The JLab JBuds Lux ANC are the newest over-ear wireless headphones from the budget American audio brand JLab. At only $79 ($49 on sale), they’re a purse-friendly option, but are they one of the best wireless headphones available today?
The Lux ANCs have, you guessed it, active noise cancellation, meaning they’re a great option for busy environments. They’re among some of the cheapest over-ear headphones I’ve seen with ANC and premium features. And the battery life is pretty sweet — up to 70 hours. That’s almost two working weeks without having to plug them in once. The headphones also have spatial audio and are compatible with Dolby Atmos for a surround-sound experience.
So they’ve got a great battery life and decent premium features for the price. But does the Lux ANC’s sound quality hold up for only $79? Find out what I thought in my JLab JBuds Lux ANC wireless headphones review.
JLab JBuds Lux ANC review: Cheat sheet
- What is it? A pair of budget over-ear headphones with ANC and good audio quality
- Who is it for? If you don’t want to fork out $100 for luxury headphones
- What does it cost? $79 at Amazon
- What do we like? The battery life is awesome — up to 70 hours
- What don’t we like? No LDAC codec support and no IP rating
JLab JBuds Lux ANC review: Specs
JLab JBuds Lux ANC review: Price & availability
The JLab JBuds Lux ANC wireless headphones are only $79 at Amazon or £79 at Amazon U.K. The headphones come in four colors: white, dark gray (the specimen I reviewed), dark sage green, and grayish mauve. It’s great to see so many color options as often headphones are the basic black, gray, or white.
These are clearly budget headphones, cheaper than Anker’s Soundcore Space One ($99) and much cheaper than Cleer Enduro ANC ($149). The Lux ANCs are also cheaper than Audio-Technica ATH-S300BT ($99), which we praised for their battery life, but had issues with their ANC. However our best cheap headphones are only $54 — so if you’re looking to spend even less, the 1More SonoFlow SE headphones might be worth checking out.
JLab JBuds Lux ANC review: Design & controls
The Lux ANCs look far more premium than their price might suggest. The pads are soft and light, and don’t press into your skin. The headphones are lightweight enough that you might even forget you’re wearing them — I did a number of times.
There are three buttons on the right cup: play/pause (which doubles up as on/off if you long press), ANC, and a volume bar. The buttons are rubbery enough that you can’t accidentally activate them but can find them easily. You can customize these button controls in the JLab app, too.
It’s worth bearing in mind that there’s no IP rating (which is normal for over-ear headphones), so I wouldn’t take these out in a dust or rainstorm and I’d be careful working out with them. There’s also no carry case, so if you’re caught in the rain, you’d have nowhere to stow the headphones and would have to duck inside.
JLab JBuds Lux ANC review: Features & connectivity
After a 2.5 hour charge time, I connected the fully-charged Lux ANCs to my iPhone 11. While JLAB says that the Lux ANCs are streamlined with Android devices, connecting to my iPhone was still as straightforward as you’d expect. To test the Android compatibility, I connected the headphones to a Google Pixel 7 Pro. The connection was just as breezy as the iPhone — but with Android, you can use Google ‘Find My’, which you can’t do on Apple devices. I tested the Android ‘Find My’, which plays an 8-bit style retro gaming tone as the alarm.
To test the ANC, I ventured out onto a main road and a busy supermarket with the headphones playing. I thought the ANC would be disappointing — but I absolutely love to be proved wrong. There’s a lot of construction going on where I live, and on my hour-long jaunt around the neighborhood, not a single drill or reversing truck perforated my headphones.
While the headphones don’t have on-ear wear detection, so you might accidentally let them play for three hours after you get home, the battery life is so good it doesn’t really matter in real world usage. Again, though, these are $79 headphones so you can’t expect every premium feature around. What’s more, even some much pricier headphones like the Shure Aonic 50 Gen 2 ($349) don’t feature wear detection.
70 hours is one of the best battery lives I’ve ever seen — much better even than some of the best over-ear headphones like the luxury Sony WH-1000XM5’s ($399) and their mere 40-hour battery life.
To test the Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos features, I had to connect the Lux ANCs to the office Windows laptop, an Asus TUF F15. This is because, unfortunately, the Spatial Audio features only work on Windows devices, PlayStations, XBox Ones, Apple Music, and third party apps like THX. You can use Dolby Atmos on iOS, but only with Apple Music. So if you wanted to watch Netflix on your MacBook with Dolby, you’re out of luck. So if you wanted to listen to Spatial Audio and Dolby on Android-operated phones, again, you’re out of luck, unless you link up your device with a compatible third party app.
On compatible devices, the Lux ANC headphones make light work of the Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos challenge. I tested it using Apple Music on my iPhone 11 and I was gobsmacked. I had to stop my coworkers to tell them about how good it sounded. For only $79, this is a generous feature.
And then, rounding off the Lux ANC’s features, is call quality. I used the headphones on work calls and my coworkers reported the mic was good. These performed their task well.
JLab JBuds Lux ANC review: App
In the JLab app, you can download firmware updates, select music or movie mode, control noise canceling mode, customize your button controls, tweak the EQ, and manage your volume levels. The app looks great and is super user-friendly, with easy to navigate sections. There’s even information about something called a ‘burn-in’ process, where JLab recommends you let the headphones play for 40 hours right out of the box, to ensure the drivers and other components reach their optimal performance. I let the headphones play over the weekend to test this ‘burn-in’ feature.
The headphones work perfectly well without the JLab app, but if you want to take advantage of the premium features like EQ customization, I’d recommend you download it. It’s compatible with iOS and Android devices.
JLab JBuds Lux ANC review: Audio quality
As the Lux ANCs only have SBC codec support, I wasn’t expecting the sound quality to be that great. Most Android devices have LDAC codec support, which is the highest-quality Bluetooth codec available on mobile devices right now. As the headphones are engineered for Android users, I would’ve liked to see LDAC support.
Even with SBC and streaming through Spotify (so not the best pairing for supreme audio quality), I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Lux ANCs.
‘Old Scratch Blues’ by Jack White, which starts with a bluesy smooth guitar riff, was clear and precise, although the bass and kick drum were a little muffled in the verses. The new techno house offering from my current obsession band Confidence Man, ‘Let Them Bells Ring’, pounded through the drivers with such groove that I wanted to stop mid-walk and start boogie-ing (I won’t, for everyone else’s sakes), although a little of the bass was lost amongst the liveliness of the track.
Jazz-tinged crooning vocals from Clairo’s ‘Sexy to Someone’ was smooth and gentle, with the charisma you’d expect from much pricier headphones. I especially liked the sliding guitar notes in the chorus; but the bass notes were a touch muddled.
‘Sink Ya Teeth’ by the Mysterines is a heavier track with layers of bass and guitars, and sounded good, but the chorus fell a little flat. I reckon these headphones struggle the most with heavier songs, but they’re still very listenable.
For only $79, you’re not going to get the quality of a Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e ($399) or a Focal Bathys ($799), but considering the price, these headphones sound amazing.
JLab JBuds Lux ANC review: Verdict
If you’re after over-ear headphones that have solid ANC, great battery life, premium appearance, and decent sound quality, and will only set you back $79, the JLab JBuds Lux ANC headphones are an excellent choice.
I loved the sound quality in most of the indie and house tracks I listened to, but the headphones don’t do heavier rock or layered tracks as much justice as I would like. In general, though, these are a great buy for only $79, and come with a nice range of features to make that price taste even sweeter.
