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CNBC: Google's New 'Pixel Buds' Suck (yahoo.com)
Google's new Pixel Buds "are really bad" and "not worth buying," according to CNBC's technology products editor:
The stand-out feature of Google Pixel Buds is that they're supposed to be able to translate spoken languages in near real-time. In my real-world tests, however, that wasn't the case at all. I took the Pixel Buds out on the streets of Manhattan, speaking to a Hungarian waiter in Little Italy, multiple vendors in Chinatown and more. If you press the right earbud and say "help me speak Chinese," for example, the buds will launch Google Translate, you can speak what you'd like to ask someone in another language, and a voice will read out the translated speech through your smartphone's speakers. Then, when someone replies, you'll hear that response through the Pixel Buds.
The microphone on the Pixel Buds is really bad, so it barely picked up my voice queries that I wanted to translate. I stood on the side of the road in Chinatown repeating myself at least 10 times trying to get the phone to pick up my speech in order to begin translation. It barely worked, even if I took the buds out and spoke directly into the microphone on the right earbud, and often only translated half of what I was trying to ask. In a quiet place, I was able to allow someone to respond to me, after which I'd hear the English translation through the headphones. That was neat, but it barely ever actually worked that way. To mitigate this, I found it was just easier to manually open the Google translate app, speak into my phone's microphone, and then let someone else also speak right into my phone. This executed the translation nearly perfectly, and meant that I didn't need the Pixel Buds at all.
The article ends by answering the question, Should you buy them? "Nope. There's nothing I recommend about the Pixel Buds.
"They're cheap-feeling and uncomfortable, and you're better off using the Google Translate app on a phone instead of trying to fumble with the headphones while trying to translate a conversation. The idea is neat, but it just doesn't work well enough to recommend to anyone on any level."
The microphone on the Pixel Buds is really bad, so it barely picked up my voice queries that I wanted to translate. I stood on the side of the road in Chinatown repeating myself at least 10 times trying to get the phone to pick up my speech in order to begin translation. It barely worked, even if I took the buds out and spoke directly into the microphone on the right earbud, and often only translated half of what I was trying to ask. In a quiet place, I was able to allow someone to respond to me, after which I'd hear the English translation through the headphones. That was neat, but it barely ever actually worked that way. To mitigate this, I found it was just easier to manually open the Google translate app, speak into my phone's microphone, and then let someone else also speak right into my phone. This executed the translation nearly perfectly, and meant that I didn't need the Pixel Buds at all.
The article ends by answering the question, Should you buy them? "Nope. There's nothing I recommend about the Pixel Buds.
"They're cheap-feeling and uncomfortable, and you're better off using the Google Translate app on a phone instead of trying to fumble with the headphones while trying to translate a conversation. The idea is neat, but it just doesn't work well enough to recommend to anyone on any level."
No way. I'm totally driving around Mars on my 3D printed car so I can go visit Elon Musk at his private Mars retirement home.
Yup.
Nothing is ever over-hyped.
Whoda thunk it?
do they still spy on you?
audio apps don't work on the streets in new york city, require reasonably quiet place / low noise environment.
also translation software isn't 100%.
MORE AT 11.
What a surprise!
CNBC's technology products editor can't diss Google and remain employed. We're talking about Google.
Funny, I thought I just left 4chan.
/pol/ isn't 4chan, any more than the KKK are American Society.
If you have a Pixel phone, can’t you do all this without the earbuds? Or is there some sort of artificial restriction which checks for the existence of some connected earbuds?
#DeleteChrome
"OK Google, where can I find the men's room?"
[bleep bleep boop beep]
(in Chinese:) "Where can I find the gender-neutral restroom? And don't say you don't have one because that makes you literally Hitler."
So, you take a brand new technology, that is expected to have some rough edges, you test it in the worst possibile environment (noisy and crowded streets with a lot of traffic) and you're surprised of the result? Moreover you used: a) a language (Chinese) that due to its nature is really difficult to recognize efficiently. b) a language (Italian) as spoken by Italian-Americans of several generations, so with a strong accent, regional influences and maybe a few grammatical errors in the mix (I'm Italian-Italian myself so I know what could be expected).
I'm not saying that Google buds are great, maybe they really do suck, but this sounds more like a rant than a well-informed test. Then, of course, can debate whether Apple's approach (bringing a technology on the market when it's mature, instead of jumping first on the bandwagon) works better or it's just a strategy to make your competitors fail in a series of inevitable pitfalls.
Oh hai fake APK.
So you didn't read the summary?
Me neither.
Wait, you tried anything with speak to text in a noisy city area? LOL.
So you didn't read the summary?
Me neither.
I’ve just been trying to fit in...
#DeleteChrome
So if the slaughterbots work as well as the pixel buds we should have nothing to worry about. It's reassuring to know it was all just advertising B.S.
The announcement of these things was buried pretty far under the rest of the announcements. I remember tech sites getting there eyes on it and screeching to the high heavens about how great they were going to be, and how you could translate languages without and internet connection and it would work perfectly and...
And of course not. If someone, anyone, had that tech they'd demonstrate it on stage front and center, hyping it to the high heavens. Instead it's just a crappy pair of earbuds, that most every reviewer out there thinks is crappy for reference, just in case you're getting cognitive dissonance and trying to rationalize how this bad review is obviously biased or something. Of course they buried the announcement and hoped no one would notice, they knew it these things were crap.
So did he/she try another set to see if they just got a bad microphone?
I basically feel Google simply added very little to a $150 pair of wireless buds that would add much function to them just being average sounding ear buds.
For me they would compare to a $20 pair of wired buds and I just do not see spending the dollars on wireless technology when the rest of the ear buds suffer. At the Apple Air Pods do audio quality half way decent and you can take calls with them. I think Google tried to one up everyone and they failed.
That Google, or anyone, is pedaling an item which is superfluous because another item already does the same thing, and better in this case, isn't surprising.
Nor is the fact that thousands upon thousands of people will buy said product, then complain when it doesn't work even though they already had another item which does work.
AC's law of the internet #357:
Any post that uses the terms SJW, snowflake, cuck or cupcake non-ironically can be skipped immediately as it will be offtopic/flamebait/troll.
"An ex-plumber from Australia invented a $179 earpiece that can translate 8 languages in real-time"
http://www.businessinsider.com/an-ex-plumber-invented-a-140-earpiece-that-translates-in-real-time-2017-6?r=US&IR=T&IR=T
Fta : "Lingmo International, a startup based in West Gosford north of Sydney, launched its TranslateOne2One earpiece at the UN's Artificial Intelligence for Good Summit in Geneva, revealing that IBM Watson machine learning technology had been used for its algorithms.
Traditionally, converting one language to another orally in real-time is called "interpreting" whereas the term "translation" is reserved for processing text across languages with some delay. Lingmo founder Danny May, however, describes his product as performing "translation in real-time".
"It's a fully independent translation earpiece. And what I mean by independent is that it doesn't require any connectivity to your phone by Bluetooth or wi-fi. A lot of our competitors do," he told Business Insider."
Did you try shouting? That's what you're supposed to do when foreigners don't understand, isn't it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Suction is the way they stay in the ears.
This sounds like an SJW rule. You hitler piece of shit.
The current state of the audio filtering technology is not up snuff. So be it. These real-world tests will only make it stronger.
And when audio filtering does get good, the world will finally have a hearing aid that works.
I am a native English speaker living in Hungary and I can say without reservation that Google Translate is really bad at Hungarian. It can handle individual words ok sometimes but anything beyond that and it falls apart quickly. So even without sound issues, it's not really something you can use for any communication beyond the most basic.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
AC's law of the internet #357:
Any post that uses the terms SJW, snowflake, cuck or cupcake non-ironically can be skipped immediately as it will be offtopic/flamebait/troll.
I was being ironic. Google doesn't have a SJW agenda, I thought it was obvious that they appropriated the SJW culture to further their corporate agenda of greed and ruthless pursuit of market dominance.
lucm, indeed.
As per the title, this is a big let down for me...I was really, really looking forward to being able to use these to converse with my mother-in-law and some of my extended family. High hopes dashed.
I should have known better, but with Google the hype is usually kept to a dull roar and at the product (when it finally appears) is more-or-less as claimed. Still, I can hope they get better as time goes by.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
In other words, they copy everything Apple does and poorly at that.
Real APK wouldn't give a fuck about bump stocks since gun violence is not threat to him from the comfort of his mother's basement.
...so I figured I was supposed to stick them into my eyes. No?