Sound is subjective. What sounds good to my ears may sound terrible to yours, and that has a little to do with everything. Your ears are different from mine, your brain works differently, and your tastes may be completely unique. I like power and bass. You may prefer more or less treble or acoustic tones. Of course, you always have to keep this in mind when reading headphone reviews, for example, and in the case of the newly released JBL Live Flex, these personal tastes and personal references really come into play from the first minute. Because it’s a departure from the classic JBL formula in so many ways. A slightly different route is taken here, and I can see exactly why.
The Live Flex is basically JBL’s take on Airpods. The American audio giant copied Apple’s design exactly, creating an in-ear headphone that doesn’t have the typical silicone plug that inserts into the ear canal. Live Flex, like Airpods, are hard plastic cups that you put in your inner ear, and whether you prefer that, or a traditional rubber stopper, is of course a super subjective thing. Over the past five years, I’ve heard several people tell me they only want to use the Apple Airpods (just!) because they don’t like stuffing things in their ear canals, while others, like me, think the opposite.
The JBL Live Flex uses JBL’s finest drivers, up to 12mm in size, which offer the same excellent noise reduction and the same spatial sound playback as the Live Pro 2. They pack six microphones, provide clean, noise-free call audio, and offer very good battery life. The Live Flex earphones run for eight hours per charge, and you charge them from zero to 100% battery four times in the included case with magnetic lid. Spec-wise, these are top-of-the-line devices, priced at £159.99, as JBL has become known for in recent years.
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While this is all well and good, the problem for me is that they don’t fit my inner ear. Or well, they don’t fit at all. They just fall out. No matter how I position them, they fall out whenever I move my head, forcing me to review them by sitting on my ears and pinning them on. Of course it’s kind of unfair because we all know that in-ear headphones always sound best when we push them tightly into our ears and hold them there, but considering that this type of design doesn’t feel right to me It doesn’t work that well, all I can do is listen to it with Live Flex.
Compared to the Live Pro 2 in particular, the sounds here are a little thinner, and part of the reason must have something to do with them just rattling in my inner ear rather than getting stuck in my ear canal. I miss some warmth, I miss some presence, I miss bass. If you find that JBL often makes in-ears with too much bass focus, these might definitely be for you, but for me, they’re missing too much. Control is good though, and you can tell the drivers are big because the soundstage is wide and the separation is good. Call quality was also good, as was the battery capacity, but noise cancellation suffered, as did bass reproduction, as the Live Flex didn’t get stuck in my ear canal.
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If you like the design of the Airpods and therefore prefer over-ears that don’t stay securely in the ear canal, then these are an excellent choice as they have fewer stems, better battery life and better earphones than the Apple Airpods the sound of. However, for me, it’s not something I would choose over, say, the JBL Live Pro 2, which is cheaper and performs significantly better.