JBL Live 780NC Review

Design

• Comfortable design
• Foldable
• Pouch for transport

There’s no hard carry case for the Live 780NC, which is a little bit surprising for the money. Is it a problem? Not necessarily.

The included pouch will protect the cans, keep the USB-C to 3.5mm cable safe, and likely take up less space than a hard case. Just don’t put the pouch in your bag next to a water bottle…

The Live 780NC are comfortable to wear, and at 260g one of the lighter over-ears on the market. The padding on the earcups is good, and during a 90 minute commute the headphones don’t feel uncomfortable. The clamping force is on the tight side, making these headphones stick to your head. Depending on how you like your clamping force, that’s either a good thing or bad.

Noise isolation is very solid, dulling external noise before the noise cancellation makes an impact. They do fold for travel, though the headphone adjuster is not a stepless slider and makes some noise.

Operating the headphones is a combination of physical and touch controls. A slider for power and Bluetooth pairing, along with volume and the noise cancelling buttons; and playback on the earcup itself. Play and pausing feels responsive, though I do feel like there’s a particular area that I’ve got to tap for it to work consistently.

You’ve got lots of colours to choose from: orange, white, purple, black, sand, green and blue – plenty of ways to personalise the headphones to your own style.

Features

• LDAC Bluetooth
• JBL Headphones app
• Bluetooth 6 standard

The JBL Live 780NC is compatible with the Smart Tx transmitter, through which you can control and adjust the headphones settings. It’s a cool device, and it supports wired connections too, re-routing audio to the headphones. But that’s not the version I have, and at £102.99, it’s an expensive add-on.

Bluetooth 6 performance has been very good – I can’t recall any drop outs wearing the headphones, and perhaps surprisingly, you get LDAC for higher quality wireless audio and Bluetooth LE Audio (which reduces battery usage).

Multi-point Bluetooth means you can connect these headphones to two devices at once, and with Auracast you can share audio with other devices.

The JBL Headphones app is where you’ll find the concentration of the features, split into General, Audio, and Other. From customising the Ambient Sound Control (more on that later), to the Personal Sound Amplification (which disables ANC to let in sound), there’s the usual smorgasbord of features for a JBL headphone, though a little less than what you’ll find on the Tour models.

The Smart Audio & Video feature aims to provide the best audio and lip-syncing experience. You can customise what the ANC button does as well as the touch panel controls. Spatial Sound and Personi-Fi (which tailors the sound to your hearing) can be enabled through the app but at the loss of LDAC.

Adaptive EQ offers real-time adjustment of sound, or you can enable the EQ and select from several presets or create your own. There are features for calls – Sound Setting (adjust the tone of the person on the other end), Voice Setting (adjust your voice), and Voice Aware (control how much of your voice you can hear).

Don’t want to listen to audio and prefer to relax? There’s a mode that plays ambient sounds and you can set how long it runs for. The JBL Live 780NC is stocked with features to customise the performance to what you want.

Battery Life

• 50 with ANC
• Fast-charging support

In just a few years headphones have steamrollered past the 30-hour mark and some are reaching close to 100 hours – though that’s often with caveats.

The JBL Live 780NC claims to last up to 80 hours – but the real figure is 50 hours, which is with ANC on. That’s still much more than headphones that cost twice as much as the JBL, but does that figure hold up in the real world?

Yes, it does.

A five hour drain of the headphones playing a Spotify playlist at 50% volume resulted in the Live 780NC dropping down to 90% after five hours so 50 hours is reachable. If you are running low, a five-minute boost is enough for another four hours.

Noise Cancellation

• Adaptive ANC
• TalkThru and Aware modes
• AI assistance for calls

Mid-range headphones often come with compromises, and that compromise is often found in the noise-cancelling performance. That’s no different with the Live 780NC.

The noise-cancelling is solid, but using them on the London Underground, the ANC is not powerful enough to suppress sound without having to up the volume levels on the Victoria line. That said, they do reduce a decent amount of noise.

They seem best placed for walking around cities and dealing with the environmental noise – they’re fine on the bus and Elizabeth line, and I found them effective enough walking through Soho – so when they’re dealing with the hustle and bustle of street life, they’re good.

There’s some wind noise to deal with but it doesn’t affect audio. The transparency mode is good, and you’ve got the choice of two options with Ambient Aware (for general sound) and TalkThru (for speech). It sounds clear and natural – it doesn’t over-emphasise or amplify sounds, just filters through what’s around you.

Call quality is fine. The person on the other end could pick up my voice, but they did comment that in loud places it can get noisy. While waiting for an order in a Chinese restaurant I could hear people chatting. If you’re using these headphones for calls, best do so in a quieter area.

Sound Quality

• Bass-forward sound
• Smooth midrange
• Clear highs

The Live 780NC have a bassy character, but having listened to the headphones with two OnePlus smartphones, how bassy may depend on your source device. With one smartphone, the 780NC’s bass sounded rich and big; with another, it sounded clearer and more balanced.

Either way, I’d describe the JBL Live 780NC as bass-forward rather than bass-heavy. The highs are clear, the midrange is smooth in description, and the soundstage wide and spacious. It has a neutral character, neither warm nor overly crisp. The headphones sound better at louder volumes too, as default volumes seem to constrict the soundstage’s width as well as make them a tad quieter than I’d like.

I actually feel the bass sounds balanced – at least with the tracks I auditioned in Doja Cat’s Attention, IIlit’s Magnetic, and Warren G’s Regulate. Bass is described in big terms but also varied, punchy at times or weighty when called for. It can’t quite reach for sub-bass but the bass doesn’t seem to affect the midrange, with vocals always remaining clear and preserved.

The midrange sounds clear if not the most detailed. The smoothness of the midrange robs it of some detail. That said, vocals come across clearly in every track I play, and tonally it’s probably best to describe them as uncoloured with vocals coming through naturally.

The highs are clear, and while they’re not the brightest due to some roll-off, they’re not as sharp as the Tour One M3. From top to bottom, I like the balance of these headphones.

They’re not the most dynamic or energetic, but this could be viewed as good thing because the clear highs, smooth midrange and beefy bass works across a range of music genres.

I think the majority would describe these headphones as bass-heavy, and that’s fair enough. If I’d listened to them just on the first smartphone, I’d have agreed. But giving them a chance with another source opened them up – they’re bass forward but clear and smooth too. I think JBL has done well with the tuning with a nicely expressive sound for the money.

Should you buy it?