Is it just me or has Google sort of dropped the ball on its audio hardware range? The company hasn’t updated its Nest smart speaker lineup in more than 4 years, and it’s only ever made tiny improvements to its Pixel Buds TWS earphones. The Pixel Tab was supposed to be a spiritual successor to the smart speaker (with its docking station), but I can venture a guess that Google’s barely sold any. Not to mention the fact that their current product offering has a gaping headphone-shaped void.
Sony’s launched headphones, Microsoft has too, Apple’s AirPods Max are quite literally a cult statement, and Nothing just recently unveiled their Headphones (1). Samsung doesn’t ‘need’ to launch dedicated headphones because they literally own Harman, but Google… Google hasn’t entered (or even flirted with entering) this space. So to fill the void, Sidhant Patnaik designed the perfect Pixel Headphones concept.
Designer: Sidhant Patnaik
Let me just point out that this might just be the PERFECT time for Google to launch headphones. The headphone space is very lucrative, with devices costing upwards of $200 providing enough of a profit margin. A lot of people overwhelmingly prefer over-ear audio to in-ear buds that are tinny, sound weak, and have low battery lives. And more importantly, the headphones are the perfect delivery platform for Google’s AI service, Gemini.
Sidhant’s concept captures the Pixel Buds Pro’s design aesthetic perfectly, translating its soft, pebble-esque form into a larger, over-ear headset. The iconic pebble shape can be found in the headset’s individual ‘cans’, with the Google monogram sitting perfectly in the center, as usual. However, the headphones also have a hint of metal interplaying with the plastic. The metal elements connect each individual earpiece to the headband in a way that reminds me of the parrot ZIk headphones, designed by Philippe Starck. However, while Starck often relied on oddly whimsical design elements, this one treads the balance carefully, not venturing into ‘polarizing design’ territory like the Nothing Headphone (1).
Although conceptual, Sidhant gave his design a fair amount of detail so as to not take the entire thing at face value. The Pixel Headphones come with physical controls – none of that touch panel nonsense. One button toggles ANC, one works as a power button as well as the Gemini AI button, and a set of volume rockers let you control the output of the headphones. There’s a USB-C port for charging, and an aux in for wired listening.
The headphones come in a variety of muted-yet-fun colors, quite like the Pixel Buds lineup. They’re high-end, but I’m assuming they weren’t designed to be cost-prohibitive. After all, splurging upwards of $400 on AirPods Max feels somewhat justified given that they’re made from metal. The Pixel Headphones are much more pragmatic, keeping both cost and overall weight down with a plastic-friendly design that’s matte, resulting in soft shadows and zero fingerprints.
I can’t stress enough how this is just the most opportune moment for a set of Pixel headphones. There’s really no truly ideal Android headset on the market. The Nothing headphones are expensive and polarizing, the Sony headphones are great, but I can’t assume they have any good AI integration. If the AirPods Max are the perfect headphones for your iPhone, the Pixel Headphones can quite easily take up the mantle of being the most well-suited headphones for the entire Android lineup. Throw Gemini in too and you have a real winner on your hands… even more so considering Apple’s still dropping the ball on how much its Apple Intelligence AI assistant can do. Google – THIS is your moment!
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