I’ve been using the JBL Tour Pro+ TWS earbuds every day for approximately 6 weeks now as a replacement for my Apple Airpods pro, and in a lot of ways they are much better than my Airpods Pro. But there's a few pretty significant ways in which they are not. Let me explain…
Firstly out of the box, The Tour Pro+ are a very, very good looking set of earbuds. The all black finish combined with the rather unassuming design make these the best looking and least intrusive set of buds I have ever used. The travel case is rather chunky while also being a bit more or a manageable shape than something like the Airpods Pro. This case however feels super premium compared to other earbuds I've tried. It's very robust and it just feels very well built and not at all flimsy. The earbuds fit in very precisely and to be honest sometimes a little too precisely as occasionally I have had trouble closing the lid properly due to the earbud being just ever so slightly out of alignment. The design of the buds themselves is excellent, I didn't even have to change the tips or anything, I literally popped them in my ear and they fit perfectly, they never feel like they're falling out nor do they feel too big, they are just super snug and comfortable. I have worn them a lot over the last 6 weeks including a few fairly intensive gaming sessions and almost 8 hours a day 5 days a week during work and never have they felt uncomfortable at all. So in terms of design and comfort, The JBL Tour Pro+ TWS are a big tick.
Sound quality is probably the most important factor for me when it comes to any headset. If they dont sound good, it doesn't matter how comfortable they are, they are not going to be a hit with me. Luckily then the JBL Tour Pro+ TWS sound great. It's no secret that I am generally a fan of JBL audio products and the sound profile they deliver, and the Tour Pro+ is no exception. They deliver rich bassy sound that honestly is up there with most over ear gaming headsets I've tried. There's a lot of adjustments you can make using the JBL app for mobile, which we will get into a little more later in the review as tis app is quite simply a major feature of these earbuds and what they can do. Back to how they sound though and like I said they sound great. The bass was extremely punchy and accurate and the sound just felt relatively crisp across the board. One thing I will say, which is pretty much an earbud issue in general due to their nature of being in ears, is the lack of any sort of soundstage. Everything just sounds like it's coming from within your head rather than a good pair of over ears which do a fantastic job of projecting sound around you. The addition of ANC (which to be fair is a fairly common feature these days in premium earbuds) but not a lot actually implement it quite as effectively as the JBL, Whether it be for gaming or at the gym the ANC on these things is great. I think it's due to a combination of the tight seal in your ear and the technology itself, but the ANC blocks out a lot more noise than other earbuds I've tested. At the gym for example, they manage to block out almost all background noise, which is quite a lot. So sound quality is another huge tick in the pass column.
Let's talk quickly then about the app, as I said earlier, the JBL app (while it certainly has the odd bug) is extremely useful. And allows access to a lot of the more premium features of this headset that you wouldn't necessarily know about otherwise. One such feature is possibly my favorite thing about the Tour Pro+ earbuds and that is the “MyAlarm” or more specifically the “Silent Now” feature. Basically what this does is it allows you to use the earbuds as essentially earplugs. You can customize this to play your favorite music or podcast for a specified amount of time and then basically they function silently with ANC on blocking out all background noise until your alarm time at which point your alarm will play through the earbuds themselves ensuring you hear it. This has been a feature I’ve used with great success a few times with having a 1 year old in the house. It's a really cool feature that I wish my Airpods had.
Now, let's “touch” on something (pardon the pun) I am really not a fan of with the Tour Pro+. That is the gesture controls. Basically the left earbud controls things such as ANC on/off and Ambient aware, but it's the right hand side that annoys me massively. The right hand side you can have either playback control OR volume control. But you can't have both… This is super annoying and really makes the Tour Pro + TWS earphones quite difficult to use a lot of the time. This is fixable however, a simple software update would do it in a heartbeat.
The other “issue” I have with the Tour Pro+ is the overall quality of the microphone, sure there are situations in which this microphone is very good, but others it's not. It does a good job of blocking out background noise for instance. But leaves your voice sounding rather muffled so overall not great but not bad either.
The low latency of the Tour Pro+ means I ran into very little lag when gaming whether it be on my PC, Nintendo Switch or mobile phone, there were no major issues at all and as I said earlier the sound quality is fantastic. I even used them on my PS5 and Xbox Series X using an Airfly pro bluetooth transmitter, and it too ran relatively smoothly most of the time but with some instances of pretty unusable lag.
Battery life is a bit of a weird one for me, I’ve seen comments online saying that people struggled to get 4 hours of continuous playback out of theirs. However, I was comfortably able to get around 6-8 hours a day, as I said I wore them for basically my entire work shift from 8:30 - 4:30 taking them out to talk on the phone for maybe an hour a day, I can't explain this discrepancy, but honestly I never found the battery life to be lacking at all. Especially when the case packs in 3 full charges off a single recharge.
Pros: | Cons: |
|---|---|
Very Comfortable Fit | Average Mic |
Excellent Audio Quality | No on Board Battery Indicator |
Easy Setup | Touch Controls |
Durable | |
ANC Earplug Feature | |
Decent Battery life | |
Wireless Charging | |
Sleek design | |
Overall, the JBL Tour Pro+ TWS are a notable step up over 1st party mobile earbuds. Having experienced both Samsung and Apple's flagship versions of their earbuds, it's safe to say that the JBL Tour Pro+ TWS are just a superior product in almost every way. The clumsy gesture controls let it down a little compared to the others mentioned here, but honestly it's nothing a software update couldn't fix. The Tour Pro+ feels more durable, they fit better and in my opinion they look way more premium too. I'd struggle to recommend anything other than the JBL in terms of wireless earbuds, granted I haven't tried a whole lot (especially other market leaders such as the Sony WF1000XM4 earbuds) but the JBL’s will take some beating. I can only give my personal opinion, I have no way of physically testing things like audio quality etc. All I can do is tell you how it sounds to me, and honestly I had zero complaints at all. The bass was super accurate and the whole thing sounded really crisp.
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