Affordable Earbuds With Good Sound Quality

Summary

• The JLab GO POP ANC offers great sound quality for $30.
• JLab includes a tough charging case with an integrated charging cable.
• Unfortunately, the ANC feature is practically useless in these earbuds.

The world of earbuds can get a bit elitist. Those who spend hundreds on their earbuds would never consider something cheap. But the JLab GO POP ANC earbuds prove that some features, like sound quality, don’t need to be sacrified to achieve a low price.

Price and Availability

The JLab GO POP ANC earbuds are available at the JLab web store, Target, and other retailers. They come in three colors: black, fuchsia, and teal.

A Simple but Effective Design

From the charging case to the earbuds themselves, the GO POP ANC is a simple product, though simplicity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There aren’t any fancy bells or whistles, though everything is good enough to serve its purpose.

For example, the JLab GO POP ANC’s charge indicator is just a singular light on the charging case, which flashes in different patterns to indicate battery life. The charging case has no unique functionality, but it’s strong and robust. The tough material will withstand any typical mishaps, like being dropped or sat on. You’d have to intentionally go out of your way to inflict meaningful damage on the case.

The earbuds utilize a straightforward design with no stems or over-the-ear clips. They only come with one set of ear tips, but I found that they were pretty comfortable. I was able to wear them for several hours while sleeping through the night and didn’t feel too irritated by their presence. That said, comfort is subjective, and you may need to buy aftermarket ear tips if the included set doesn’t fit your ears.

You can tap the earbuds with different patterns to perform different functions, like changing the volume, equalizer, noise-canceling mode, and more. It’s pretty intuitive, though there is no physical feedback to let you know you did it right. You just have to wait and see if your earbuds did what you wanted them to do.

If I had one complaint about the whole thing, it would be that the case’s built-in charging cord is incredibly short, being maybe two inches long. This means the case will inevitably dangle from a charger if you plug it directly into a charging block on a wall outlet. On the other hand, it is a USB-C cable, so you have a lot of options for charging it if you want.

Good Sound For the Price, but Lackluster Noise Canceling

There’s a bit of a stigma against cheap earbuds due to their earned reputation from the past. They are often perceived as low-quality in both design and sound. Thankfully, the JLab GO POP ANC’s sound quality surprisingly good for a $30 pair of earbuds. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not blow-you-away amazing. A $130 pair of earbuds would sound better. But for $30, the sound quality of the GO POP ANC is better than I expected.

The sound quality isn’t tinny, distorted, staticky, or anything else you might associate with “cheap” earbuds. As someone who listens to a lot of music and has used a number of different earbuds across all price ranges, I can honestly say that I never once thought, “man, these things suck” while listening to my favorite tunes.

To be frank, I didn’t even notice a huge difference between them and my $130 earbuds unless I was wearing one in each ear for a direct comparison. I could tell that my expensive earbuds were better, with slightly deeper bass and a more robust range, but the GO POP ANC earbuds weren’t bad in comparison, which is high praise for $30 earbuds.

I didn’t feel like I was exchanging quality for price. At least, not in terms of sound quality. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the noise-canceling component of these earbuds. It’s bad, to put things mildly.

These earbuds allow you to turn ANC on and off at will. And, when flipping between the two options, I could barely tell the difference. Even with the noise-canceling effect of the GO POP ANC earbuds turned all the way up, I could easily hear noises throughout my house, the voices of other people talking, and my cats meowing at me. Admittedly, if you have the noise-canceling on with music playing at the same time, you won’t hear outside noises. But the music blocks out more noise than the noise-canceling feature.

This is, undoubtedly, the biggest flaw in these earbuds for me. Noise-canceling is pushed as a pretty big feature of GO POP ANC, and it just doesn’t cut it on that front. This is the real noticeable difference in quality between cheap headphones and much more expensive ones, as my $130 Soundcore earbuds can cut me off from the world almost completely.

As for using the earbuds for phone calls, they are serviceable, but nothing special. The audio quality in this regard is average, though for some reason, the microphone noise canceling seems to do just a little better here. You can hear an audio example of the mic quality both with and without interfering background noise below.

A Basic App With Basic Customization

You can customize some of the GO POP ANC earbuds’ features, including touch controls and ANC, in the JLab app (available on Android and iPhone). There’s also an equalizer in the app that you can also play around with, but it’s not very user-friendly. Instead of adjustments to categories like “bass” or “treble”, you have to fiddle around with ten individual frequency bands, such as 31Hz, 500Hz, and 8kHz. If you don’t know what those numbers mean, you’ll have a tough time actually using the equalizer to get the output you want.

Additionally, you can pick between “music” and “movie” modes, or turn on a safe hearing option that limits the maximum volume of the earbuds to cut back on nasty things like hearing damage. That’s about all the customization you get from the app, however, but it does well enough.

Seven Hours of Playtime a Pop, Twenty-Four Total

On a full charge, each of the GO POP ANC earbuds can last approximately seven hours. Combined with the carrying case, you can get 24 total hours of playtime before you need to recharge the whole thing. I didn’t keep a stopwatch open to time it all, but throughout my experience with the earbuds, these numbers seemed pretty accurate to me.

I do wish the earbuds had eight hours of charge so they could at least last one full work day, but they have decently fast charging, so you can score another hour of tunes with around ten minutes of charging. It’s not the biggest battery I’ve ever seen on earbuds, but it’s more than enough. Most people have an opportunity to charge their earbuds once every 24 hours of playtime.

The Affordable Competition

I’ll be honest, there’s not a whole lot of competition for decent earbuds at $30, and there are even fewer earbuds trying to offer active noise-canceling at this price range. That said, the noise-canceling on the GO POP ANC is so bad it may as well not even exist, so that doesn’t give it too much of an edge.

If you don’t care for ANC, there are a few affordable options that could be considered competition at this price range, such as the EarFun Air 2 or the Sony WF-C510. However, these options are a little more expensive than the GO POP ANC.

Should You Buy The JLab GO POP ANC Earbuds?

Do you care about noise cancelation? If you do, then I wouldn’t recommend buying the JLab GO POP ANC earbuds. The ANC on these things just isn’t good, and if I bought them for noise canceling alone, I’d be pretty upset about the purchase.

If you just want some affordable earbuds that can provide respectable sound quality, then I’d recommend the GO POP ANC. They are some of the cheapest earbuds you can buy while still feeling like you’re getting good quality for your money. If you have the money to splurge, go for something better than these. But if you are on a tight budget and still want something good, the GO POP ANC earbuds are a great pick.