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Seeking (non-technical) input on what I should do with my possibly faulty Google Pixel Buds Pro.
I bought the Pixel Buds Pro three weeks ago on sale for $150 (MSRP $200). It's been mostly satisfactory, except about a week ago, without any obvious cause (i.e. software update, drop damage, water damage), when I took them out of the case and into my ear to take a call, the right earbud suddenly developed continuous noisy crackling. I believe the left bud may have been affected to a much smaller extent. Cycling through the active noise cancellation on/off didn't do anything. The problem seemed to be with the buds and not a phone app, as Spotify and podcasts all had the same crackling issue.
I put the buds back into the case, closed it, and took them out. The problem immediately went away. Great. I thought it was worrisome that such new devices had issues, but hoped that it'd be a one-time thing.
Unfortunately, this morning the same thing happened again. When I took them out of the case ahead of a workout, the crackling returned, mostly in the right earbud. I cycled through active noise cancellation, disconnected and reconnected bluetooth on my phone, and even put it back in the case and closed it. Nothing did the trick. Neither did "forgetting" the device--the unconnected buds crackled while untethered to anything. I checked firmware and it was up to date.
It was only when I hard reset the buds in their case (press and hold bluetooth button for 30s etc.) and repaired that the problem went away.
So my question to The Motte is, what would you do now? Google allows free returns for refunds for up to 30 days, so I have less than a week to do so. Google also has a one-year warranty. I'd rather not bother with finding a box to package the buds, print a label, drop it off at Fedex/UPS, reorder a new pair etc. But I fear that not doing anything now out of laziness will mean the problem returns a week from now, or maybe a month, with me eventually stuck with a lemon outside of the return/warranty period.
Google (the search engine) does not return super obvious answers--i.e., this does not appear to be a super common software problem that will be fixed by a firmware update in a week, or a super common hardware problem that requires a return.
I realize this is a trivial question, but we make trivial decisions every day that have substantive consequences, so I'm hoping to improve my decision making. So what would you do personally if you're in my situation?
What I would do myself: I'd go "yeah I knew it, wireless earbuds are a stupid product" and go back to wired forever. I personally think that wired earbuds are just a flat out superior product and many times cheaper to boot.
I don't suspect that's on the table for you, though (else you probably wouldn't have bought them in the first place). So given that you probably want to stay wireless, I would stay the course for now. Maybe return them to Google if you feel you would rather get another brand considering the issues, but otherwise keep them and see what happens. If they do indeed start acting up again, don't try to fix them or troubleshoot, send them in for warranty repair/replacement. You aren't responsible for trying to fix their broken product, that's what a warranty is for.
I use wired headphones with a USB dongle on my Pixel 6. There's a loud white noise effect that plays whenever the volume falls below a certain threshold.
I refuse to buy any phone without a headphone jack. If they ever stop making them entirely, then I guess I will stop buying phones or something? I don't know, really. But the point is that I don't get phones that chose to reject a universal standard that worked great in favor of making people use a dongle.
I hear that. The headphone jack was a great standard. You could bring along a cheap male-male cable and interface with nearly any device with a speaker.
The good news is that Bluetooth in the current year is that universal standard. It's supported by as many, if not more devices. I initially thought charging the headphones would be annoying, but I find I rarely need to do it. The charging case keeps them topped up. Plus, you can still use your wired headphones with a lapel clip BT adapter. It's much better than trying to use the awkward phone port ones that always come loose.
That's the thing, though, it's not universal like the headphone jack was (or even close really). My car doesn't even have an aux input jack, let alone bluetooth! I have to use a tape deck adapter (which, naturally, uses a headphone jack). Granted, my car is 21 years old, but there are a ton of legacy devices hanging around which don't support bluetooth. Maybe in 20 years bluetooth will be as universal as headphone jacks are today. But for the moment, it is really unfortunate that short-sighted manufacturers have opted to get rid of one of the very few connections you can reasonably expect damn near everything to have.
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