JBL packs a lot of technology into its latest $249.95 Live 780NC headphones. This midrange offering includes high-quality audio, advanced noise-cancelling tools, monster battery life, and is comfortable to wear for hours and hours. The latest Bluetooth spec and the LDAC codec are big pros, but JBL's default audio tuning pushes an overwhelming amount of bass that some people may not like. If bass-first headphones are your thing, the JBL Live 780NCs are a solid option. But we think most will prefer the Editors' Choice Nothing Headphone (a) for its more balanced tuning, solid noise cancellation, and similar battery life for $50 less.

Design: Comfortable for All-Day Wear

The JBL Live 780NCs are a classy pair of headphones. Between their subtle colors and clean, tight seams, they feel well designed. They’re flexible, stretching and twisting with ease, and they don’t creak or crack when contorted. They come in black, blue, green, sand, and white. I received the sand color.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

There’s a fine blend of materials here. The headband is plastic with a soft silicone padding on the bottom. It may not be the most breathable material, but it makes for a gentle, supportive crown. The plush cushioning in the earcups, leatherette finish, and modest clamping force hold them securely. I found my ears got a little warm, and I had some mild discomfort on the crown of my head, but that was only after wearing them for most of the day. I experienced neither of these when I wore them for only a few hours. At 9.2 ounces, they’re not a terrible burden.

The earcups attach to metal sliders that offer a good range of adjustment and both flex and pivot to keep them aligned with the sides of your head. The sliders can fold to help with squeezing the headphones into a bag. And the earcups fold flat for an even lower profile or to rest on your collarbone when you’re taking a break.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

The control setup is mostly satisfying. The right earcup includes a three-way switch with a clear on/off position, so there’s no fussing around with 5-second holds to power the headphones on or off. The third position toggles Bluetooth pairing mode, and the toggle promptly springs back to the On position after selecting this mode. The listening mode control is beneath the power switch. The left earcup has a two-way volume button. All the physical controls are well placed for easy pressing. 

An additional capacitive control surface sits on the outside face of the right earcup. It responds to taps and holds. I found it mostly reliable, though light, single-finger taps sometimes fail to register. By default, a single tap plays or pauses audio, a double tap skips forward, a triple tap skips back, and a press-and-hold calls up your phone’s voice assistant, but you can customize these.

The 780NCs include a proximity sensor that pauses playback when you remove the headphones, and it does so quickly. Where some headphones include a sensor in each earcup, these headphones include only one in the right earcup; they won’t pause playback if you lift just the left earcup off your ear, as you might when briefly conversing with someone.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

The JBLs have 40mm drivers with a frequency response of 10Hz to 40kHz, which qualifies them for High-Res Audio. They connect via Bluetooth 6.0 and support the LDAC and LE Audio codecs for high-quality sound, with AAC as a fallback. You can tune in to Auracasts. They support Bluetooth multipoint, but I found its behavior a little off. While connected to my laptop and phone, it often failed to start audio playback from my phone, even though no audio was playing on the laptop. Like most headphones, many of these features require tapping into the mobile app, though LDAC and multipoint are enabled by default. The Nothing headphones also have LDAC and multipoint support.

The headphones come packed with a soft, suede-like pouch that includes an interior pocket for the included USB-C-to-3.5mm cable. Surprisingly, it doesn't include a charging cable, though it shouldn’t be hard to find one that works with the USB-C port.

Battery Life: Better Than Most

Battery life is a strong point. I spent a whole workday listening to the headphones, and the battery drained just 10%, putting them well on track to meet their claimed 80-hour battery life (with ANC off). Enabling ANC reduces battery life to 50 hours. Should the battery run completely empty, it can top back up in 2 hours or get 4 hours of battery life after just 5 minutes of charging.

The Nothing headphones run for 62 hours with ANC on and 90 hours with it off.

App Experience: A Necessary Tool for Tweaking

The JBL Live 780NCs work with the JBL Headphone app (available for Android and iOS), which is separate from the app JBL uses for its Bluetooth speakers. The app doesn’t require an account, prominently shows the headphones’ battery level, and offers a wide range of settings. 

(Credit: JBL)

First up, you'll find the controls for noise-cancelling and transparency modes. These are followed by a less common feature called Personal Sound Amplification. Unlike Ambient Aware mode, which aims for lifelike transparency, Personal Sound Amplification lets you adjust the left and right earcups individually and adjust the gain to make sounds around you easier to hear. I found it fairly unnatural and unsettling, as it sounded like listening to everything through a spy microphone. In certain contexts, however, it could help with hearing.

Further in, there are controls for audio and video modes, which can run automatically. The latter reduces latency slightly but is disabled when LE Audio is engaged. One menu lets you connect the headphones to Auracast transmissions, and you'll also find separate menus for the wear sensor’s auto-pause function, touch control functionality, and voice prompt language. The first settings page ends with a toggle for LE Audio, which isn’t on by default.

The app includes an entire page dedicated to audio tuning. Here you can toggle LDAC, select from a host of EQ presets, or create your own with a 10-band equalizer, shift audio balance, and enable a protective 85dB volume limit. There are virtualized spatial sound features and a personalized sound feature. The personalized sound feature takes several minutes to set up and creates an EQ setting tailored to any hearing deficiencies that it measures based on your input. An adaptive EQ in the app can adjust equalizer settings to compensate for low-volume audio by boosting highs and lows, as well as compensate for sound leakage.

Additional audio settings exist for voice calls. These let you manage the volume and tone of your contacts' voices, adjust your own voice with Natural, Powerful, and Bright settings, and adjust the microphone's sidetone levels.

A final page contains Relax Mode, which plays soothing sounds on a timer. It’s a small selection, but the audio is decent. 

Noise-Cancellation: Good for Eliminating Low Sounds

The headphones perform admirably at lowering ambient sound. They don't compare to market leaders from Apple, Bose, or Sony, but they hold their own.

They start off with decent passive isolation, thanks to the design and fit of the earcups. This helps reduce some sound in slightly noisy spaces without tapping into the ANC circuitry. 

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

In a space with loud music or other background noise, the ANC reduces the overall sound level reaching your ears, but voices and other high-pitched audio sneak in. The headphones cut the low droning of a loud fan, but I could still hear the squeak of its frame. On a couple of long train rides across Illinois, I found the ANC wholly capable of eliminating most of the surrounding noise for comfortable, quiet listening. The work best against constant low frequencies, but can't consistently cut higher frequencies.

The Ambient Aware mode offers lifelike clarity that almost made me forget I was wearing headphones. This mode boosts the middle and higher frequencies, and I feel comfortable navigating the world with them on.

Neither the noise-cancelling nor the transparency modes handle wind noise well. In fact, transparency mode eventually turns itself off until the wind subsides. The Nothing headphones are a little more consistent at cancelling more frequencies.

Sound: Crisp Audio That's Overrun By Bass

The headphones sound overly bassy from the start. In The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the opening bass triplets rattle off heavily only to be drowned out by the deep sub-bass quarter notes that underline the track. Some may like this bass-first presentation, but the rest of the song is hard to concentrate on next to this booming wall of bass. You can tame the bass by adjusting the EQ, but JBL’s default setting is heavy-handed. This thick bass tuning gives satisfying extra depth to the lower vocal harmony, but the upper vocal harmony winds up hushed unless you crank the volume. This imbalance hinders some of the phrasing's sweetness in the vocal harmony. The synth melody is punchy, but doesn’t quite have the bite that it should. The uppermost registers are just crisp enough to provide clarity and presence, despite the massive low-end.

(Credit: Mark Knapp)

The strong bass plays well into Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty,” where the cymbal hits and the Bruno Mars sample are brightly rendered. Kendrick and Rihanna’s vocals are crisp throughout the song. But when the chorus comes in and introduces its deep sub-bass line, the balance shifts, and it feels overly powerful compared with the mix's subtle vibe.

Bill Callahan’s “Drover” only further highlights the imbalance. Almost everything sounds great, but the constant patter of the drums, which falls into the boosted bass range, feels more like a battering. The electric and rhythm guitars enjoy good clarity and presence, and the dynamic cymbal hits sound lifelike. The fiddle and Callahan’s baritone vocals have a rich, full-bodied sound, though sometimes Callahan’s voice gets too much boost when he hits his lowest notes. As the drums build toward the climax, they become thunderous and overbearing. 

The headphones' clarity and presence help keep the choir in John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary pronounced while giving the strings and brass a rich sound. When deeper instruments chime in, however, they sound like large blobs of sound rather than anything tonal.

The bass-forward tuning is noticeable in other types of audio as well. For instance, what should be subtle background music in a podcast is amped up and cuts through everything else. The Studio EQ preset resolves the bass issue and is the most natural tuning of the bunch. If the default tuning is too bass-heavy for you, I strongly recommend sorting through the EQ presets to find one that's more balanced, or creating your own.

Bluetooth consistency is worth mentioning. I experienced occasional dropouts throughout testing, perhaps once every couple of hours, when using LDAC. LDAC provides a higher-fidelity audio stream and doesn't always stream stably. It may be worth the occasional hiccup to some, but the dropouts vanish when listening with the AAC codec.

The mics work well for calls. They effectively cancel out background noise without digitizing my voice, which sounds full in a test recording where my words are clear.