When the Pixel Buds Pro were first announced at Google I/O 2022, I was a mixture of hyped and skeptical. Google’s earbuds have always been nice, but they’ve also always had an annoying issue that has rendered them ineligible for being my go-to, everyday earbuds. This problem? Heavy Latency. When you’re listening to something in real time with the Pixel Buds, there’s always been almost a full second delay between what’s happening on screen and what you’re hearing.
This latency is compensated for most of the time in video apps, which basically pulls the video back a bit to automatically align with the audio, and since there’s nothing to compare when listening to audio-only sources, chances are you a go a long time without noticing this latency issue if you only use your earbuds for music and videos.
However, there is one large category of smartphone activity that has this lag issue in force, and that category is gaming. When playing games, your phone can’t adjust the images on the screen to match the latency of your earbuds, so you’ll experience the full lag of your headphones. And on the Pixel Buds, Pixel Buds A-Series, and Pixel Buds Pro, that lag was so bad it was just unusable.
For me – and I’m sure for many others – this has been an ongoing, troubling issue. No, I don’t play games on my phone all the time, but I do jump into a match at some point most days, and for those times I need my earbuds to show the least amount of lag possible. No Bluetooth earbud is perfect on this front, but there’s definitely minimal latency that most earbuds achieve these days, and almost every pair I own suffers from the same limitations. Except for the Pixel Buds.
A new update, a new latency
However, with the latest firmware update (3.14), Google seems to have finally turned down the latency on the Pixel Buds Pro and I’m so excited about it. The update is technically to be delivered here a new 5-band EQ and left/right balance controls, and while I love these features and am glad to see them here, I am far happier that overall latency has been addressed.
As I do with every single Pixel Buds update, as soon as that happened, I jumped into the training area in Apex Legends and determined the delay between seeing an action on screen and hearing it in the earbuds. Where the Pixel Buds Pro used to delay things by at least a full second, the delay suddenly felt much better than other earbuds like my Anker Soundcore, Wyze Buds Pro, and AirPods Pro.
To verify this, I stayed in-game and hopped between a pair of earbuds, and after a few minutes I’m now convinced that Google made the adjustment. Again, I have to reiterate that this doesn’t mean there’s “zero lag” with the Pixel Buds Pro, and I’ve never claimed that for any earbuds. But the minimal lag that’s present in most modern wireless earbuds now applies to the Pixel Buds Pro too, and that means they should now be considered as full-service earbuds.
I know not everyone is concerned about this facet of the wireless audio experience, but I also know there are quite a few of you who care as much as I do. For all of you, Google’s new earbuds are finally a viable option, and I’ve been putting them back in my bag for a while to see how they fare as everyday items. With the temporary price cut gone (for now), $199 is still a steep price. But with its superb ANC and transparency modes, seamless Pixel phone integration, and overall pleasing aesthetics, Perhaps this latest update makes the idea of picking up a pair of Pixel Buds Pro a more enticing option.
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