UPDATE January 8, 2018

I was using the Pixel Buds again today and noticed that Google Play Music was now very quiet. I thought to myself 'Oh, did they go to the extreme the other way now?'  I had to turn the volume up nearly all the way on my phone. I check to see if my ears were plugged. It was still really quiet. Then I found out that in an update that I never saw be installed on either Android, Google Play Music or the Google Assistant, they have changed the behavior of the volume controls on the Pixel Buds. 

Now, instead of mirroring the volume levels between the Phone and the Buds, each acts independently of the other, which is exactly what I asked for and described with the LG headphones in the video.  You can now set the volume close to where you want it on the phone and then adjust the volume by small increments on the Buds themselves. 

This completely fixes the volume issues that I listed as my biggest complain and makes these much more pleasurable to use.  The only real complaint I have now is the comfort with my piercing. Otherwise, I can recommend these much more readily now and they are worth trying out.

See the video at the bottom

I wanted these to be good. I read all the reviews about how lackluster they were. Many people criticized them for the translation not being great. I knew it was just using the Google Translate app on your phone so it would wouldn’t be any different in terms of quality.  Some complained about how hard it was to wrap the cables. That sounds like nitpicking. Still others talked about the fact that there is a cable connecting the 2 buds instead of being completely wireless. In my experience, only the Apple AirPods have managed to solve the connectivity problem of going completely wireless, so if a cable makes them work better, so be it.

No, I wanted to know how they would do as a pair of cable buds for exercising and day to day music use.  I wanted to use them as just a pair of Bluetooth headphones. If the assistant is great, then all the better. I’ve been using Bluetooth headphones every day for the past 7 years. I’ve tried multiple brands and have fallen in love with the LG on neck headphones, even if they are a little clunky. Their only drawback is you can’t exercise with them, hence my search for some lightweight cable buds.

Unfortunately, the Pixel Buds by Google are not the perfect solution to my problem. Right out of the box I had issues getting them to connect to my Pixel 2 XL. Using the new Apple styled ‘open your headphone box near your phone to pair’ feature took multiple tries before I finally got the notification to appear. When I finally did, I was so surprised that I held the talk button down on the headphones and proceeded to crash the Google app.

After trying again for 30 minutes, I had to resort to the internet to find out that I could hold the hidden connect button down for 3 seconds to enter pairing mode and get it to try to connect again.  Setup from there was pretty easy using a step by step walk through. 
 

Once the headphones are connected, Google Assistant on your phone will give you an option to adjust the Buds settings in the future, so that’s pretty handy. The assistant in the headphones also gives you lots of subtle prompts and hints at how she can help you which is a plus.

 The sound signature is passable, if a little veiled on the high notes. It's hard to accurately judge them given their loudness (more on that later). I’ve gotten used to the sound signature of the LG headphones, but the Buds had a good enough range for me with good mids, no tinny high sounds and enough bass to notice it. I’m not a fan of big bass as it hurts my ears anyway.  These are good enough for exercising and occasional use.  I listen to symphonic rock so anything that accentuates female vocals and violins is good to me.  My go to testing tracks for all headphones is 'Faster' and 'Paradise' by Within Temptation. (Note, YouTube compresses these so listen in your actual music streaming service on high quality if you want to hear them at their best.)

It’s easy enough to change the volume with a swipe, pause with a tap or talk to the assistant with a finger hold. None of these are overly loud to my ear when touching the headphone.  You can also have the assistant read out notifications with a double tap. Neat!

It is also easy to wrap the cables into the case, once you learn that you have to pull the ear loops to as big as they can go to get the white plastic piece out of the way so you can close it.

The range was the best of any Bluetooth headphones I’ve owned. In my office, I was able to go about 25 feet away from my phone without any drop outs. This is in an office full of Apple products so there are literally hundreds of Bluetooth devices, mice, keyboards, headphones, etc all vying for air space so 25 feet is good.

The little ear loops are actually kind of convenient. They are soft enough that I can just jam them into my ear and hold the Buds securely. I have no fear that these things are going to fall out.

They are big, it’s not obvious when you have them in correctly. There’s just a little bit of silicon, but not enough to be considered cushiony. On top of all of that, I have the special case of having my tragus pierced and these gigantic buds put so much pressure on it that my ear started hurting.

Lastly and worst of all is the volume. Playing music from Google Music is unbelievably loud. (Fixed. See the update at the top of this post) If I turn the Buds and the Phone down to their lowest volume, it is too quiet. If I turn the phone up just the tiniest bit, they headphones become loud enough that I’m worried about damaging my hearing. Reset them back to their lowest level and use the buds to go up a notch and it is even louder.

YouTube doesn’t seem to suffer from this problem though because it has a quieter noise floor so the volume increases are much more granular, but in high quality music from Google’s own music service, it is ridiculously loud.  I’ve found a help thread discussing this on Google’s help site, but no response has come yet from Google as of this writing.

With the volume turned way down to facilitate music listening, when the assistant chimes in to talk, it is too quiet to hear what she is saying.

I set out to find some suitable cable buds for music listening and to keep out of the way while exercising, with no preconceived conclusion about how the “Special Features” worked.  And in terms of my criteria for good Bluetooth headphones, the Google Pixel Buds fall short in that metric.

See more about the built in Google Assistant and why I decided to keep these despite their flaws in the video below. You can pick up a pair of your own here: https://store.google.com/product/google_pixel_buds