THIS is JBL's BEST?! 🤦🏻‍♂️ JBL Live Pro 2 Review
The JBL Live Pro 2 is said to be one of JBL’s best active noise canceling earbuds. As a brand, JBL has a reputation of squeezing in as much value as possible in terms of features and performance. And the Live 2 Pro’s no exception. It has large 11mm drivers, up to 8 hours of battery in the buds and 24 with case.
It also has Multipoint pairing, and a nice app with some very useful custom features like some EQ presets, a graphic EQ, and a latency reduction mode for watching videos and gaming. So it checks most boxes in terms of features. But what about its performance compared to other top-shelf earbuds?
We’re going to look at its sound quality, noise canceling and call quality, which involves listening to some binaural sound samples.
Strap in. Let’s go.
Sound Quality
In terms of sound quality, compared to the top earbuds in the market (see FR chart below), these have a somewhat balanced middle of the road tuning. However its tuning is still a bit V-shaped, with some heaviness in the bass frequencies. In fact, it has about as much bass as the Sony’s WF-1000XM4.
So listening to Trap or Hiphop music with it is awesome. Its midrange tuning is a bit more flat and laid back which takes away some of the focus from the vocals, but it gives other instruments and tracks in your music more prominence, more opportunities to shine.
It’s also got a little bit of vibrance in the highs, so wind or string instruments still sound airy. These sound samples compare them to Sony’s best earbuds.
And if you love bass, wow, you must try the bass heavy settings. It really adds a lot of extension and gravity to my music!
Call Quality
(Tested by comparing the Live Pro 2’s call quality to that of Sony’s top earbuds in both quiet and noisy conditions, using some really loud cafe style background noise.)
Its call quality seems pretty good. Great clarity of voice in quiet conditions, and decent noise gating in noisy conditions. It doesn’t cut all noise unlike the Sony LinkBuds S, but still, my voice sounded clear and intelligible. Very decent mic pickup indeed. Listen to the difference here.
Active Noise Canceling
If you compare its noise canceling to Sony’s top earbuds, these are pretty effective overall, especially in the low frequencies. But their eartips don’t seem to dampen as much mid range noise, instead the earbuds will try to mask over human voices with white noise. And this is something that you can hear in these samples, which are recorded using the same background noise that I used for the call quality test.
ANC Features
The Live 2 Pro’s got a few active noise canceling features, such as an Adaptive Noise Canceling mode which automatically adjusts the noise canceling power depending on how loud the environment is, and it’s also got a feature that optimizes the ANC. I’ve tried those features, and to be honest, if there was a difference, it was so subtle that I couldn’t tell.
Transparency Mode
You can choose various levels of transparency in the app, but setting it at 60% seems to work best for me. It’s got a bit of muffling but it also has very little hiss in the background. But overall, it has decent transparency that’s pretty useful for staying aware of your surroundings, and having quick conversations with people without removing your earbuds.
Also when making phone calls, you can actually choose how much of your own voice you want to hear, what they call “VoiceAware”. Or you can also disable VoiceAware completely if you prefer not to hear your own voice at all. That’s similar to what the Jabras have, and something that I wish Sony earbuds had.
Do I like the Live Pro 2?
Overall I think the Live Pro 2’s is a very safe choice. It’s got nice features, it sounds decent, and with the right EQ settings it can sound even better. Its active noise canceling is pretty effective, and its mic pickup is decent for phone calls as well.
Its multipoint feature works rather well too. In my time using it connected to my PC and my phone at the same time (or two separate phones) I haven't had any issues with signal drops. So if you’re a power user, and you’re a fan of JBL products, you’re more likely to look at these versus whatever else is out there.
But, for someone already using the AirPods Pro 2, Bose and Sony earbuds, is this going to blow your mind? For me, not really. It’s good at most things, but it still feels very cookie cutter. It seems to me that there are countless other AirPods-style buds out there, and this is just one of them. In other words, nothing about it really blows my mind. But if you want to check it out for yourself, I’ve got the Amazon links to the JBL Live Pro 2 below. Click on them if you want to check the latest prices.
JBL Live Pro 2 - https://amzn.to/3LDeunK
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