The capacitive touch panel on the outside of each earcup is easy to use. A single tap on the left earpiece toggles between ANC and Ambient modes, while a double tap activates TalkThru mode. On the right earpiece, a single tap controls playback, a double tap skips forward one track, and a triple tap takes you to the previous track. A double tap on either earpiece accepts incoming calls and ends calls in progress. A long press on either earcup mutes the microphone for calls and calls your device’s voice assistant. You can customize the controls to some extent in the app, but you can’t just assign any function to any gesture. The medium-sized case has a clamshell-style lid that is relatively easy to open due to its grippy texture. A status LED on the lip of the lid indicates the remaining battery life, while there is a USB-C port on the back for the included USB-A to USB-C charging cable. The case also supports wireless charging via the Qi standard. JBL estimates that the Live Pro 2 TWS earphones will last about 10 hours on battery power, but that estimate drops to eight and six hours with True Adaptive ANC and normal ANC enabled, respectively. The company states that the case will hold another charge for about 30 hours. Fully charging the case takes about two hours. The JBL Headphones app (available for Android and iOS) keeps getting better, offering much more than basic settings and firmware updates. On the main screen, the app shows the remaining battery life for each earphone as well as for the case. You can turn off the earphones from the main screen, which is useful if you don’t have access to the case and want to save power. Below that is the ANC section. Here you can enable ANC, Ambient Aware, and Talk Thru modes, or turn ANC off altogether. You can either choose the default Adaptive ANC option or manually adjust the levels with a slider. Another option, Leakage Compensation, adjusts ANC if your ear cup does not seal optimally and some of the sound leaks out. We recommend trying the Ear Canal Compensation feature, which scans your ear canal to avoid this problem in the first place. If you don’t hear a difference after activating either function, the default ANC setting is fine for your ears. However, ANC can be more effective against the midrange when the options are enabled, so it’s worth testing. The EQ section, which you can turn on or off, offers customizable presets and the ability to create new presets from scratch with an impressive 10 bands ranging from 32 Hz to 16 kHz. Plus, a Smart Audio & Video feature automatically reduces transmission latency for a better video streaming experience.
