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True wireless earbuds have come a long way fairly quickly.
Design, Fit, and Comfort
The look of the JBL Live Free 2 is nice.
The shape, somewhat similar to a bean, also makes grabbing them easy.
Kris Wouk / How-To Geek
Speaking of fit, JBL includes three sets of ear tips: small, medium, and large.
In my case, the medium tips were a perfect fit.
The JBL Live Free 2 headphones are rated IPX5 waterproof.
Kris Wouk / How-To Geek
With adaptive noise cancellation enabled, playback time drops to five hours.
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The charging case extends that capacity by 28 hours.
A full charge takes around an hour and a half.
Kris Wouk / How-To Geek
LEDs on the earbuds indicate charging and connection status.
The Live Free 2 earbuds have automatic ear detection, which stops playback when you remove one earbud.
This should help keep battery life from draining unnecessarily.
Kris Wouk / How-To Geek
The app also features an equalizer.
Sound Quality
The overall sound is where the questionable choices start.
There is no support for higher-quality codecs likeLDACor evenaptX.
Kris Wouk / How-To Geek
AAC doesn’t sound bad, and when SBC is well implemented, it doesn’t sound bad either.
The good news is that the Bluetooth sound quality here is fine.
I also realized I wasn’t a fan of any of the EQ modes.
Kris Wouk / How-To Geek
The key, I found, was turning the EQ mode off entirely.
Note that this isn’t the same as setting it flat or using the “Studio” setting.
Other EQ parameters sounded harsh in the higher frequencies.
This gave the already gritty sounding vocal a lo-fi quality.
On the other hand,“All Stars” by Grafton Primaryallowed the JBL Live Free 2 to shine.
This wasn’t even a problem when I switched from ANC to Ambient Sound mode.
I also noticed less of thephantom ear pressure ANC can cause.
The TalkThru mode, on the other hand, is confusing.
This aims to make hearing people talking to you easier, but keeps your music going.
In practice, engaging this mode lowers the volume of your music so low that it’s nearly inaudible.
you’re able to enable TalkThru mode by double-tapping on the left earbud, which could be handy.
Even taking out a single earbud is easier, which seems to render TalkThru mode useless.
Call quality is excellent, with the mics doing a good job of blocking out background noise.
Listening to music is fine, but it could be better.
Still, this is a quality set of earbuds for the price.
