Sound quality is subjective. What looks good to me may look bad to you, and so on. My ears and yours are different, our brains work differently, and our tastes can be very unique. I am more serious and aggressive. You may prefer more or less treble or maybe acoustic tones. When reading headphone reviews you should always keep this in mind, and in the case of the JBL Live Flex, those tastes and preferences are very important right out of the box. That’s why it’s quite different from the classic JBL formula, which took a slightly different path, and I can see exactly why.
The Live Flex are basically JBL in the Airpods version. The American sound giant has perfectly imitated Apple’s design and has manufactured in-ear headphones without the typical silicone plugs inserted into the ear canal. The Live Flex, like the Airpods, consists of cup-shaped hard plastic pieces that you kind of stick in your inner ear. This is also subjective, as you can use traditional rubber plugs. Over the past five years, many people have told me that they only want to wear Apple Airpods and nothing else because they don’t want anything in their ear canal. However, others like me think the exact opposite.
The JBL Live Flex features JBL’s finest speakers, which are 12mm long. They come with the same excellent noise cancellation as the Live Pro 2 and the same ability to reproduce spatial sound. They have six microphones for clear, noise-free call audio, and they offer incredibly good battery life. You’ll be able to use the Live Flexes for 8 hours per full charge and recharge them from 0 to 100% battery four times just with the case they include, which has a magnetic lid. If we talk about specifications, they are high-end devices that cost around 180 euros, just as JBL has become known in recent years.
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As nice and good as they are, my problem is that they don’t fit my inner ear well. Well, they just don’t fit and fall all the time. No matter how I put them on, they always fall out when I move my head, so I had to do the scan while sitting down and holding them in place. This is somewhat unfair, we all know these types of in-ear headphones always sound better when you push them hard into your ear and hold them there. However, since this type of layout works so poorly for me, that was all I could do to properly use the Live Flex.
They sound a little thinner than the Live Pro 2, which is partly down to the fact that they vibrate just around my inner ear and aren’t glued to my ear canal. I lack a bit of warmth, a bit of power and bass. If JBL in-ear headphones tend to put too much emphasis on bass for your liking, this might be the model for you, but it’s not good enough in my opinion. However, the control is good and the drivers are noticed to be tall, as the soundstage is wide and with good separation. Call quality is also good, as is battery capacity, but noise cancellation suffers a bit, as does bass reproduction, as the Live Flex doesn’t fit my ear canal.
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If you like the design of Airpods and therefore prefer in-ear headphones that don’t sit too tightly in the ear canal, this is a great option. They have less stem, better battery life and better sound than Apple Airpods. However, in my opinion, I wouldn’t choose them over the JBL Live Pro 2, for example, which are cheaper and perform much better.