 These are Google's Pixel Buds. They're kind of sort of Google's answer to Apple AirPods. They're wireless earbuds, though not truly wireless, and they cost about the same amount of money, $159. On one hand, they're really good wireless earbuds that do a lot of the basics well, while also teasing that seemingly inevitable future of having supercomputers in our ears. On the other hand, there are a couple tiny nitpicky flaws that, when added together, kind of mar the experience. Up front, though, we have to start with one of the features that Google's hyping the most about the Pixel Buds, and that's real-time translation. Can you tell me where the train station is? Sort of wrong. Can you tell me where the bathroom is? That's good to hear. There's a toilet not far from here. Can you tell me how to get to the train station? Go straight and turn right. Hello, and thanks for helping out. Is that kind of right? Yeah, it is. It is. It's taking a while to translate it. Do you know how to translate it? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to translate it. Do you know how to get to the train station? What's wrong about it? It would just be a bit like you're kind of like, it's using the imperative, so it would be a bit like, not very polite to just stop someone and say, tell me where to get to the train station. Like you would say, can you tell me how to get to the train station? So this is as if I was a rude five-year-old. Yes. Hey, Dami, thank you for helping us with this. Wait, so am I speaking into the app or am I speaking at the Pixel Buds? That's also weird. You are speaking into the app, but it's reading it out in English to me. Oh, so you can hear it in English. So what it's showing up here, it's reading to me in English. Oh, okay. Well, I guess, yeah, you don't mind. Would you rather hear both, though? No. No? Okay. Can you tell me how to get to the train station? Wow, this is not super accurate. Oh, yeah? Yeah. What did it get wrong? Just like a lot of grammar, and you're speaking to me in a really informal way. There seems to be a problem with it, is that it's very rude with the way that it's translating things. I'm sensing a little hostility from you. The one common thread we saw across all the languages is that the translation's pretty crude, so you're probably going to come across as sounding a little bit rude or maybe even kind of like a five-year-old. And that's not a problem with the Pixel Buds themselves. It's really just a problem with where translation apps are at this point in time. And that's really all this is. It's not like the Pixel Buds are doing magic to translate conversations. It's just leaning on the Google Translate app that already probably exists on your phone. The weirdest thing for me is that with Pixel Buds, you're adding a whole other device into what is already an awkward situation when you're trying to speak somebody else's language. And it makes it a bit more impersonal. My coworkers didn't really seem to have much of a problem with it just testing it out, but I know for myself I would probably rather just use the app on the phone as opposed to adding a whole other device into the situation. Now there may very well be a time one day where everybody is wearing the Pixel Buds and using them to talk to people across languages and borders, but that future is not here yet. This current version of the product is only teasing it. It's not delivering on it. Google Assistant, however, is much further along. And here's the best thing about it on the Pixel Buds. It is stupid fast. You just tap the right earbud and you're already talking to the Assistant. You don't have to wait for it to confirm that it's heard you or anything. You just tap, talk, and it's off to the races. It's so fast that I found myself begging for reasons to use it. I usually only use the Assistant for things like weather or alarms, especially on headphones. That said, I think Google's Assistant is the best of the ones out there, and having it less than a second away definitely feels like a genuine step forward. I found myself using it in ways that I never had, like asking it to tell me how long it'll take me to get home on the subway, or asking it to read me the news while I walk from the subway back home. So let's set all these fantastical and futuristic features aside now, because while they might be useful in a pinch, what you're going to be using the Pixel Buds for the most is listening to music that's coming from your phone. And in the right setting, they do that really well. They reproduce audio really clearly. There's a little bit of depth to it, more than I expected to find on earbuds this size. And they'll do that for a while, too. Google advertises about five hours of listening time, and I found that as long as you're not using the Assistant a ton, you'll get at least four hours of what they're claiming. But the open-air design of these earbuds, Google calls it semi-occluded, is a totally double-edged experience. On the one hand, it's good for situations like running where you want to have sound from the outside world coming in, but on the other hand, it means that sound can totally drown out the music-listening experience, especially if you're in a big city like New York. I found myself hearing buses, trains, traffic, people walking by me instead of the music that I wanted to listen to. There was even one point where I actually heard the music from someone else's headphones instead of my own music. That's annoying. That brings us to the last part of the experience with the Pixel Buds, which is the case. I really want to like this thing, and for the most part, I do. It's got a nice soft-touch finish to it, it has a couple extra chargers worth of battery in it, and it'll even quick-charge the Pixel Buds. 10 minutes will give you about an hour, which is awesome. The problem comes from just how finicky the process is of getting the buds back in the case. You have to put them in one by one, and then you have to wrap the cord around just the right way, or else the case won't close. And Google even had to put a sticker on the inside of the case to teach people how to do that. Now, the way that you get Pixel Buds to fit in your ears also has a couple issues. You have to tug on this little loop of the cable that connects the two earbuds together, which is a nice idea, but that cable tends to slip over time, and so I found that pulling them out of the case, the cable has slipped. Or even when I have them in my ears, the cable slips, and I have to constantly readjust them to keep them fitting in my ears the right way. Now, the touchpad on the right is really fast for Google Assistant, which is great, and you can tap to play and pause music, and you can even swipe to control the volume, but it's super sensitive, and so you have to be careful. I found myself getting lots of accidental taps and swipes, especially when I took the earbuds out of my ears and went to put them back in the case. That was really frustrating, because I would hear music starting to play again, or I would lose my place in a podcast. It just seems like an easy problem that Google could fix if the earbuds know that they're out of your ears. Now, these are admittedly little frustrations, but when you add them all up together, it makes for a more problematic experience than I was expecting with Pixel Buds. There are a lot of good ideas in this product, and I'm excited to see what Google does with that going forward. It's just painfully obvious right now that this is their first attempt at making wireless earbuds. Thank you. And it missed it. Great.