The JLab Play Gaming Wireless Earbud is a Bluetooth wireless earbud aimed at the gaming market. The earbuds are not true wireless since they have the neck strap connecting the buds. The buds come with a micro USB charge cable, an aux cable for when you need a 3.5mm connection, a carrying pouch, and 3 different bud tip sizes. I really like what JLAB has been putting out lately, so I was happy to look at that these earbuds geared towards gaming.
Features
The buds have a connecting strap that rests on your neck to connect to the 2 sides. Its not rubbery, so it doesn’t stick to the skin on you neck which is nice. The wire for the right bud carries the inline 3-button remote and mute switch. The 3-button remote controls volume, song selection, EQ setting, call controls, and assistant prompt. The buds themselves have magnets, so they stick together when you pop them out of your ears and let them hang – certainly a nice feature.
The earbuds come with a good 11 hour battery life – enough to get you through an entire work day on a single charge. The buds connect with the current Bluetooth 5 standard for when you are linking up to a compatible wireless source. The included AUX cable lets you use the buds like regular wired earbuds when hooking up to a gaming system that doesn’t support Bluetooth headsets (I used it for Xbox and Wii U). Using the AUX cable does not use the devices battery up. The buds come with a pretty nice carrying pouch that’s plenty big enough for the buds, charge, and AUX cables. The buds come preloaded with 2 different EQ setups – one for gaming with amplified mids, and one for music with amplified bass and vocals. The default EQ is the gaming, which the buds start in each time they are powered on. Lastly the buds carry an IP55 rating so they should be good for use while working out.
Sound
I played a number of games across mobile, XBOX, and Wii U, as well as listened to plenty of music and took calls – my PC was unfortunately down for gaming due to equipment failure (RIP PSU). For hooking up to my phone I was able to use Bluetooth, which was easy to pair. Taking calls was easy and the sound was very clear – The mic also did a good job here as well. Listening to music was a pleasure as well since the buds do a really good job of sealing off external noise. Sound quality was good, and did as well as I would expect out of earbuds – bass was a little flat (as expected out of buds) but vocals were great. I only do the most basic gaming on my phone (solitaire is my jam) but I will play a few mobile games here and there. Again, sound quality was good and I didn’t have any issues here.
Switching over to XBOX I had to bust out the AUX cord. I plugged the cord in while still connected to my phone’s BT. I hoped that I would be able to connect to both at the same time, and the phone BT would overlay on the game (like cutting game sounds if a call came in). Unfortunately as soon as the AUX cord was connected the buds said “Bye.” With the AUX cord in place the buds acted like a regular pair of wireless buds with the volume controlled by the inline controller on the AUX cord – the 3-button remote is nonfunctional in this mode. Side note here – if your battery in the buds dies you can always pop in the AUX cord and use them like regular earbuds. I took some time to fiddle and adjust my game vs. chat mixer as well as mic monitoring in the audio settings. I played several games with my party of friends – Halo MCC and Fortnite. Unfortunately I didn’t have a great experience in this mode. The mic monitoring was nonexistent and it really threw me off – I hooked up plain phone earbuds and the mic monitoring worked fine on them, same as my larger over the ear headsets. Game sounds for the most part were good, but I had a lot of difficulty balancing chat with game sounds. The chat/vocals always came through really well, but the game sounds were either way too quiet or too loud. I just couldn’t find a good middle ground. There was also the issue of sounds like footsteps. Fortnite footsteps are usually easy to hear with my over-ear sets, but I had a really hard time picking them up with the buds – maybe they lack the sensitivity to reproduce those sounds at low levels? I also felt it was difficult to pick up the direction some sounds were coming from as well. Either way my gameplay was impacted by this, and just didn’t leave me all that impressed.
Overall I really liked using the earbuds for non-gaming tasks. Taking calls was a breeze, and music sounded great. Where they struggled was mic monitoring and reproducing low-level sounds – both are big knocks for me. These come with a lot of positives though – Bluetooth and an AUX back-up are something you don’t see every day. Great battery life, nice carrying pouch, and comfortable design are all great selling points. I’m not sure I would get these for their gaming chops, but when viewed as an all-around headset they make a good argument for themselves.