JLab Epic Lab Edition
The JLab Epic Lab Edition are a premium set of wireless TWS buds with a lot going for them. With multi-point Bluetooth, a wide selection of codecs, smart looks, a comfortable fit and long battery life, there’s plenty to like. There’s also quite a few drawbacks, including a case with an awkward shape, a narrow soundstage and only middling ANC. If you need the features they have, these are a solid choice, but if you want the best sound quality or ANC, you’d be best to look elsewhere.
Introduction
So you want to buy a pair of wireless earbuds – where do you start? It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, in no small part due to the dazzling variety of options on the market today.
From £20 up to £1,000, there’s an array of buds in all shapes and sizes from players big and small, from alphabet soup Amazon vendors up to seasoned veterans of the audio world. While some members of the public have priorities and know what to look for, there’s even more who want nothing more than a pair of buds which does it all.
And if you are an iPhone user, the answer then tends to be AirPods, but for Android users, the situation is more complex. JLab doesn’t seem to think that it needs to be, offering a solution with its Epic Air Lab Edition buds, retailing for an upper-mid/low-premium price of £199.99.
With hybrid dual drivers, purportedly powerful active noise cancellation, a companion app, spatial audio compatibility, IP55 rated splashproofing, wireless charging, multipoint Bluetooth and more, the buds do come with many of the mod-cons that are expected for the price. As hinted earlier however, there is a lot of competition, so do the Epic buds do enough to earn a place in your pocket and/or ears?
Design
- Premium, office appropriate looks
- Case is too long for small pockets
- Comfortable in ear fit.
When it comes to the design of wireless buds, there’s a single factor which almost matters more than the buds themselves, the case. Buds, for the most part, conform to a few standard shapes and patterns in general, and beyond the odd logo or colour pop it can be quite difficult to tell them apart. It’s in the cases where we see a lot of the differences, and with JLab that’s particularly true.
Some of the company’s efforts from years past have been a little out there, including one option which had an embedded USB cable. If there’s one cardinal sin they have committed in the past, it is in being too large. The best cases are simple, slim options that fit easily in a jean pocket.
While the Epic Air Lab Edition bud case might be slim, it is also long, quite long, maybe too long. Inside it houses a large battery, space for the two buds and, oddly a USB-C dongle, which mean that it is well-featured as a compromise, but these are buds meant for menswear pockets, not women’s slim jeans. If they really are for everyone, that’s an important point to consider.
Another bugbear is the lid, which slides back in steps as might be expected, but which also doesn’t slide back far enough to allow the buds to be removed easily. Combined with the powerful magnets holding the buds in place, and the slightly tricky grip of the buds themselves, taking them out can become a palaver. If you are walking down the road quickly, to get these out and put them in you’ll need to slow down or stop, thereby removing a large part of the convenience factor.
Size is also an issue for the USB-C dongle, which is also oddly long. It is definitely convenient for connecting to a computer, however the plastic surrounding the port is so long it makes any adjacent USB-C slots on the computer impossible to use. If you are working on a machine with limited USB-C ports, it suddenly then becomes an annoying issue.
Beyond these grumbles, the case is soberly constructed from metal with a non-slip base that keeps it safe from unintended coffee table dives. It feels solid and premium, and looks office appropriate.
Coming to the buds themselves, they are the dot type, with no stick. They are a little large, but comfortable for the most part. JLab include a selection of different tips with the buds, including memory foam for improved isolation, if that is your cup of tea. There’s no flashes of colour on the buds themselves, but again that isn’t an issue as it makes them entirely office appropriate.
Features
- Multi point Bluetooth support
- USB-C dongle included
- Wide Bluetooth codec support
If there is one thing that JLab has become somewhat known for over the years, it has been an insistence on stuffing each of its products full of features. Sometimes these work, sometimes they don’t – any inclusion is only as strong as its execution.
And fittingly for the price, the Epic Air Lab Edition buds come with a raft of features included, starting with multi-point Bluetooth. This allows you to connect to at least two devices simultaneously, allowing seamless playback on either without needing to go through the kerfuffle of turning Bluetooth off and re-pairing. It’s a quality of life feature which works well, and which definitely adds value.
Then there’s the dedicated app, available on both Android and iOS. This allows you choose noise control modes, adjust an equaliser with a number of presets, change the touch control layout and more. A useful addition is the ability to set decibel limits for your music, to the recommended 85db or to 95db, which in turn helps to prevent damage to the ears and as a result makes these an interesting option if you have teenagers.
On the whole the app works well if a little slowly on an iPhone 13 Pro, and is mostly worthwhile, even if it could use a little more polish.
Wireless charging makes an appearance too, very convenient if you have made the jump and have charging pads in your home, while IP55 weather proofing makes these fine for a run in the rain, if not a session in the pool.
In all, the Epic Air Lab Edition can’t really be faulted for extra features, there’s a lot of them and save for the app, they are implemented well enough that they are worthwhile to have.
Sound Quality
- Not the best for orchestral tracks
- Warm, powerful bass
- Only middling ANC
For all that design and features are useful, the Epic Air Lab Edition are an up-market set of buds with a price tag to match – it isn’t enough that they look nice and are functional, they need to sound great too. That isn’t the only measure however, as they come with active noise cancellation included and so their ability to block out the outside needs to come under scrutiny too.
Beginning with the active noise cancellation, this worked well but within the context of these being in-ear TWS buds. That means that there is a ceiling on what can be achieved, if you need truly powerful noise isolation, you’ll need to look at over-ear headphones.
So, bearing in mind these inherent limitations, the Epic Air Lab Edition buds work fairly well for noise cancellation. They drown out most of the noise of a busy street, so you’ll still have awareness of your surroundings but won’t have the feeling of cocoon-like silence. As such, expectations are best adjusted accordingly, if you need something to remove all of the noise of a busy office or public transport, you’d be best to look elsewhere.
And so it comes to the question of sound quality, where interesting claims are made. There’s Spatial Audio, Dual Drivers and Knowles Preferred Listening Response Curve tuning, to begin, a boatload of terms which need broken down a little.
Spatial Audio, as might be expected, works to improve the soundstage, the feeling of separation and distance between instruments. When done well it adds a lot to the ambience of tracks, particularly with the likes of orchestral music. Here, the JLabs have an unfortunately narrow soundstage, so even with supported tracks the impression of distance and space isn’t particularly impressive, if not terrible.
Dual Drivers are paired up with LDAC and claims of Hi-Res audio, all lofty claims as to quality. In practice, they don’t quite live up to the promise of the marketing. Beyond the relatively narrow soundstage, music can feel a little crunchy, meaning that revealing detail in recordings isn’t the strongest suit of the JLabs.
That isn’t to say that they aren’t a good pair of buds, or even that they sound bad, but that they are best suited for a certain kind of music. If you are a bass head and need a thumping beat in everything you listen to, they’ll serve you well, with warm and energetic lower tones. Dance, EDM, punk and the like are all well represented and sound good. Pop and classical don’t work as well however.
Lastly, coming to the Knowles Preferred Listening Response Curve, this is a tuning curve which can be activated within the app, and proves to be a relatively neutral profile, neither excelling or failing at anything in particular – not really worthy of the inclusion.
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Should you buy it?
You’re looking for lots features for less money than premium options
The JLab have a strong feature set, from waterproofing, to active noise-cancellation and long battery life
The competition is tough
There’s plenty of wireless earphones that better the JLab for a little more, and equally good value options for less
Final Thoughts
As ever, with any product, the question isn’t “is it good” but rather “is it right for me?”
The JLab Epic Lab Edition buds are an interesting test for the latter. They have waterproofing and good bass reproduction, so are therefore a strong fit for gym-bunnies, however their case is too big to stuff in small pockets. For commuters they offer strong battery life and decent noise cancellation, but their detail reproduction is a little muddy. For audiophiles, they have useful EQ tuning abilities and work well with certain genres, but aren’t the accomplished all-rounders they set out to be.
This isn’t to say that the buds aren’t worthy of either attention or money, that isn’t the case, but whether they do enough to raise themselves above the competition. For roughly £20 more you can get the Sony WF-1000XM5 with better audio quality, or for the same price there are the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II with the best noise cancelling on the market. There’s more options too, from Samsung, Apple, Beats, Google, JBL and others, each of which sporting an advantage, a USP where the JLab Epic Lab Edition buds have none.
So as it stands, these are functional, comfortable buds with good connectivity options, strong battery life, office-appropriate looks and a range of useful features. At £150 that would be enough to make them stand out, but at £199.99 they need something more to help them stand above the more seasoned competition.
How we test
We test every headphones we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
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Tested for several days
Tested with real world use
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FAQs
Maximum battery life is 13+ hours on a single charge and 56 in total. That drops to 9+ and 36 hours with ANC enabled.
Full specs
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