JBL is perhaps best known in India for its wireless speakers and car audio systems, but the company’s headphones and earphones are also popular. With a wide range of products starting from under Rs. 1,000 and up to Rs. 25,000, covering various functions and form factors, JBL has something to offer buyers with just about any budget and requirement. Today, I’m reviewing the flagship of JBL’s personal audio lineup, the Tour One over-ear wireless headphones with active noise cancellation.
Valuation Rs. 24,999, JBL Tour One offers a lot, including a sleek design, useful features like active noise cancellation, touch controls, and app support. It promises good sound quality as well as battery life. Is the JBL Tour One the current champion challenger in this space, Sony WH-1000XM4? Find out in this review.
Given its price point, the JBL Tour One is ahead of the competition from brands like Sony and Bose
Physical buttons and touch controls on JBL Tour One
High-end over-ear headphones are usually quite large, to completely cover the wearer’s ears and create a snug fit with adequate noise isolation. However, this keeps the headset from being unnecessarily bulky, making it comfortable and convenient to wear for a long time. The JBL Tour One manages to manage that balance, with a significantly sleeker look than the company’s flagship Club One headphone.
Available only in black, the JBL Tour One looks and feels very sophisticated. The earcups and headband are mostly matte black, with reflective black bands highlighting the edges of the ear cups and the area just below the headband. JBL and ‘Tour One’ logos can be seen in different places on the headphones, and the underside of the faux leather headband is padded for comfort. The headphones are lightweight and very comfortable to wear during long listening sessions, but I needed to adjust my glasses to ensure the soundproof seal was maintained.
Power and pairing are controlled by a slide switch on the JBL Tour One’s right earcup; Swipe this button to the center to turn on the headset and hold it in the lowest position for a few seconds to put the headset in pairing mode. There are also dedicated buttons for volume control on the right earcup and a customizable button on the left. There’s a 2.5mm socket for connecting the included stereo cable for wired listening and a USB Type-C port for charging.
The JBL Tour One uses a four-microphone system for voice pickup and active noise cancellation, with two microphones facing forward, a third speaker to the side, and a fourth speaker inside an ear cup. The outside of the right earcup is touch type. You can tap it to control playback and answer or disconnect calls.
I found the touch controls a bit awkward to use. They are easy to activate accidentally and sometimes fail to register double or triple taps. There’s also wear detection that will automatically pause or resume your music when the Tour One headphones are removed or put on, and this worked for me.
JBL Tour One works with JBL Headphones app, available for iOS and Android. This application displays the estimated battery level of the headset and allows you to customize and adjust various functions and settings such as active noise cancellation, ambient sound mode, and talk mode. There’s also a ‘smart sound mode’ to improve sound quality, stability and latency, equalizer settings, touch controls, customizable button controls, and assistant settings voice, among other things.
Programmable button on JBL Tour One that can be used to control ANC and transparency modes, or call up your smartphone’s voice assistant
The JBL Tour One’s programmable button can be set to motion between ANC and ambient sound modes, or invoke your smartphone’s voice assistant via a press and hold. In addition to Siri on iOS and Google Assistant on Android, Amazon Alexa is also supported. Press and hold the sensitive area can also be set to control ANC and transparency mode, or activate the talk function to quickly lower the audio volume and let you chat.
It’s a very functional app, allowing you to set up the JBL Tour One exactly how you want it, while also updating its firmware as needed. One thing that’s notable is the ability to quickly set active noise cancellation and transparency modes depending on the environment, and I often found myself tweaking the equalizer to find the right settings for the genre of the instrument. body that I am listening to.
JBL Tour One features 40mm dynamic drivers and uses Bluetooth 5 to connect with Bluetooth SBC and AAC codec support. The lack of enhanced Bluetooth codec support is a bit disappointing at this price point. The frequency response range is 10-40,000Hz (when used in passive mode with a stereo cable) and 10-22,000Hz when used with Bluetooth. The sales package includes a hard carrying case, a stereo cable for wired connectivity, an onboard adapter, and a charging cable.
Battery life on the JBL Tour One is excellent. It runs for about 30 hours on a single charge with active noise cancellation and the volume is moderate, but this will vary slightly depending on your usage. Charging is pretty quick too, with the headphones fully charged in about two hours using the included cable and 10W power adapter.
Clean, balanced sound on JBL Tour One
High-end headphones come with expectations of good sound quality, and the JBL Tour One largely delivers on this, with a neutral and adaptable sound. That said, the lack of enhanced Bluetooth codec support has made these headphones a bit more of a challenge when it comes to detail and definition in audio, depending on the source device.
I used JBL Tour One for music, calls and video content with iPhone 13″ are my primary source, but I also pair this headset with my Android smartphone and MacBook Air for reference. Audio can be optimized for specific functions like listening to music or watching videos, using apps, and this seems to have helped make each use case a little better.
My initial impressions of the JBL Tour One’s sound quality were fairly neutral, but over time, and by listening to music across multiple genres, I’ve become quite fond of its balanced sound. Listening to The Avalanches’ Wherever You Go, I enjoyed the headset’s ability to adapt to its changing speeds. The track’s slow vocal-based build-up sounds soft and delicate, and the headphones still adapt almost seamlessly to its faster tempo parts.
The clear and balanced sound is refreshing and enjoyable, but the lack of an advanced Bluetooth codec puts the JBL Tour One back a bit.
Lows sound comfortable, but still have to attack just enough and drive to not get lost in the much more capable mids and highs. This flexible and adaptable sonic approach is evident even in faster tracks like Stylo’s Yeke Yeke and Space Motion, delivering a fast beat that’s just enough to be heard alongside traditional human vocals. Fascinating Africa by Guinean singer Mory Kante.
It certainly helped to keep active noise cancellation on and the volume on the higher side – around 80 percent – to get the best nuance and characterization out of these headphones.
The level of detail offered and the lack of dynamics and all-round attack have kept the JBL Tour One back a bit, when compared to similarly priced competitors like Sony WH-1000XM4. The Tour One does its best to offer a little bit of fun, and listeners looking for balance and a lack of ‘noise’ in the sound will appreciate the JBL Tour One’s sonic signature, but it still lacks a bit at the beginning.
Active noise cancellation on the JBL Tour One is very good, as you would expect from a high-end headset. It’s geared toward typical outside noise and doesn’t perform as impressively as indoors. That said, there’s still a significant reduction in typical household noises like ceiling fan hum, but the Tour One doesn’t silence these sounds as effectively as some competing products can. Voices and sounds of activity have been suggested softer.
Outdoors, especially when walking on the street, the JBL Tour One did a great job of reducing noise, ensuring that I could hear music and audiobooks clearly. I can also conduct appropriate conversations over phone calls. Ambient sound and talk mode allow you to hear your surroundings without having to remove your headphones, but the audio sounds a bit artificial and gets unnecessarily amplified in noisy environments. For me, the Bluetooth connection on the headset is stable up to 4m away.
Identify
The premium wireless headphone segment is mainly dominated by a few brands such as Sony, Apple, and Bose. As a long-standing name in the headphone industry, this price segment really lacks a capable option from JBL, to date. JBL Tour One is, in my opinion, a capable pair of wireless active noise canceling headphones for Rs. 25,000. It offers a clear, balanced sonic signature, good active noise cancellation outdoors, excellent battery life, and very good features, including a great and detailed companion app for Allows you to adjust the headset to your liking.
It’s also a very nice and comfortable pair of headphones, but is limited in a few notable ways, including the lack of enhanced Bluetooth codec support, the controls are a bit unwieldy, and some of the audio lacks detail. details. Active noise cancellation, while decent, isn’t top-notch on these headphones. It officially costs around Rs. 5,000 less than the Sony WH-1000XM4, and given the price difference, it might still be worth considering the JBL Tour One.
