BARCELONA — Google’s voice-translating Pixel Buds failed to impress us when they debuted last fall, but a new startup in town has a pair of foreign language-translating earphones that could actually make conversations easier.
MORE: How Pixel Buds Handle Translation
For instance, if your grandmother speaks Japanese and you don’t, you could still carry on a conversation if that other person was wearing a Pilot bud, says William Goethals, Waverly Labs’ vice president of manufacturing. Your earbud would listen for her voice and then translate it from Japanese to English with a slight delay, and her Pilot bud would do the same.
I demo’ed the Pilot buds in an extremely noisy environment, but found the device picked up on words with almost 100 percent accuracy.
You can even have group conversations with multiple people who all speak different languages. You have to select which mode you want to use in the app before beginning to talk, but in my demo, the selection seemed straightforward and obvious.
The Pilot earbuds are available in three colors: red, white and black. The red looks particularly fetching. They do cost more than Google's $159 language-translating earbuds — almost $100 more — but they work with both iOS and Android devices. They're also completely cord-free, unlike the Pixel Buds, which connect to each other via a cable you drape around your deck. You can order a pair through Waverly Labs’ website now. We’ll put these earphones to the test against Pixel Buds to see which is more useful, so stay tuned for that comparison.
