Hopefully you've read up on our review of the Pixel 6a this week, but as someone who wasn't part of that circuit, I ended up pre-ordering my own device from Google Fi and am crossing my fingers that the expedited shipping I paid for will actually make a difference (for the record, that difference is literally one day earlier than July 28). But for at least one customer in France who put in a reservation for the Pixel Buds Pro, it seems their retailer is giving "expedited" a whole new meaning.
In a thread on the r/GooglePixel subreddit Saturday morning, one Kevin Saindou, also known as u/Linkakox, said he pre-ordered the new earbuds from Fnac on July 21 just like many other people. The big difference between him and the others is that he got his pre-order delivered that morning, well before the sanctioned ship date on the 28th.
In the hours since, he has done a bunch of testing with them. He says that while the Pixel Buds app hasn't been updated to support the Pros yet, they do turn on and pair easily to a Pixel 6 and that the active noise cancellation works "pretty well." Transparency mode is also a boon.
Saindou notes that the box does not include a USB-C cable (which we knew from what Google has made public), but that the Pixel Buds Pro charging case does indeed charge wirelessly. Multipoint functionality also seems to work seamlessly — the user was able to receive a phone call whilst they were listening to content on their PC.
Accompanying the claims were pictures comparing the Pixel Buds Pro. The new bud design loses out on the anchoring stem that the second-gen Pixel Buds and Pixel Buds A-series had. Saindou believes the Pros to be a less secure fit than their predecessors, but still secure enough during exercise. Touch controls are similar to those found on the A-series except for the long press which triggers ANC mode instead of Google Assistant.
Saindou was brave enough to also share recording samples from the microphones on the buds. You can hear the noise cancellation on this end work wonders in the car with the radio turned up.
The Buds Pro are advertised to last up to 11 hours without ANC and 7 hours with ANC on a single charge with just shy of two extra cycles available via the case. Saindou reports a six-hour session taking 70% of the battery though he didn't clarify how much of that time the ANC was in gear. Charging was surprisingly fast.
With the good comes a bit of bad. As we mentioned above, people who used the touch controls to reach Google Assistant on the A-series are out of luck here. Also, it looks like the Pixel Buds Pro primarily relies on the AAC codec and that's a real shame for a $200 pair of beans in 2022.
Overall, we've gained a lot of valuable perspective from Kevin and it may be that you might be basing a purchase decision off of his testimony. Sometimes, these little mistakes just happen to work out in the consumer's favor.