Google may have started as a search engine, but almost three decades later and it’s expanded into audio products. Today, the Google Pixel Buds Pro offer everything but the kitchen sink. These buds have active noise-cancelling (ANC), spatial audio, and multipoint connectivity. Then, there are the simplified Google Pixel Buds A-Series. These earbuds have a more reasonable price and forgo fancy accouterments.

We’ll compare the Google Pixel Buds Pro to the Google Pixel Buds A-series to give you an idea of which wireless earbuds are best for you. We even include a list of Pixel Buds alternatives, for listeners who aren’t quite satisfied with Google’s options.

Google released the Pixel Buds Pro on July 28, 2022. A little over a year prior, it released the Pixel Buds A-Series on June 17, 2021. These earbuds share plenty of similarities. Noise-cancelling and spatial audio are the main differentiating factors between Google’s buds.

Using a similar design, the Pixel Buds A-Series and Pixel Buds Pro have large, circular touch panels adorned with Google’s “G” logo. Google uses a sealed design with ear tips for both of these earbuds. Both Google earbuds come with small, medium, and large ear tips.

Google’s Pixel Buds both merit an IPX4 water-resistant rating, making them durable enough for working out. Athletes who engage in vigorous exercise may opt for the cheaper A-Series earbuds. These feature permanent wing tips that further cement them to your ears. Google ditched the winged design for its Pro buds. Larger earbud housings accommodate the Pixel Buds Pro’s myriad sensors.

ANC makes the Pixel Buds Pro more premium than the Pixel Buds A-Series. Both earbuds’ ear tips block ambient noise, but the Pixel Buds Pro will hush the sounds of engines and rumbles during your commute or plane ride. Unlike the Pixel Buds A-Series, the Pixel Buds Pro have spatial audio with head tracking. The Pixel Buds Pro are more advanced, but the A-Series hold their own, too.

The Google Pixel Buds Pro cost $199 and the Pixel Buds A-Series cost $99. Both sets of earbuds go on sale throughout the year for $149 and $79, respectively.

If you’re starting from scratch, we recommend buying the Pixel Buds Pro over the Pixel Buds A-Series. The Pro are excellent earbuds for Android phone owners, and even better for Pixel 6 or 7 phones. When paired with an Android phone, you can access a custom EQ and audio switching between devices. Pairing these to a Pixel 6 or 7 phone opens the door for spatial audio with head tracking.

Other features that make the Pixel Buds Pro stand out from the crowd are Bluetooth multipoint and active noise-cancelling. This is a winning combo for productivity. You also get a water-resistant wireless charging case with an IPX2 rating. The earbuds have an even more impressive IPX4 rating, making them good for exercise.

Listeners who don’t care for ANC or spatial audio may want to save some money and get the Pixel Buds A-Series instead. More pedestrian in their feature set, the Pixel Buds A-Series have a lighter build and stabilizing wing tips. Like the Pixel Buds Pro, you get touch controls and IPX4 water-resistant earbuds.

Without wireless charging or water resistance, the Pixel Buds A-Series case requires a USB-C cable to recharge. Like the Pixel Buds Pro case though, the A-Series case is sturdy and feels a bit like a fidget toy. When you close it, the case rattles off a satisfying click sound.

Both the Pixel Buds A-Series and the Pixel Buds Pro work with Google Assistant. You can say, “Hey, Google” with either set of buds for sending texts and making inquiries. Both pairs of Pixel Buds also work with Google’s Find My Device app. This lets you emit a sound through either earbud or locate the earbuds’ last-known location on a map.

Google’s earbuds punch above their price points, and their regular firmware updates make them distinguished. In the past, Google has released firmware and software updates to add utility to the earbuds. We saw this with the Pixel Buds Pro when the company introduced a custom EQ. Likewise, Google fixed the Pixel Buds A-Series’ initial low-volume issue and added a bass boost slider. Admittedly, we would have liked to see these features upon release. Receiving additional features down the line is the next best thing. It shows that Google is willing to improve its products and listen to customers.

After reviewing both of Google’s Pixel Buds, it’s clear that these are powerful earbuds for Android. Each pair of Pixel Buds come at a fair price, given their features. Only iPhone owners should stay away from these earbuds; Google’s features are as closed off to iOS as Apple’s are to Android.

Google threw everything into the Pixel Buds Pro and it paid off. We commended Google for its effective noise-cancelling and transparency listening modes. Further, the battery life is exceptional, given the demanding nature of good ANC. Curious listeners will have fun playing around with the Pixel Buds app’s five-band EQ. Meanwhile, less adventurous folks will feel satisfied with the default sound.

Those who rely on creature comforts like multipoint and audio switching will feel at home with the Pixel Buds Pro. The company even added modern features like spatial audio and head tracking. The $199 original price isn’t too shabby either.

You don’t get swanky spatial audio with the A=Series. Instead, you get earbuds that focus on the basics. The Pixel Buds A-Series fit well and have great touch controls. Out of the box, the A-Series lack bass, but enabling Bass Boost actually makes them sound a tad better than the Pro. While we don’t like the Adaptive Sound feature, we appreciate the option to disable it.

What other reviewers from around the web think

To give you an overview of the Google Pixel Buds Pro and A-Series, we’re sharing what other reviews are saying about the earbuds.

• Tom’s Guide’s Alex Bracetti said the Pixel Buds Pro’s ANC removes low-frequency sounds. Simultaneously, the buds make it hard to hear higher-pitched sounds like birds chirping. He said the Pixel Buds Pro are great noise-cancelling earbuds for Android users in need of a great Google Assistant experience.
• Digital Trend’s Simon Cohen said the Pixel Buds Pro are compact earbuds that fit well and offer good sound quality. He remarked that the absence of high-quality codecs like aptX and LDAC was disappointing.
• Gizmodo’s Sam Rutherford noted the A-Series’ comfortable design and compact charging case but wasn’t impressed with the battery life. He said the A-Series are good and affordable earbuds for anyone who already uses an Android phone.

The Pixel Buds Pro and Pixel Buds A-Series look like fraternal twins and provide fraternal experiences. As expected, both buds support Google Fast Pair for one-step pairing to any Android phone. You can be up and listening to music or podcasts with either of the Pixel Buds in seconds.

Audio switching and Bluetooth multipoint take connectivity one step further on the Pixel Buds Pro. With audio switching, you may watch a movie on a laptop and receive calls from any device under the same Google account as your Pixel Buds. Further, you can actively connect to two specific devices at once with multipoint. These devices don’t have to be under the same Google account as your Pixel Buds. Little conveniences like these may not make or break the experience, but they do improve it.

Bluetooth 5.0 powers the Pixel Buds Pro and A-Series. Both sets of Google earbuds only stream audio over the SBC and AAC Bluetooth codecs. Since AAC performance varies on Android, not all Android phones will send consistent high-quality audio. This can result in perceptible audio-visual lag when streaming videos.

Unlike the Pixel Buds A-Series, which use Adaptive Sound, the Pixel Buds Pro have a Volume EQ. This adjusts the bass and treble as the volume changes. Google’s Volume EQ should make music sound more consistent across volume levels, but it won’t transform your buds into Hi-Fi cans. That said, we much prefer the Volume EQ to Adaptive EQ. The latter effectively adjusts the volume knob, depending on the loudness of your environment. You can toggle both earbuds’ EQs off.

Replete with a five-band Custom EQ, ear tip fit test, and spatial audio, the Pixel Buds Pro are the more powerful earbuds. Even so, we appreciate the Pixel Buds A-Series for their stripped-down experience and price.

Google’s spatial audio creates a virtual field of 360-degree sound. Unlike your typical multi-channel setup, spatial audio casts each sound as its own movable object. This object can float through space in any direction, including above or below you. The effect: you’ll hear the audio twist around you as the pilot on screen does a barrel roll to avoid oncoming attacks.

Currently, there’s no way to personalize the effect on your Pixel 6 or Pixel 7 series phone, but you can enable head tracking. With this turned on, the audio is anchored to the compatible Pixel phone. As you move your head relative to the phone, the audio changes. With the phone in front of you, turning your head to the right will make sound louder through the left Pixel Buds Pro earbud.

To use this feature, you’ll need the Google Pixel Buds Pro (firmware version 4.30 or later) and a Google Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 7, or Pixel 7 Pro smartphone running Android 13 or later. It requires Dolby Atmos or DTS-X content with the EC-3 codec to work. Oh, and you’ll need one of these apps: Disney Plus, Google TV, HBO Max, Netflix, or YouTube. Got all that?

The Pixel Buds A-Series don’t have all the sensors that facilitate head tracking, but you can enjoy spatial audio from certain music streaming services. Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Tidal all support spatial audio on any headphones, which includes the A-Series earbuds.

Google Pixel Buds Pro vs Pixel Buds A-Series: Noise-cancelling and isolation

If you spend too much time on public transit or flying for work, the Pixel Buds Pro are the better earbuds for you. Noise-cancelling from the Pixel Buds Pro will make your neighbor’s lawnmower or a persistent wind about 85% quieter than without the earbuds. This impressive performance won’t affect the battery life too much, either. At the same time, silicone ear tips keep out most of your environment’s high-pitched sounds.

Good noise-cancelling comes at a cost, though. If you think the Pixel Buds A-Series will do enough to block background noise without ANC, more power to you. The passive isolation quiets high frequencies by about 75-85%, which is great. The A-Series just don’t do much of anything to reduce the loudness of low-pitched sounds.

Further, the lack of ANC may make it hard to hear your music in particularly noisy spaces like a plane or train car. This is because of auditory masking: when a loud sound makes it hard to hear a quiet sound. A plane’s engine might be so loud that you’re tempted to increase the volume on your Pixel Buds A-Series to hear your music. We advise against doing this. Increasing the volume could damage your hearing. Instead, keep the volume below 85dB in these contexts. You can set a volume limiter on your phone, or invest in noise-cancelling earbuds.

Look at the noise-cancelling comparison chart above. This visualizes how much more noise the Google Pixel Buds Pro block out compared to the Pixel Buds A-Series. The higher the line is, the more noise the earbuds block out for that specific frequency. The frequency ranges from 0-256Hz, and 257-2,040kHz are the most important for isolation. As you can see, the Pixel Buds A-Series don’t start significantly blocking out noise until about 1,000Hz. Meanwhile, the Pixel Buds Pro reduce almost all sounds to a perceptible degree.

Do the Google Pixel Buds Pro sound better than the Pixel Buds A-Series?

The default sound of the Pixel Buds Pro is much better than the Pixel Buds A-Series’, but both earbuds have their audio quirks. Choosing between the two forces the question: to have too much bass or not enough?

The Google Pixel Buds Pro boost bass quite a bit. This sound profile bodes well for hip-hop, electronic, and pop music, but makes it hard to hear vocals during particularly crowded parts of a track. On the other end of the spectrum, emphasized treble can make violins and flutes sound too loud. Even still, most will prefer the Pixel Buds Pro’s out-of-the-box sound.

With the Pixel Buds A-Series, sub-bass and bass are all too quiet. You won’t feel a kickdrum’s thud through the A-Series like you will through the Pro earbuds. A frequency response like this could work well for spoken word content. Though even then, voices will sound “hollow” and unnatural. You may also find that the “-f,” “-th,” and “-sh” sounds we make when talking are louder than normal.