A little while back, Google released their new earbuds, the Pixel Buds, no doubt in answer to Apple’s AirPods that were released late last year.  The marketing for this product is clear, as Google states on their storefront:

Loud, proud, ‘wireless.’  Well, the Pixel doesn’t have a headphone jack (no surprise there, it’s 2017 after all), so Google needed to release a product for Pixel buyers to use that would provide a quality experience after the port deletion, just like Apple did.  However, there’s one weird thing about the Pixel Buds, and that’s, well…

…the wire.  Yes, the Pixel Buds are wireless in that they don’t require a wire to go from the phone to your ear, but they do require a wire between each earbud.  This is very much in contrast to the way that Apple solved the “quality experience without a headphone jack” problem, which was to release a truly wireless pair of earbuds.

I found this rather odd, but Google isn’t alone, of course.  Apple’s own Beats X earbuds are “wireless” earbuds that have a wire, as are any headphones that claim to be wireless.  In fact, there are only a handful of truly wireless earbuds on the market, and I think it’s a shame that Google chose to go “wireless” rather than truly wireless.  I’m sure if you get the PixelBuds, they’ll be fine (or maybe not, TWiT owner Leo Laporte seems to think they’re disappointing), but I think that experience really could’ve been better.

I want to see more really wireless earbuds.

For the record, prior to the iPhone X, I would’ve said the the Apple AirPods are the best product Apple launched since the iPhone 4 or perhaps 5.  They are incredibly good, and the first product Apple has released in quite a while that captured some of that undeniably cool Apple magic that people used to rave about so much before it became cool to hate Apple