against like a real loud subway screech. I kind of miss that. Ew. I'm like missing the sound of the screeching subway. This is reaching new levels. There are those typical Bluetooth connectivity issues, and I really hate that this is still a problem. Like a few times my buds dropped out and then would reconnect a few seconds later, but overall I was able to leave my phone in the back of the apartment and walk freely without losing connection. I didn't notice a lag when watching videos on my phone or MacBook either, but I did notice there's this sort of white noise that happens for a few seconds after you stop playing something. And I only heard it when it was really quiet, but it's there. All right, come on down. Here we go. What you knew I would absolutely be doing today, and that's a mic test. Today's contenders. We have the AirPod Pros, we have the Galaxy Buds Plus, we have the Jabra Elite 75Ts, and then of course the Google Pixel Buds 2. We're starting with the gold standard of headphone microphones, and those are the AirPod Pros. And next we have the Galaxy Bud Plus. The first generation of these was not so hot in the microphone department, but they definitely upped their game in the second gen. All right, coming to you live from the Pixel Buds 2. Here we are. This is the, this is the, this is how they should sound. How do they sound? All right, these are the Jabra 75Ts. They also came out this year, and they're known to have really great sound quality, but how does their mic sound? Can you hear me? Although you can hear me really clearly on the Pixel Buds 2, they definitely sound the most compressed out of all of these. And I think the AirPod Pros remain the gold standard. The Pixel Buds 2 charge via USB-C or wirelessly, and Google claims the Buds can get around five hours of music listening time and 2.5 hours of talk time on a single charge. In my use with adaptive sound turned on, lots of music playback, and of course lots of hands-free Google Assistant use, I was averaging closer to like 3.5 hours off a full charge, which is definitely on the lower end of battery life. Compared to the Jabra 75Ts that get around 7.5 hours, and especially compared to the Galaxy Buds Plus that boast a whopping 11 hours of battery life. The Pixel Buds case gets you another 24 hours of listening time and around 12 hours of talk time. And a 10-minute charge on the case will give you about two hours of additional listening time. The Pixel Buds have their own app that is very minimal, and it includes a find your device feature, adaptive sound, in-ear detection toggles, and touch control settings. Play pause with a single tap, double tap to skip a track, triple tap to go to the previous track, and then my favorite gesture is swiping forward to raise the volume and back to lower. I know that my coworker Chris Welch found these controls to be a little finicky. I mean, you really have to nail the placement of your finger, but that wasn't an issue for me. And I just love being able to control the volume so easily without having to touch my phone, which brings me to why these buds are really important. Cut the music, cut the music. Friends, we have to talk about two things. Number one, how well these work with Android, and number two, how friggin' incredible it is to have Google Assistant always at your beckoning call. First things first, pairing. Setting these buds up on an Android device is so easy. As soon as you open the case, a prompt pops up that walks you through pairing, naming, and even downloading their app. The whole process took me under a minute, and it's a total breeze. And second, coming from a Google-connected world I already live in, I'm just so used to shouting commands to the Assistant without having to touch anything. So on the go, I was setting alarms, answering text messages, changing the song, changing the playlist, even turning on my lights while I was on my bike rolling up to my house, all without touching a single thing. Now, there are other headphones that allow you to hold down a button or click a button to access the Google Assistant. But with these, you just say the magic command, and the headphones respond. With the Pixel Buds 2, Google is finally improving the hardware enough that you enjoy using the software. Yo, again, I gotta say it. RIP that cord. Thank God. See you never. Now, these do still feel somewhat first-gen to me. I mean, this thorn, it's a killer. The battery life, it's a killer. But those are all problems that a next generation can fix. And I think Google is finally onto something with these Pixel Buds. Oh. Ooh. Oh. This could well have lasted.