JBL Live 300TWS: Feature-rich earbuds for the not-so-rich

These true wireless earbuds’ many features, equalizer, and good sound quality (with tweaking) make them worth consideration.

- LEIF JOHNSON

Considering the JBL Live 300TWS’s price and relatively simple design, I expected an equally simple experience— but I shouldn’t have judged a pair of true wireless earbuds on its subdued looks. A couple of weeks on, the Live 300TWS’s features still dazzle me, and the music quality is far better than I expected from buds in this price range.

The 2.7-inch-wide case alone looks as if it could come from a premium set of earbuds. Smooth, compact, and pocketable, its notification lights have a chic air reminiscent of luxury goods: A ring around the USB-C port along the bottom pulses white while the earbuds charge inside—the better to see where to stick the plugin low light—and it shifts to red once the cable is in. The act of opening the case could be more elegant, though; eventually, I fumbled far less with the lid after learning to pull it up from the sides.

The case is also attractive in light of JBL’s estimate that it delivers 14 extra hours of battery life, as you’ll need it. Despite the company’s claim that the earbuds will play music for a full six hours, on two occasions they sputtered out before I reached the fifth hour.

As for the earbuds themselves, the Live 300TWS fit perfectly in my ear right out of the box. In what was a first for me, I didn’t need to experiment with the two other ear gels or four stability fins. They fit so snugly that they almost doubled as earplugs—they even look a bit like them from a distance (or like black, blue, purple, or white metallic bolts drilled carefully into your skull, depending on which color model you bought).