JLab Epic Air ANC review

Our Verdict

While the JLab Epic Air ANC offers an affordable route into noise-cancelling wireless earbuds, underwhelming performance and an unreliable app mean you're amend off looking elsewhere.

For

ANC on a budget
Great battery life
Decent sound quality with the right settings

Against

Bulky design
App is frustrating to use
ANC not that effective

Tom's Guide Verdict

While the JLab Epic Air ANC offers an affordable road into noise-cancelling wireless earbuds, underwhelming performance and an unreliable app mean y'all're amend off looking elsewhere.

Pros

+
ANC on a budget
+
Swell battery life
+
Decent sound quality with the correct settings

Cons

-
Bulky design
-
App is frustrating to use
-
ANC non that effective

JLab Ballsy Air ANC: Specs

Colors: Blackness
Battery life (rated): eight hours with ANC on (32 hours with charging case), 12 hours with ANC off (48 hours with charging case)
Size: 1.iv x one.1 x 0.9 inches (per bud); two.3 x 1.5 ten 2.2 inches (charging case)
Weight: 0.25 ounces (per bud); 1.98 ounces (charging case)
Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.0

The JLab Epic Air ANC has all the immediate markings of a great deal: a true wireless earbud design, long battery life active racket-cancelling (ANC), all for a mere $99.

It'due south not solitary in this regard, coming hot on the heels of the $130 Anker Soundcore Liberty Air ii Pro and its own sporty cousin, the JLab Ballsy Air Sport ANC. This is a very exciting arena to finally see some competition: many of the best wireless earbuds include ANC simply are towards the pricier end of the spectrum; the $249 AirPods Pro being a prime number example.

As you'll run into in this JLab Ballsy Air ANC review, taking the low-budget route doesn't hateful having to surrender on certain features, but then this item fix of buds comes with a number of caveats that only leaves them outside the best cheap racket-cancelling headphones you lot can buy.

JLab Ballsy Air ANC review: Price and availability

The JLab Epic Air ANC is $99 directly from JLab; if you tin can spare 99 cents more than you lot can buy from Best Buy or Target instead.

The current best price we've seen is $93.47 from Amazon. This may be a small and evidently temporary saving, but even at total price the Ballsy Air ANC is seriously inexpensive for a prepare of dissonance-cancelling, truthful wireless earbuds.

JLab Epic Air ANC review: Pattern

Aesthetically, the design of the JLab Epic Air ANC somewhat gives abroad that this is a relatively cheap pair of ANC earbuds. The plastic has a basic matte finish and while it's handy to have such big sensors for the touch controls — in the class of a round JLab logo — the buds themselves look gigantic. They stick out the ear noticeably farther than the $130 Anker Soundcore Freedom Air two Pro, even if the stalks aren't as long.

While non a particularly expert-looking pair of earbuds, the Epic Air ANC at least does well on marrying design and function. Both earbuds include their own status LED to help confirm pairing, and because the JLab logos on the sensors are slightly raised, they provide a little extra tactile feedback to let you know you're tapping in the right spot.

The charging case, unfortunately, feels the issue of the earbuds' bulkiness by being on the larger side itself. Even so, the leatherette finish is nice for the money, and again, integrated LEDs convey helpful details: battery accuse status, in this instance.

The case too features a hardwired USB cable that slots into the front. I appreciate the neatness of this stowing method, though be warned that the cable is very short: not even three inches. Yous may wish to utilise a Qi wireless charger instead, which to JLab's credit, the Ballsy Air ANC case supports.

The buds (though non the case) are IP55-certified, which ways they're sweat-proof and dust-resistant. You could even let them get drenched in the pelting, though you shouldn't take them into the shower or let me exist fully submerged in water for any amount of time.

JLab Epic Air ANC review: Condolement and fit

You go a healthy six pairs of swappable tips in the box. That includes three standard silicone tip sizes (small, medium and large), and the medium and large sizes also take extra-long versions for deeper ears. The last gear up is a single pair of "Deject foam" tips, which are medium-sized. I would take liked a smaller foam choice, though, as medium wouldn't fit in my ears.

Still, with the correct sized tips, the JLab Epic Air ANC are both secure and reasonably comfortable. They don't feel as fatiguing after a couple of hours equally the Soundcore Liberty Air ii Pro did, even though JLab's buds are very slightly heavier: 0.25 ounces per bud compared to 0.22 ounces.

JLab Epic Air ANC review: Setup

The JLab Epic Air ANC pairs dainty and rapidly. The first time, you just need to concord down on the touch sensors for a few seconds to activate pairing manner, and so find the JLab Ballsy Air ANC on your device'southward Bluetooth list. After that, it's merely a matter of removing the buds from the case to automatically re-pair them.

This all works well, equally does the Bluetooth v.0 connection in general, which holds potent over distances and through multiple walls.

JLab Epic Air ANC review: Controls

The aforementioned bear upon controls are reliable plenty. I had a couple of occasions when some particularly light taps weren't registered, but every bit long as you're decisive and then it's easy to heighten or lower the volume, activate a voice assistant or cycle through sound and ANC profiles (more than on these after) with simple tap and hold gestures.

At that place'due south besides a JLab ANC mobile app (Android and iOS), only sadly this is one of the almost frustrating companion apps I've always used with an audio production.

First off, it doesn't always launch properly. There'due south typically a "Loading" prompt whenever y'all open it, but sometimes this merely loops forever, forcing you to close the app and start over again. This thankfully wasn't an upshot for Alex when he tested the Ballsy Air Sport ANC, and I only used the Android version, and then the iOS version might not accept this issue. Nevertheless, even if I just got unlucky, it was an irritating trouble to deal with.

So at that place's the dissonance-cancelling and Be Aware controls. Yes, the JLab Ballsy Air ANC supports both ANC and an ambient way, which for $99 is great, only the way it'south set up here has the potential to exist pretty disruptive. Typically you lot might be using the bear upon controls to switch between the ANC on, ANC off and Be Aware (ambient) modes, but if you open up the app there are slider controls for both ANC and Be Aware.

This isn't explained anywhere, only the sliders merely have an consequence when the respective mode is in use, so I can absolutely see baffled users dragging the sliders dorsum and forth, wondering why they tin can raise the volume of Be Aware'due south microphone recording while still in dissonance-cancelling way. Or vice-versa.

JLab Epic Air ANC review: Sound quality

Weirdly, you also can't use the app to switch between sound profiles, though at to the lowest degree this tin can be done with the touch controls. The Balanced EQ profile is indeed evenly counterbalanced, in the sense that at that place's no single overbearing frequency range, though besides sound a bit flat: the snare pulsate hits in AViVA's "GRRRLS", for instance, lacked a certain sharpness.

The Bass Boost profile is merely as well boomy, period, so it'southward up to JLab Signature profile to save the twenty-four hour period. The manual says this amplifies vocals and bass, which sounds similar it could only introduce two different types of imbalances, but I enjoyed what I heard. Pretty much every vocal-led song benefits from information technology over the Balanced mode, and the extra low end creates a greater sense of overall depth. This was especially noticeable in tracks with abrupt bass/treble contrasts, like "Dani California" by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Sadly these profiles bring up yet another signal of confusion with the app. You can set to four boosted custom EQ profiles, which is not bad, but these volition override the JLab Signature, Bass Heave and Balanced profiles if you're already using them; it would make more sense to automatically switch to the fourth profile, named Custom, before your tinkering takes effect. To get the original sound contour back as information technology was, you'll need to cycle dorsum through to it once more.

JLab Epic Air ANC review: Active dissonance cancellation

The ANC is not great. In fact it'south non even particularly good: it relies heavily on the natural, passive noise isolation of the silicone tips, which in fairness is fine. But the electronic aspect does very trivial to silence office noises like the click-clack of typing or the rolling of chairs, and is fifty-fifty less effective outdoors. I could easily hear nearby cars and buses pass by; fifty-fifty the rush of wind noise competed to overpower my music.

Engaging the Exist Aware transparency mode fabricated this wind dissonance fifty-fifty worse. And a lot of sounds, including speech, can be tinged with a harsh, snappy electronic effect when it's switched on.

To be off-white, ambient style does make information technology a lot easier to hear both your own vocalisation and that of whoever you're speaking to, so information technology does the chore in a basic sense. But on the whole, both noise-cancelling and transparency are executed with much more finesse by the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro.

JLab Epic Air ANC review: Features

The skillful news is that the JLab Epic Air ANC has a few other toys. There's Siri and Google Assistant support, for ane. Activating the latter with impact controls, the earbuds dutifully and ably recorded my voice commands for the Banana to execute on my phone.

At that place's also a defended Flick Mode, which supposedly reduces latency. In truth I never noticed video sound going out of sync without this mode engaged, just it'south easy enough to enable or disable that you might as well use it: only concur downwardly both impact sensors for three seconds.

One of the app's redeeming features is the ability to customise the impact controls. There's an in commendable depth to this: every bit with the more expensive Sennheiser CX 400BT, there are plenty of gestures and enough of functions to mix and match them with, and so you tin can build a command scheme that feels the about intuitive and tactile to you. As frustrating every bit the app tin be, information technology'due south worth using for this feature alone.

Lastly, you go iii months' complimentary subscription to Tidal, a dainty bonus for such a cheap pair of buds.

JLab Epic Air ANC review: Battery life

This is where the JLab Epic Air ANC finally gets to stand out on something other than price. With ANC on and volume at 50%, we got an outstanding 8 hours and 46 minutes of continuous music playback — a issue that leaves the the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro in the dust, as it even does the ultra-premium AirPods Pro and the Samsung Milky way Buds Pro. Neither of these could break 5 hours with ANC enabled.

And, as the charging case is good for 3 additional refills, you're looking at around 35 hours of ANC playback in total. That's preposterously good.

This outcome tracks with JLab's own numbers, which quote "32 plus hours" of total ANC playback. Plow dissonance-cancelling off and this could stretch up to "48 plus hours," or 12 hours between charges.

Fast-charging performance is decent as well: later on 15 minutes charging from empty, the JLab Epic Air ANC could keep going for two hours and 10 minutes.

JLab Ballsy Air ANC review: Phone call quality

Using the JLab Epic Air ANC made phone calls clearer on my cease, only the friend I called reported that vocalism clarity dropped "essentially" later on I switched from my phone to the earbuds. I plainly sounded less organic and more distorted, albeit non enough to cause outright problems.

This is another shame, as JLab Epic Air ANC tin can use one of each bud's onboard mics to cancel out a degree of ambient noise; this try conspicuously shows in that location was a desire to make the clarity of voice calls a stiff arrange. It but hasn't entirely worked out.

JLab Epic Air ANC: Verdict

Information technology'south hard not to admire the appetite of the JLab Epic Air ANC. True wireless ANC earbuds for $99 is a large inquire, non to mention features similar custom bear on controls, water resistance and and one of the best bombardment performances yous'll see from whatsoever contempo pair of noise-cancelling buds.

Unfortunately, it's the ANC itself that tops the disappointment list. It's merely not every bit effective as the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro. These rival earbuds aren't perfect either, but but cost $30 more, while delivering improve noise-cancelling, higher sound quality in general and an app that doesn't stop to wonder if it should work every time you open it.

Unless you value battery life over everything else, the selection is obvious: the JLab Ballsy Air ANC is a decent pair of cheap noise-cancelling earbuds, but the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro is the better buy.

James is currently Hardware Editor at Stone Newspaper Shotgun, but before that was Audio Editor at Tom's Guide, where he covered headphones, speakers, soundbars and anything else that intentionally makes dissonance. A PC enthusiast, he too wrote computing and gaming news for TG, ordinarily relating to how hard it is to detect graphics carte du jour stock.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/jlab-epic-air-anc

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