For the last few years, TechRadar’s audio team regularly raved about the JLab Go Air Pop – ultra-cheap earbuds that massively defied their low price with their performance and build quality. They were a stalwart of all our guides, from our best budget earbuds list up to our full list of the best wireless earbuds of any kind.
However, they’ve been getting harder to get hold of recently, so we started looking at alternatives to recommend… but it turns out the reason why is that their successor was getting ready to secretly drop at IFA 2024.
I say ‘secretly’, but JLab will quite happy tell you all about them if you visit its booth, and even gave me a pair to try, but the company has been mostly talking three other pairs of earbuds launched at the same time, and just kept very quiet about these initially.
Obviously, I found that unacceptable, so here’s what you need to know about the JLab Go Air ANC: they have active noise cancellation; they’re super small and light; they have a six-hours battery life in the buds and 24 with the case; they have a built-in USB-C charging cable; they have multi-point pairing; they’re going to come in cool 2000s-inspired translucent cases at a later date (they come in solid black, green and pink for now); they have IP55 waterproofing; and they’re still stupidly good value for their $29.99 asking price – so around £25 or AU$45, although unlike the confirmed US dollars MSRP, those last two figures are unofficial estimates.
I tried them out during my time at IFA, and it really does feel ridiculous that something so cheap delivers music as well-rounded as you get here. Obviously, compared to the AirPods Pro 2 I also had with me at the time, there’s much less depth to the bass, the details aren’t as sharp, and the mid-range is softer. But all seems fair considering they cost one seventh of the price.
The ANC is also staggering effective as well. I know you’re expecting me to add “for $35” here, but based on my early testing, it’s just straight-up good. With music, and the volume at 60% or so, they were as effective as I could need on my flight, a test more expensive earbuds have failed. It stumbles more if you’re listening to podcasts, though, because the relative thinness of the mid-range and slightly soft detailing means the voices are more shadowed by the sounds that do come through. There’s a transparency mode that’s pretty crude but effective, too.
I love how light and discrete the buds are – if you like a bud that doesn’t seem like you’ve got a cybernetic attachment in your ears, these will be perfect for you. They have touch controls that include on-ear volume control, and you can also switch between ANC modes with a tap, and you can even switch EQ modes with a triple tap, though I haven’t played with this yet.
I found them very comfortable, though with the medium ear tips, I found that the in-ear seal weakened enough to let in outside sounds depending on what positing my head was in, since it changes your ear shape a little. That’s something we’ll explore more in a full review, but is certainly a difference from more expensive buds.
The case is super-slim, which I always appreciate from a pair of buds. JLab has kept one of the odder foibles of the previous version, which is a built-in charging cable, though this time it’s USB-C. JLab knows what it’s doing, so I have to assume people want this, but it just seems a shame to remove the flexibility of being able to plug into different power sources to me – I bought my mum a pair of Go Air Pop buds, but I don’t know if I’d buy her the Go Pop ANC because she doesn’t have a single USB-C charger in her house, and if I need to buy one then it changes the value of the earbuds.
Of course, being an editor on the website TechRadar dot com, I’ve been running an all-USB-C house for a while – so if you’re the same as a reader of that august publication, then perhaps this will seem like a silly complaint.
We’ll have to do a more in-depth judgment on them, but let me leave you with my prevailing thought about what good value they are so far: more than once while using them specifically to test the ANC, I’d made my judgment and taken notes, and then didn’t bother to switch back to the AirPods Pro 2 sitting right there in my pocket. The Go Pop ANC were doing the job perfectly nicely already, so I just kept using them. It’s not like I’d switch permanently from my premium buds to these or anything, but as a picky listener, the fact that I didn’t switch back instantly is kind of a miracle.