This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
I have had some of the other "open" buds made by Jlab, but I think these are the best among them. These are technically the most expensive, but technically are the same price as the Epic Open Sport so that's what I'll be comparing them to even though they are from different categories.
One little quirk I like is that these basically fit over your ears like a pair of headphones, although I personally don't like how the silver-ish driver covers lightly touch my ears. It could easily be because of my ear shape so keep that in mind. The adjustment can be a bit finicky since it's somewhat easy to pull the adjustment all the way down even though you're wearing the headphones. The mesh is removable but I personally haven't figured out how that works and don't want to break anything, and it's fine with the mesh they're still very open. However it still suffers from the unfortunately thin headband that I wish Jlab would get away from since it does dig into my skull a bit. The buttons to turn on and volume control the headphones are a bit small and were tricky to find at first but once you see them you'll be fine.
The sound is what gets me. I personally thought the Epic Open Sport were among the better open ear buds out there but these things are just even better. It's a bit obvious since the drivers are much larger, but I feel like that's the only contributing factor. Sure, it could be argued that because they're positioned differently and pointed at your ear at a different angle instead of laying on top of your ear that makes the difference. But if you know anything about audio drivers and physics, it's honestly the size that counts.
If you've been curious about open ear buds or bone conduction things but heard that the sound quality isn't the best, give these a try because I think you'll be convinced that it can be done right.
