The exercise-friendly JLab Go Air Sport true wireless earbuds offer serious bass depth and solid battery life for just $30.

JLab’s latest true wireless earbuds, the Go Air Sport, feature a water-resistant, exercise-friendly design and solid battery life for just $30. Their bass-forward sound signature might help motivate your workouts, but their on-ear controls can use some work and we don't love their hardwired charging case. Ultimately, we give slight preference to the $39.99 Tribit FlyBuds 3 thanks to their fully waterproof build, but they share a few downsides with the Go Air Sport, including finicky controls and the lack of a companion app. For a stronger user experience, you have to spend a bit more for a pair of earphones like the $79.99 Jabra Elite 3, which have better on-ear controls and superior app connectivity. For $30, however, it's easy to look beyond the drawbacks here.

Available in black, green, tan, teal, or neon yellow, the Go Air Sport earphones use hooks for a secure, exercise-ready fit. They feel relatively comfortable in the ear, though people who wear glasses might not like the design. In any case, you also get three pairs of silicone eartips in small, medium, and large sizes.

Internally, 6mm drivers deliver a frequency range of 20Hz to 20kHz and an impedance of 16 ohms. The earphones are compatible with Bluetooth 5.1 and support the AAC and SBC codecs, but not AptX.

The earpieces feature capacitive touch controls that are sensitive enough to get the job done, but that sometimes don't register touches. A single tap on the left earpiece turns the volume down and the same gesture on the right earpiece increases it. A double tap on the left summons your device's voice assistant, or controls playback on the right. A press and hold gesture handles backward (left) and forward (right) track navigation. Tap three times on either earpiece to cycle through the three EQ modes—including the default signature (which we recommend for most listening scenarios), Balanced, and Bass Boost. A voice prompt tells you which mode you select, but we still had trouble switching between these modes—typically, when we performed this gesture, the earphones played or paused music instead.

An IP55 rating means that the earpieces can withstand light splashes from any direction and are highly dust resistant. They should be fine for sweaty workouts and running in the rain, but you shouldn't place them under the pressure of a faucet or fully submerge them. The rating also doesn't extend to the charging case, so make sure to fully dry the earpieces before you dock them for charging. Their IP rating matches that of the pricier Jabra Elite 3, but falls a bit short of the fully waterproof Tribit FlyBuds 3 (IPX7).

The charging case is large because it needs to accommodate the over-ear hooks. It looks a bit like a clamshell, features a flip-top lid, and includes a status LED on the front. There’s a lanyard loop on the back (the box doesn't include a lanyard though) and a hardwired charging cable on the bottom. It’s difficult to understate how much we dislike hardwired charging cables, and especially ones that are very short like this. If the cable breaks, you need a new case, so be careful with it.

JLab estimates that the earphones can last roughly eight hours on battery and that the case holds 24 additional hours of charge. Both are solid estimates, though your typical volume levels will affect these numbers. For comparison, the Tribit FlyBuds 3 can last around five hours on battery, but their case offers an unheard-of 95 hours of charge.

JLab doesn't offer a useful companion app for the earphones (the JLab Store/Burn-In Tool doesn't count in our opinion), but you can switch between various EQ modes via the on-ear controls. The Jabra Elite 3's companion app, by comparison, makes it simple to customize settings and tune the earphones to your tastes.

On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the earphones sound either thunderous or thin and tinny. But this has little to do with the EQ mode you select. The drastic difference is due to the fit—the ear hooks can slowly pull the drivers away from their initial position in your ear. If you think the sound is too light on bass, try reinserting the earpeices. With a proper in-canal seal, the earphones are capable of churning out powerful bass depth.

Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the sound signature. Assuming you get a good in-ear seal, the drums on this track sound very bass-heavy and Callahan’s baritone vocals get an extra dollop of low-mid richness. The high-mids and highs balance out the lows and the clarity doesn't suffer, but the midrange sounds a bit scooped out in the mix.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild,” the kick drum loop receives plenty of high-mid presence and retains its punch. The vinyl hiss and crackle take a slight step forward here. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat arrive with serious thunder and the vocals sound clear, though perhaps with more sibilance than they require.

Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary, sound heavily boosted in the lows and sculpted in the highs, but neither frequency range overpowers the other.

The MEMS mic array works fine, and we had no trouble understanding every word in a test recording from an iPhone. That said, we noticed some Bluetooth audio artifacts in the signal. The mics shouldn't cause problems on calls, just don't expect the utmost clarity.

If you want seriously bass-forward earphones for the gym, you'll be hard-pressed to find a pair more affordable than the JLab Go Air Sport. We like their long battery life and solid water-resistance rating, though we aren’t fans of their finicky on-ear controls and the case’s hardwired charging cable. The Tribit FlyBuds 3 cost $10 more but offer a fully waterproof design with a detachable cable for the charging case, earning them a higher rating. We also like Jabra's Elite 3 earphones, which offer a more polished experience overall, but they cost more than twice the price. If you're simply looking for the most affordable exercise-friendly earphones possible, it's hard to go wrong with the Go Air Sport.

The exercise-friendly JLab Go Air Sport true wireless earbuds offer serious bass depth and solid battery life for just $30.

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Contributing Editor Tim Gideon has been writing for PCMag since 2006. He specializes in reviewing audio products, and is obsessed with headphones, speakers, and recording gear.

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