For iPhone users, the first choice for completely wireless earphones is Apple's genuine "AirPods series". The AirPods Pro, the 2nd generation AirPods and the entire series are the best-selling fully wireless earphones in Japan, so the trust of Apple users is tremendous.
On the other hand, looking over the Android camp of smartphones, aiming for the position of "AirPods on Android terminals", Google's "Pixel Buds series", Samsung's "Galaxy Buds series", Huawei's "series" ..... With the release of genuine completely wireless earphones, the Android camp and the construction of an ecosystem centered on its own smartphones are being promoted.
There is one question. For iPhone users, can the manufacturer's genuine complete wireless earphones that are appearing one after another in the Android camp be used? Or is there a merit to use it beyond the boundaries of the OS?
As a representative model, I tried it with Google's "Pixel Buds" (second generation) and Samsung's "Galaxy Buds Pro".
The first thing I prepared was "Pixel Buds" (second generation) by Google. It is a model introduced in Japan at the same time as Google's smartphone "Pixel 4a" in August last year, and the selling price of the Google store is 20,800 yen. Since it does not support noise cancellation (NC), it is equivalent to the second generation AirPods as a grade. The fit to the ear is a canal type ear tip and a type that firmly fixes the ear wing. The continuous playback time of the earphone body is about 5 hours.
"Pixel Buds" can be easily paired with a mechanism called Fast Pair when connected to Android, but of course iPhone is not supported. When connecting to the iPhone, pressing and holding the button on the back with the charging case open switched to Bluetooth pairing mode, and I was able to connect manually.
When I listened to music on my iPhone with "Pixel Buds", the sound quality of this model was very good. Compared to the AirPods series, the mid-high range of "Pixel Buds" is vivid, the sound is dynamic and each instrument is clear, and the positional relationship of the instruments is also three-dimensional. It's an attractive sound for music listeners.
You can also use the touch sensor of the earphone body, and tap to play / stop the song, and swipe the earphone back and forth to raise or lower the volume. Calling the voice assistant doesn't seem to work. There is no app that works with smartphones, so music listening-related functions are almost all functions.
So what's the difference if you have an app on the Pixel Buds? I also own an Android smartphone, so when I try it on an actual device, I can customize the operation of the main unit and turn on the function to adjust according to the surrounding environment with adaptive sound. And the most aggressive function of "Pixel Buds" is the specification specialized for voice operation that can call the Google Assistant, a voice voice assistant, with zero waiting time. When connected to an iPhone, neither the Google Assistant nor Siri can be called in the first place.
If you are attracted to the sound quality of music listening, iPhone users can use it normally, but I wonder if "Pixel Buds" is just an earphone with good sound quality.
