We tested which earphones are best for making calls on a boat

A few months ago The Vergecast, we wanted to answer a question: which wireless earbuds should you buy to use for phone calls, Zoom meetings, or chatting with your voice assistant? So Those of The Verge Chris Welch walked into a noisy Brooklyn coffee shop and spoke to him on the phone potting Co-host David Pierce to test a range of wireless earbuds in a noisy environment.

The pretty clear winners of this test were the Apple AirPods Pro and the Sony LinkBuds, which had the clearest detail in the voice and removed quite a bit of background noise.

But two new flagship earbuds have come out since this review: the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and the Google Pixel Buds Pro. So of course we had to put them to the test together with the winners of the last round.

This time we wanted to up the ante, so we put Chris on a boat. The New York City Ferry to be precise – a very noisy environment with engines, waves, chatter, helicopters and wind. It’s not fun to make phone calls there.

You can listen to this full segment about 24 minutes after it begins this Wednesday pottingbut I wanted to share some of the results we found here.

The first part of the test took place at the dock waiting for the ferry, with busy city noise coupled with nearby boat engines, a helipad, PA announcements and all the unpredictable sounds of downtown Manhattan. Here’s an unedited audio sample of the dock, recorded with a stereo microphone:

Here’s how the Apple AirPods Pro handle the dock:

Here’s how the Sony LinkBuds handle the dock:

Here’s how the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro handled the dock:

Then we had to get on the ferry. We sat down at a table inside the boat fairly close to the engine, which is pretty loud unless you’re wearing noise-cancelling earphones. Here is an audio sample from inside the ferry, recorded with a stereo microphone:

This is how the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro handle in the ferry:

This is how the Google Pixel Buds Pro handle in the ferry:

This is how the Apple AirPods Pro handle in the ferry:

How to handle the Sony LinkBuds in the ferry:

After this test, we eliminated the Sony LinkBuds and the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro as they failed David’s stress test. Chris then went to an even worse place — the top of the outdoor ferry — to compare the call quality of the AirPods Pro and the Pixel Buds Pro.

There was a strong wind on top of the boat – not an ideal situation for phoning with earplugs, although a stormy phone call is certainly a scenario you can encounter when wearing these. Here is an audio sample from the top of the ferry recorded with a stereo microphone:

We heard one big difference between the two models. Here’s how the Apple AirPods Pro handled the tip of the ferry:

And here’s how the Google Pixel Buds Pro handled the tip of the ferry:

Let’s be clear: both of them don’t sound great, and nobody on the other end of your call will be motivated to talk to you in this situation. But you can hear the AirPods clipping much of the speech and struggling with the wind and other elements on the boat. The Pixel Buds Pro held onto Chris’ voice surprisingly well and were actually able to take a call without much trouble.

Sure, the New York City Ferry isn’t an ordinary place where the majority of the population would use their earbuds to make calls or join a Zoom meeting. But this scenario sums up several elements you might encounter when communicating in the world: windy days, an active city, public transportation, and all sorts of machines that surround you. So if mic quality and noise isolation are what you’re considering when making your purchase, the Pixel Buds Pro seem a step above the rest.

We’ll be sure to test more earbuds, headphones, and other mics in future episodes of The Vergecastso let us know what you want to hear!