REVIEW: JBL Live Pro 2 ANC Earbuds

With their Live Pro 2 earbuds, JBL has launched a pair of new true wireless active noise cancelling earbuds in what can be considered the high-end performance segment. Touting JBL’s ‘Signature Sound’, improved noise canceling and battery life of up to 40 hours, are they worthy of their of £129/approx. €152 price tag?  Find out below in our full review.

Design & Build Quality

At first glance, the JBL Live Pro 2 are quite an unassuming pair of earbuds. In particular, the charging box has been kept very simple. With the black model (which we were sent to review) you get a plain black matte plastic charging case.

The charging box has the JBL logo on top and the USB-C charging port at the back and thankfully, these second generation Live Pro buds are capable of wireless charging which, again, adds to the earbuds placement in the higher end market.

The Live Pro 2 TWS themselves have a long ‘stem-like’ design so when the earbuds are in your ears, you have the stem of each earbud hanging down. There’s a premium-looking glossy finish on the exterior of each bud also which raises their overall appearance over just a matte plastic finish.

In terms of fit and comfort, the Live 2 Pro fit quite well and generally feel comfortable. We wouldn’t say that the Live Pro 2 are the most comfortable earbuds we’ve ever had in our ears, but they’re definitely not the worst.

Sound & ANC Quality

JBL advertises the Live Pro 2 TWS with ‘JBL Signature Sound’. What does this mean? This means a fairly ‘lively’ and bass-heavy sound signature, at least that’s the case with the JBL Live Pro 2.

But let’s start with the highs which, for the most part, are fairly neutral, with little lift in the top elevation. As a result, they feel pleasantly sharp and clean but are not overly scratchy.

Mids are imperceptible to slightly lower so again, sound pretty rounded if a little uninspiring.

Of course, this also means that the bass is slightly raised. When listening to bass-heavy EDM or Hip Hop, the bass is very powerful and deep and pushes itself slightly into the foreground. However, the bass avoids being overly exaggerated. Thanks to a good depth and high volume.

All that said, these earbuds are designed to deliver an entertaining and animated sound profile, especially in Electric and Pop tracks.

Overall, we were impressed with the JBL Live Pro 2’s sound.

When it comes to ANC, traditionally, JBL isn’t one of the companies that doesn’t first come to mind unfortunately with the likes of Sony, Apple, Bose, and Sennheiser seen as the leaders of the pack. That said, with the Live Pro 2’s, JBL has really entered the ANC race.

The ANC capabilities of these earbuds really took us by surprise and, with the new triple mic array on each earbud, we can see that JBL did their homework and improved their ANC offering to a point that they should now be considered along with some of the best in the business. They were extremely effective in removing not just lower range sounds like car engines and the general office hum but also did a very respectable job of reducing the interference of mid to higher ranged sounds like people chatting and the hustle and bustle of a café or city street.

When pairing the earbuds up with the JBL Headphones app, available on both Android and iOS, users can make a number of additional tweaks and edits to their earbuds, including the option to change the ‘Ambient Sound Control’ of the earbuds, tweak the equaliser, enable of disable the ‘Smart Audio & Video’ setting (with ‘Audio’ mode giving you the best audio quality and ‘Video’ mode giving you the best lip sync performance) along with a slew of other options.

It must be highlighted that the earbuds also support Google’s ‘Fast Pair’ technology so simply opening the earbuds for the first time near an Android phone (with Bluetooth enabled) will cause a pop up on the phone to help you through the process of setting the phone up, along with the ability to enable Google Assistant access directly on the earbuds and the ability to have your notifications read aloud on the earbuds.

Battery Life

When popping the earbuds into the charging case, the Live Pro 2 earbuds take 2 hours to charge – same as the charging case – and deliver up to 8 hours of battery life runtime with ANC turned on and 50% volume. With ANC turned off, you can get 10 hours of battery life from the earbuds. The charging case can store between 22 and 30 hours of extra charge, giving you enough power to recharge the earbuds 2 or 3 times.

Conclusion

If you’re in the market for a bass-focused pair of earbuds with impressive battery life and ANC, then the JBL Live Pro 2 are for you.

JBL Live Pro 2 Pricing & Availability

The JBL Live Pro 2 are available in 4 colours, blue, pink, black and white for £129/approx. €152 from JBL and Amazon.co.uk.