JLab has released its latest wireless earbuds — the $60 JBuds Air Pro — and they come with a feature that is still a rarity in the earbud world: Bluetooth Multipoint. The new earbuds are up for pre-order on JLab’s site starting April 5, and the company expects orders to start shipping by the end of April.
As more and more people find themselves bouncing between their desktops or laptops to their tablets or smartphone — often several times during the day — Bluetooth Multipoint is becoming an increasingly important feature for wireless headphones and earbuds. BT Multipoint lets you connect your headphones to two devices simultaneously, letting you switch between them quickly and seamlessly, without needing to connect and disconnect manually.
The feature has been well supported on over-ear and on-ear wireless headphones, but on wireless earbuds, it’s been much harder to find. When a brand does support it, like Jabra, Technics, Soul, or Astell&Kern, it typically charges quite a lot. Jabra, for instance, includes the feature on its $200 Elite 7 Pro and $180 Elite 7 Active, but not on its less expensive earbuds like the $120 Elite 4 Active or $80 Elite 3. That makes the $60 price of the JBuds Air Pro the most accessible we’ve seen so far for BT Multipoint.
The JBuds Air Pro aren’t shy on other features. JLab claims more than nine hours of play time per charge for the earbuds, with a total of more than 36 hours when you include their charging case. The earbuds are rated IP55 for very good protection from dust and water, and JLab backs the JBuds Air Pro with a two-year warranty — an unusually long period for wireless earbuds.
They include wear sensors for automatically pausing and resuming music when you remove/replace an earbud, and each earbud can be used independently for both music and calls. As with several of the company’s other products, three EQ modes are available via the earbuds’ touch controls — no companion app needed.
JLab also includes its StayAware mode (a transparency mode for keeping tabs on the outside world), which means that the only things missing are active noise cancellation (ANC) and wireless charging, but for $60, we’d be shocked if JLab had managed to include them.
