There's no shortage of midrange earbuds with good Active Noise Cancellation (ANC). The only trouble is finding one that offers a good value for the money. Google is going after that goal with the Pixel Buds 2a — and it's doing an okay, but not great, job.
The Pixel Buds 2a are a decent pair of midrange earbuds. They do some things right and some things wrong. You'll either love them or hate them. I've been using a pair of Pixel 2a earbuds for a week; here's what I learned.
The Pixel Buds 2a are adorably tiny
The good old earbuds-and-stem build has its merits. Pixel Buds are designed to reside almost entirely inside your earlobe. That's a design that I personally like, even though there are some clear shortcomings.
The main reason I like them: size. The Pixel Buds 2a are just small enough to sleep on your side with them in. Your mileage will vary depending on the shape of your ear, but I found I could sleep in them. There is a bit of pressure on the ear when I do, but it's barely noticeable.
Despite being diminutive, these buds are good for about seven hours of playback on a single charge, with another two charges in the equally tiny case. In the week I was using them, I never charged the case – and it still has 35% charge as I write this. I'm also not the heaviest earbud user, so again, your mileage will vary.
The downside: the stems sticking out of your ears are touch sensitive. This can cause problems when you reach up to push the bud back into your ear … and inadvertently pause your music or turn off ANC. There's also no way to adjust the volume of the buds by touch. You can tell Google/Gemini to do it, but that's a workaround at best, annoying at worst.
The Pixel buds 2a sound and ANC are solid
The overall sound of these buds is pretty good. Out of the box, you get a pretty balanced tone, though there's a little bit less bass than I would normally like. Google provides a five band EQ that you can use to adjust sound. I'm usually more of a 7 to 9 band EQ fan, but was still able to tweak the sound to my liking.
One welcome addition to these buds, missing from the previous generation, is ANC. I found it surprisingly good considering the price point. It doesn't drown out everything, to be sure, but it certainly filters out quite a bit.
During my review, the office in my basement was blasted with sounds from a HVAC system, a 3D printer, and a washer and dryer, all running at the same time. Most of that noise was cancelled out. That was a very pleasant surprise.
Transparency mode is also effective. There is a bit of side tone when you speak, which can be a tad annoying. But overall, I have no complaints about transparency mode.
These earbuds don't do very well cancelling out wind noise when out riding on a bike (of course, you should never ride a bike with ANC turned on: don't try this at home). Still, the buds do a good job at eliminating wind noise for callers. Despite the atrocious wind noise I experienced on the phone, the person I was calling didn't even know I was on a bike. So there's that.
Hearing Health is a quiet marvel
One Pixel bud feature it's easy to overlook: the hearing health information it feeds you. This is a feature that should be built into Android, and frankly every operating system you can pair earbuds to. It can tell you in real time how loud your audio is, and how that loudness has changed over time.
That's an awesome feature, but Google doesn't quite go far enough with it. What I'd like to see is a widget you can put on your home screen that gives you that same information in real time so you can actually see it.
As it is, this feature is buried inside the settings of the app; it desperately needs to be more front-facing. I would love it even more if Google didn't make it so easy to ignore.
Controls are limited
One pet peeve I have with these buds (and other buds that do the same thing) is they limit what you can do with the touch controls. You can control the Pixel Buds 2a with short and long taps on the buds, which is fine, except for the problem of accidentally pausing your music. But you can't control what those taps do, except for the long tap.
A single tap pauses your music, a double tap skips forward and a triple tap skips back. You can control what a tap and hold does — either turn ANC on/off or summon Gemini, but that's the only option you have.
I would much prefer the ability to configure your controls however you want. For the buds, I'd rather double tap left/right to turn volume down or up, and triple tap left/right to skip back/forward; but it's simply not an option. That's not cool. They're my buds; let me control them however I want.
As with the AirPods Pro 3, and some other buds such as the OnePlus Buds Pro 3, the controls are in the Bluetooth settings — but Google automatically adds an "app" to access those settings as well. I put "app" in quotes because it's basically just a shortcut to the same settings panel. Definitely handy, but it's hardly an entire app.
Gemini is at your service… kinda
In 2025, a product cannot be released without having some kind of AI built in. The AI here, of course, is Gemini, which is generally superior to Apple Intelligence — but what's nice about Apple's AI is you can use it to directly control functions in the buds, such as turning ANC on and off.
Gemini on the buds cannot do that, which is pretty weird. Gemini can control your smart devices, provide masses of information, or get directions. But ANC, apparently, is not on the table. This seems to fly in the face of using Gemini to turn volume up and down (which works, by the way). Using Google's buds to access Google's AI doesn't make it superior to any other earbuds that answer to "OK Google."
Overall verdict
The Pixel Buds 2A weigh in at $129: an okay, but not amazing price for what you get. I like the sound quality and the ANC, but any set of earbuds you buy for around $100 will have pretty good sound and ANC.
A good transparency mode helps, but the lack of wireless charging in particular is hard to ignore at this price. There are just too many good options at or below that price that have those features and wireless charging besides.
The main thing these buds have going for them over their competitors are their size, which is adorably tiny, with good battery life (considering their size), and the fact that they pair very nicely with your Google-branded phone…if you have one. Hearing health is a feature no other set of earbuds that I've tested has, and Google should build on that and make it as front-facing as possible.
If those are all things that you're absolutely looking for in earbuds, then these are the buds for you. But if you're not necessarily interested in having small buds, or you want the ability to control your volume with touch (which is much more important for me than skipping forward/back) then there are better options.
Ultimately, Google needs to either add wireless charging or bring the price down to $99 to be truly competitive in this space. Being small and having a "G" on the bud isn't enough anymore.
