JLab Epic Pods ANC Review: A Battery Beast if There Ever Was One

If you’re going to make a pair of wireless earbuds in today’s day and age, you’d better have something to bring to the table. As I’ve said a million times now (maybe more times than there are pairs of wireless earbuds in the world), the wireless headphones and earbuds market is crowded. That makes a lot of pairs redundant, and it makes deciding which ones to buy a bit of a puzzle.

Everyone’s priorities are a little different in the wireless earbuds world, but the core tenets typically remain the same: you probably want a pair that sounds good, looks decent, and has features like active noise cancellation (ANC). And you probably want a pair with a logical amount of battery life, too. In fact, maybe you want a pair with an illogical battery life. One that has so much battery that it’s almost stupid. If that’s what you want, JLab’s $100 Epic Pods ANC have you covered.

Battery beast

When I read the battery life figure for JLab’s Epic Pods ANC, I thought it was a typo. The company advertises 13 hours of battery life outside the case, with ANC turned on. Turn ANC off, and you’ll get an impressive 16 hours of battery life from the wireless earbuds. For the record, I don’t think that’s a champion-level figure, even if it’s a lot. The Audio-Technica ATH-CKS50TW from 2022 advertise 15 hours with ANC enabled, which beats the Epic Pods ANC just slightly. But either way, titleholder or not, 13 hours is a lot, and with the charging case, you’ll get about 50 hours with ANC on (up to 60 hours with ANC off) altogether between the buds and the case battery.

With some testing, I’m inclined to trust JLab on that figure. As of writing this, I’ve been playing the Epic Pods ANC for nearly 3 hours with ANC on at about 65% volume, and according to the JLab app as well as the earbuds’ readout when you put them in your ears, the battery is nearly full (I can’t give you a percentage because there is none in the app). If battery life is one of your biggest metrics, the JLab Epic Pods ANC should be on your radar, especially because the Epic Pods ANC actually cost $50 less than the aforementioned ATH-CKS50TW from Audio Technica.

Not bad, JLab, not bad at all.

Decent sound, but far from the best

Battery life is all well and good, but it doesn’t mean a lot if all you want to do is rip the wireless earbuds from your ears because they sound so bad. Luckily, JLab holds it down in the sound department, too, so I don’t anticipate any frustrated earbud throwing. The Epic Pods ANC didn’t blow me away, but I do think they punch above their weight class, given the fact that they only cost $100.

Mids and trebles are a highlight in the Epic Pods ANC, since both are sharp and clear. Listening to a jazz playlist with both old and new songs (some ballads and some more energetic tunes), I was satisfied with the audio quality. In the rock genre, the Epic Pods ANC shined a little brighter, in my opinion. Listening to one of my favorite grungy rock/folk bands, Wednesday, the DIY-ish production and feel of their older songs really popped. Guitars were nice and dirty, and everything sounded just a little lo-fi.

Behind the JLab sound is actually a dual-driver setup, which includes a 10mm dynamic driver as well as a Knowles balanced armature, a type of driver that is known for its compactness and ability to deliver a decent amount of volume.

The bass in the Epic Pods ANC is also notable, though not particularly standout. I like the presence in the mix with the default tuning out of the box, but the actual sound and texture of the low end didn’t exactly impress me. I still find similarly priced wireless earbuds, like the Soundpeats Air5 Pro+ I recently reviewed, to deliver more natural-sounding bass that feels sufficient and well mixed.

I do think that, by spending a little bit more, you can get better sound out of a pair of wireless earbuds in this general price range, though the battery life on that pair of buds (be it the aforementioned Soundpeats or something else) will almost certainly not be as beastly as the JLabs Epic Pods. Again, it comes back to priorities. If battery life is paramount for you, then the Epic Pods ANC take the cake. If sound is the number one thing you’re looking for, you may want to consider shelling out a bit more money.

Speaking of sound, the microphone quality is also strong. On a brief phone call, I was told that it sounded like I was “talking right into the phone,” which is a good sign. Call quality also sounded decent on my end, though I did have to crank the volume a bit to get to a comfortable level.

Things that aren’t as epic

As you may have already gathered from the fact that JLab put ANC in the name, these wireless earbuds have ANC. Having ANC says something about a pair of wireless earbuds nowadays, but not a ton because it’s a pretty standard feature. What you really want to know is how good that ANC is, and I’m here to tell you that it’s… just okay.

Just like the sound, I wasn’t super impressed with the ANC on these wireless earbuds, but I wasn’t super disappointed either. I gave them the obligatory subway test, and I got a decent amount of noise bleed from the ruckus from the train. These are far from the best noise-canceling wireless earbuds that I’ve tried (that honor still goes to the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2nd Gen), but overall, they’re about middle of the road, maybe slightly under. While we’re talking about ANC, it’s worth noting that these wireless earbuds also have a transparency mode for when you want to listen to music while still being able to hear your surroundings. This works well enough that I was actually comfortable walking into a coffee shop and ordering with transparency on, which is more than I can say for lots of other wireless earbuds. It’s not crystal clear, but it’s better than you’d expect from $100 wireless earbuds.

From a controls perspective, the Epic Pods ANC feature both touch and squeeze controls, which is kind of nice since it caters to both preferences. Both work fairly well, though I didn’t love the default controls. Luckily, with the JLab companion app, I was able to assign my preferred taps/squeezes (one tap for play/pause, two taps for track skipping, and three taps for turning ANC off/on and activating transparency). These aren’t the most sensitive tap controls in the world, but they’re serviceable. I did find myself gravitating more to the squeeze controls, if that tells you anything.

If there’s one deficiency that jumped out to me about the Epic Pods ANC, it’s the Bluetooth connectivity. I sometimes had issues with them pairing to my iPhone 17 properly, which was kind of annoying and not an issue I have with the vast majority of wireless earbuds that I test. Sometimes, that necessitated that I forget the wireless earbuds in iOS and re-pair them. Not ideal. Bluetooth issues are tough to diagnose sometimes (it could be an issue with my phone), but since other wireless earbuds seem to work just fine, I’m going to put the blame on JLab.

There are some nice features in the JLab Epic Pods ANC. Wireless charging is a nice perk, and there are some preset EQs. There’s also adaptive ANC, which automatically adjusts noise-canceling levels based on how loud your environment is. To be honest, there are some features that feel somewhat useless. An included “movie mode” is almost unlistenable, for example, and amplified the background noise of an X-Files episode so much that I could only endure a few minutes. There’s also a workout feature that can guide interval training by using an in-app interface to play chimes at predetermined times, signifying when to work out or rest. To be honest, I can’t see any reason to use JLab’s feature over free apps like 7 Minute Workout.

There is no in-app hearing test that personalizes the EQ to your hearing, which is a bit of a bummer, especially because lots of wireless earbud competitors now include that feature in their companion apps, and they can sometimes change the sound drastically for the better.

Looks-wise, I don’t find the Epic Pods ANC to be offensive in any way, though the buds themselves are a little on the big side. I do like that the inside of the wireless earbuds’ housing is a little transparent, so you can see the circuitry. I do not like that the plastic on the charging case is so slick that I found myself dropping the case and earbuds on multiple occasions.

Battery so epic, dude

Honestly, there’s a lot to like about the Epic Pods ANC. The sound is decent, the battery life is killer, and while the ANC falls a little short and the Bluetooth connectivity may or may not be a little finicky, they’re not bad for the price. You could get cheaper wireless earbuds like those made by CMF, but I do think that JLab Epic Pods ANC are better all around for not that much more money.

That being said, if sound is your number one priority and not battery life, there are better wireless earbuds to be had for slightly more money. So, it’s up to you to do some soul searching. Do you need 13 hours of battery life with ANC on? Or are you okay with an average battery (about 6 to 7 hours) with a slightly better all-around experience?