JBL Live 660 NC review: Chic over-ears with great sound & very good ANC
A TEST REPORT from Jonas Wilhelm 
on December 01, 2022, 18:00 | Write a comment
The JBL Live 660 NC are currently the best headphones in JBL's popular Live series. We tested them for you.
For a price of less than 130 euros, the JBL Live 660 NC offers a lot, such as a very good sound with lots of bass, an excellentprochen good battery life and much more. You can read below how the headphones have fared in the last few weeks.
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Design & processing
I really like the design of the JBL Live 660 NC, because they look very chic and don't stand out too much. With a weight of 265 grams, the headphones are surprisingly light, which increases wearing comfort. The padded headband is covered in fabric, which not only looks pretty good but also feels very comfortable. The insides of the ear cups are very softly padded and covered with a kind of artificial leather, which still looks like new after more than a month of intensive use. From the outside, these are made of matte plastic, which is a real fingerprint magnet, but looks good. The resizing mechanism is metal, feels solid, and stretches out really far, so even people with larger heads can comfortably wear the headphones. The ear cups can also be rotated and folded in so that the headphones fit almost anywhere in the supplied case.
Picture: TechnikNews
There is a JBL logo on both ear cups and on the top of the headband. On the sides of the size adjustment mechanism there is an ANC lettering on the right, as well as a LIVE lettering on the right side. The USB-C port, which can be used to charge the headphones, as well as a charging status LED can be found on the bottom of the left earcup. The controls for the headphones and the 3,5 millimeter jack connection are at the bottom of the right ear cup. The processing of the headphones is really quite good and does justice to the overall impression of the headphones.
Operation & comfort
The Live 660 is operated via 6 buttons, with which you can control almost every function of the headphones. Two buttons are for controlling the volume, another is for controlling the adaptive noise cancellation (ANC) and another controls the multiple Bluetooth connection, which allows you to connect multiple devices to the headphones at the same time via Bluetooth 5.0. Of course, there is also a button for media control, with which you can also accept and reject calls. The power button isn't really a button as it slides up to turn the headphones on and off.
Picture: TechnikNews
The headphones also have a wearer detection, which automatically resumes and stops the music when you put the headphones on or off. Thanks to their low weight and good padding, the headphones can be worn very comfortably, even over a longer period of time. The user can adjust the headband size to their personal needs in order to increase their wearing comfort.
Sound Quality & ANC
The JBL Live 660 NC offers two 40 millimeter drivers that can reproduce a dynamic frequency range of 16Hz to 32kHz. The drivers in the headphones do a great job as the headphones sound really good. The bass is typically extremely strong for JBL, which I really liked. The mids and highs are balanced. The overall sound is just really good and I was pleasantly surprised.
An important feature of the headphones is the adaptive noise cancellation, which ensures that the level of noise cancellation is adjusted depending on how loud the environment is, which worked surprisingly well. The ANC does a great job as it can filter out almost all ambient noise. Even wind noise and children's screams can be picked up and removed surprisingly well. The headphones also offer two different transparency modes. Ambient Aware mode is a classic transparency mode that lets the user hear the surroundings and works well. "TalkThru" is the name of the second transparency mode, which emphasizes voices even more clearly during conversations and slightly reduces background noise.
Charge the battery
With ANC enabled, I got about 35 hours of battery life, which is slightly short of JBL's advertised 40 hours, but still very good. Without ANC, the headphones lasted around 45 hours, which is an extremely good value. Once empty, they take around 2 hours to fully recharge, which is fine considering the long battery life. A USB-C cable for charging is included. JBL also built in a feature that charging for 10 minutes gives you 4 hours of battery life, which can be very helpful in some situations.
JBL Headphones app
Screenshot: JBL Headphones app
Like most headphones, the Live 660 NC come with an app that gives you some extra features. The JBL Headphones app offers the user the opportunity to adjust some things, such as the Ambient Sound Control or which voice assistant you want to use. In my opinion, however, the most important function of the app is the equalizer, which allows the user to personalize the sound according to their own preferences. Unfortunately, the preset jazz equalizer didn't appeal to me at all, which is why I selected one of the other 5 preset equalizers. Overall I really liked the app as it has a very simple and modern design and the equalizer is a really good feature.
Prices & Availability
The RRP of the headphones is €179,99, which is well above the current market price of around €130. The headphones are currently on sale for an unbelievable 79 euros, which is a really unbeatable price for what is on offer. The headphones are available from the following online shops:
- MediaMarkt,
- Saturn,
- Amazon,
- and also in official JBL online shop
Conclusion
My verdict on the JBL Live 660 NC is very positive. The headphones offer a great sound with lots of bass, really good adaptive noise cancellation, a nice design and a very good battery life, which convinced me. The price-performance ratio is right here, which is why I can recommend the headphones without hesitation.