Google alongside the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL smartphones, as well as the Google Pixelbook laptop, launched the Pixel Buds at its media event in San Francisco. The Pixel Buds wireless headphones will take on Apple’s AirPods, which at present leads the market in wireless earphones in the US.

The Google Pixel Buds are powered by Google Assistant, the virtual assistant from the company. This will allow users to ask the Google Pixel Buds any question via voice command and have them answered without ever typing a word on the phone. Similarly, much like the AirPods, you can also ask the Google Pixel Buds to play a track.

Google Pixel Buds don’t have any buttons, but they support gestures for interface and control. A user can swipe forward or backward on either of the Pixel Buds to control the volume, and tap on either of the buds to play or pause the music they are listening to.

What separates the Google Pixel Buds from the Apple AirPods is the real-time multi-lingual translation. As Google explains, “Say you’re in Little Italy, and you want to order your pasta like a pro. All you have to do is hold down on the right earbud and say, ‘Help me speak Italian.’ As you talk, your Pixel phone’s speaker will play the translation in Italian out loud. When the waiter responds in Italian, you’ll hear the translation through your Pixel Buds.” The feature works in 40 languages.

Google Pixel Buds come with a case, which houses a battery of its own. That case will beam up to 24 hours of listening time on the Google Pixel Buds, the company claims. Much like the AirPods, the Google Pixel Buds will connect with supported devices with ease. All a customer needs to do is open the case and a Pixel smartphone or any other Android phone with version 7.0 Nougat software and Google Assistant on them will connect immediately.

The Google Pixel Buds are priced at $159 (roughly Rs. 10,400), and will be available for pre-orders in the United States starting today. There’s no word on India availability just yet. The Google Pixel Buds come in Just Black, Clearly White and Kinda Blue colour variants