For the past three years I’ve been using Google Pixel Buds A-series, and they’ve actually served me really well. They aren’t exactly high-end earbuds - for me, they just play music and I can slap them to play and pause; though they had Google Assistant and mics, I never used those. But now they are getting old, and they’re now partially broken, and I thought it time for an upgrade.

Photo of Pixel Buds A-series and their case; the right earbud is missing the rubber support arm

The outgoing Pixel Buds A-series

I originally bought the Pixel Buds when I was still using a Pixel 4a, but I later switched to iPhone1, the only feature I lost on iPhone was being able to see the battery levels of the individual buds and the case. That never mattered to me, really - the light on the case indicated when it was low on battery, and the battery on the buds is still good even three years later. However, I could never quite get them to fit perfectly, even when swapping tips, and eventually one of the rubber support things started tearing, and fell off a couple weeks ago now. As such the right earbud comes very easily out my ear now.

I decided it was probably about time to upgrade, and went with the AirPods Pro. I think the main reason was the ecosystem effect; I already have a lot of Apple devices and exclusively use earbuds with my iPhone and sometimes MacBook, so the benefit is obvious there. I do already own regular AirPods 2 – I got them for free with my iPad – but they suck, the lack of eartips mean they just do not stay in my ears and the audio is way too bassy. The Pros were much more well regarded in those areas, the better fit down to them coming with four sizes of swappable eartips, instead of having a design that has to try to fit every ear. I was going to hold off on buying them for a little while, but then Amazon Prime Day happened and they were £180, so I nabbed them - £50 off the regular price isn’t bad.

The first thing you notice when you put them in is the noise cancellation. I live near a couple of busy roads and they just melted away as soon as I put them in, it’s really impressive. It’s not perfect, walking along a busy A-road I can hear the high frequencies still, but it’s very muted. Transparency mode also sounds very natural, though not entirely - you can tell it’s not quite perfect. My keyboard as I type this sounds a tiny bit muffled, and it sounds odd (hard to describe) if you say a “ch” sound out loud. It’s much better than the Pixel Buds’ “open” design, as those only let some sound in from around you - the AirPods’ transparency mode is almost perfect. When you take one bud out the other enters transparency mode automatically, and it’s very hard to tell that it’s there.

The fit is something that will obviously vary per-person, but for me the medium eartips they come with are almost perfect. I occasionally find myself reaching to adjust them, finding the seal sometimes becomes a bit imperfect, especially when walking. Finding the right tip will be trial and error I imagine; I’ve been using the larger tips for about a day now and they seem better, but I’ll see how I get on. I have to be careful when taking the buds out though, as with both medium and large tips it’s easy for them to invert when I remove them from my ears.

Sound quality is pretty good. I’m not an audiophile or anything, but there seems to be a greater frequency range than that of my Pixel Buds, probably helped by them having a better seal in the ears - the Pixels were “open”, so you could pretty vividly hear external sounds. The AirPods definitely sound bassier but not excessively so, and I do find myself occasionally noticing sounds in music that I didn’t with the Pixels. I have mostly been using noise cancellation, so I’m mostly speaking about the quality in that mode. I have listened to music in transparency mode but only in situations where the background noise isn’t too variable (air conditioning).

The controls are… not great, but I’ll probably get used to them. To play and pause you squeeze the stem of either one of the buds, but the stems are small and it’s easy to press the lower part of the stem where the controls won’t work. There’s also about a second of latency between using the controls and anything actually taking effect, despite the buds giving immediate auditory feedback. Volume can be changed by stroking the flat part of the stem up and down, which again requires some precision and is easy to do in a way that it won’t register, not helped for me by that flat part having a small amount of clearance against my cheek.

The case has MagSafe charging, which is neat, since I can just drop the case on my Apple Watch charger. But it’s an incredibly minor convenience, it’s barely a selling port for me. At least the charging port is USB-C instead of Lightning, thank God. The case also has a speaker, and none of its sound effects are explained. It makes a sound when you close the case if its battery is less than 40%, and it took me way too long to figure out what that sound meant.

The rest is software. It’s nice to have battery information for the case and each bud again, even if I don’t really need it that much. The case makes a sound when you close it if its battery is below 40%, it took me a while to figure out what that means.

Spatial audio is basically just a head-related transfer function, optionally personalisable by giving Apple your ear shape using the Face ID camera. It is very convicing - by default it will play non-music apps (such as games) using spatial audio, so they sound like they are actually coming from your phone. This weirds me out in public because it works so well I worry the sound is actually coming from my phone. Spatial audio also works with some Apple TV shows and Apple Music songs. I watched an episode of Slow Horses with it, and it did sound pretty good. By default, spatial audio tracks your head position, even when listening to media. I’m not sure the appeal of the head tracking, because it doesn’t really add to immersion, it just makes things sound like they are… coming from your device again. I never really thought I wanted Pikmin Bloom or Gary Oldman to sound like they were really coming from my device when using earbuds… The head tracking is also imperfect, it tends to lose tracking, and I can be looking directly at my device but it will play as if it’s to my left, for example. It’s also much less reliable on MacBook. There is a fixed mode, with which it basically behaves as if you’re always looking towards your screen, which is much better, like a traditional surround mode.

The only other features worth noting are to do with dynamic volume adjustment: personalised volume, which adjusts volume based on your surroundings; conversation awareness, which ducks the volume when you start talking; and loud sound reduction. The only one I can talk about is the former, because it’s really annoying. It works - the volume will go up when the outside is louder, and down when the outside is quieter - but it also does so for seemingly no reason (maybe the noise cancellation is so good I can’t hear what’s triggering it?) Regardless of what triggers it, it feels just really… jarring and unnatural, and often pushes the volume to almost uncomfortable levels when I walk along a busy A road, for example. Might be me being used to buds with a static volume, but I’m keeping that off.

It’s only been about a week with these AirPods Pro and they’re pretty good so far. They play music well and cancel noise well which is mostly what I got them for… so that’s good. We’ll see if Apple manages to ruin the noise cancellation with software updates like reddit thinks happens, but so far I’m impressed. Hopefully I will be using these buds for another three years like I did with my Pixels.

  1. The story behind why I switched to iPhone: Android 12 broke basically everything, and I wanted a larger battery, so I bought my iPhone 13 Pro Max. ↩