JBL Tour One test report: Noise canceling cans for frequent callers
RRP $ 300.00
"A large battery and a pleasant call quality make these cans ideal for work or travel."
advantages
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Effective ANC
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Good sound quality
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Excellent call quality
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Great battery life
disadvantage
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No sidetone for calls
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No aptX / aptX HD / LDAC codecs
Right now, Sony's $ 350 WH-1000XM4 are the best noise-canceling headphones you can buy. We like them so much that they also top our list of the best wireless headphones and the best headphones overall. Sony's success has not gone unnoticed by its competitors, which has led to several attempts to mimic the XM4, including JBL's $ 300 Tour One.
The Tour One isn't just a bit like the XM4. From size, weight, shape, and materials to controls and features, it's almost like JBL used the XM4 as a blueprint for the Tour One and then figured out how to sell it for $ 50 less.
The question you're probably asking is, should I buy the Tour One and save that $ 50, or has JBL trimmed too many features to slip below the price of the XM4? I think the Sony headphones are still the ones to buy, but JBL still managed to make the Tour One worth it thanks to a few things it does really well. Let's get into that.
What's in the box?
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JBL still has a lot to learn about sustainable packaging. The Tour One Box contains a lot of foam padding and coated cardboard, which makes recycling difficult.
Open the box and you will find the Tour One in its own semi-rigid zippered tote bag. This is your first hint that JBL was inspired by Sony. Not only is the case almost exactly the same size and shape as the one Sony uses for both the WH-1000XM3 and XM4, but it also has the same mesh pocket sewn to one side for small accessories or perhaps a credit Card and ID can be used if you have taken it to the gym.
Inside the case, the Tour One is folded into exactly the same position as the Sony cans and there is a paper insert with a diagram to remind you how to put the headphones in to make them fit again, just like Sony did.
If Sony's designs are too conservative for you, the Tour One adds just enough bling not to look boring.
The similarities continue into the small compartment that houses the included accessories: a USB-A to USB-C charging cable, a 3.5mm to 2.5mm analog cable and a Double pin flight adapter.
Unlike Sony, JBL's charging cable actually has a usable length (40 inches compared to Sony's ridiculously short 9 inches). The USB-A side is reversible for rate-free use – a nice touch.
design
JBL Tour One (left) and Sony WH-1000XM4. Simon Cohen / Digital Trends
Given the similarity of the Tour One to the WH-1000XM4, the overall design is hard to criticize. It has a compact shape that keeps the ear cups and headband close to your head so you don't look like you've just walked off the set of a daft punk video.
The auricles pivot, fold, and articulate gently to adapt to the shape of your head. The headband is well padded and the sliders move with a precise "notch" that is both easy to adjust and secure once adjusted.
The Tour One are still very light and very comfortable.
JBL has given the Tour One a slightly satin finish to the plastics and added some black chrome accents that give the cans an extremely high-quality look. If Sony's designs are too conservative for you, the Tour One adds just enough bling not to look boring.
In terms of controls, JBL is improving Sony's design. JBL keeps things simple by replacing Sony's swipe gestures for a combination of simple taps on the right earcup for playback controls and a dedicated set of buttons for volume. A combined power / Bluetooth pairing switch on the right ear cup and a single multifunction button on the left ear cup round off the Tour One's controls.
Comfort, controls and connections
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Although not quite as light as the WH-1000XM4 (9.45 ounces vs. 8.95 ounces), the Tour One is still very light and very comfortable. The ear pads and headband are generously padded and I was able to wear them for three hours without getting tired, even with glasses. One thing that bothered me towards the end of this period was the depth of the auricles. My ears stick out quite a bit – maybe a little more than average – and their outer edges are touching the inner lining. At some point this pressure point needed some relief.
If your ears are like mine, both the Sony WH-1000XM4 and Bose Noise Canceling Headphones offer 700 deeper ear cups.
The Tour One's hinged hinges are great for wearing around your neck, and they fold properly so that the ear cups are facing down and the ear cushions are against your collarbone. Sony does this too, but Bose makes the peculiar decision to put the headband's far less comfortable sliders on your collarbone.
Despite its comfortable fit, the Tour One has a greater tendency to move on its head than the Bose or Sony. It's by no means a deal breaker, but if you want a full-size set of cans for the gym as well as the office or airplane cabin, keep this in mind.
The controls of the Tour One are very easy to use. The single, double, and triple tap touches on the right earcup register every time (as long as you tap the center) and I like having a power button that turns the headphones on instantly. The Bose 700 also turns on instantly, but the Sony XM4s require more patience with a gesture of pressing and holding the power button.
Using the JBL Headphones app offers some adjustments to the controls. Both the multifunction button and the tap-and-hold gesture on the touch panel can be set to control the Active Noise Canceling (ANC) / TalkThru modes or to trigger your voice assistant.
The bluetooth connectivity is excellent.
The auto-pause option works really well. If you pull the ear cups away from your head, the melodies will pause immediately and then resume just as quickly when they are snapped back into place. You can deactivate the function in the headphones app if you want.
The bluetooth connectivity is excellent. Even though I wasn't considered a Class 1 Bluetooth device like the Beats Studio 3 headphones, I was still able to leave my phone at my desk and walk all the way to my garage (about 18 meters, one floor and several walls in terms of the distance). and the signal stayed strong. You can also connect the Tour One to two Bluetooth devices at the same time, although this once caused a static noise that was fixed by disconnecting and reconnecting my phone.
Sound quality
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Out of the box, the Tour One has a relatively neutral EQ. There's a nice definition over the frequencies and excellent clarity in the upper mids and highs. The bass reproduction is snappy and not intrusive. You can tell that JBL has tuned these sockets as genre-independent as possible, which is in contrast to headphones, which tend to be low-end.
Compared to the Sony XM4, the Tour One doesn't offer as much warmth or such a wide soundstage, but the difference isn't that big. Strangely enough, the Tour One, just like the other flagship radio sockets from JBL, the Club One, are not equipped with high-quality Bluetooth codecs such as aptX, aptX HD or LDAC. While you can play frequencies from 20 Hz to 40 kHz (and are therefore considered Hi-Res audio compatible), you will never experience this anywhere when using the headphones wirelessly. The XM4 gives you LDAC, which doesn't do much for iPhone owners, but offers better sound quality for those with Android phones.
When you listen via bluetooth you can enjoy the bones of the song, but when you are wired you can hear its soul.
And that's a shame, because if you connect the Tour One to a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) with the supplied analog cable, they deliver a lot more depth and resonance.
One of my favorite test tracks is Billie Eilish's Bad Guy. Not only does it have incredibly deep bass, but it also superimposes Eilish's whispering voice, creating a torture chamber for audio equipment. It's also a deceptively complex shot. When you listen via bluetooth you can enjoy the bones of the song, but when you are wired you can hear its soul. Suddenly Eilish is not only whispering through the lyrics, she is whispering directly in your ear – it's an ASMR-level experience that creates goosebumps.
I don't want to miss out on the wireless performance too much as it's actually very good, and I like the fact that you can access EQ presets and manual EQ adjustments from within the app. This can radically change the sound signature of the Tour One. So if you're not a fan of the so-called flat EQ, you don't have to put up with it.
Noise cancellation and transparency
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The Tour One does a good job of canceling out external noise, but its performance can be a little uneven. Unlike the Sony XM4 and Bose 700, the Tour One seems to struggle to produce a nice, even canceling effect. I have a fan under my desk that produces both even sound and even wind. JBL's ANC blocks it well enough, but it cannot decide exactly which of the fan’s frequencies to block, so you can actually hear it chasing around and the result can be a little uncomfortable.
This mostly happens when you use JBL's True Adaptive ANC mode which tries to respond to your listening conditions in real time. Turning this feature off helped a lot. To be fair, my desk fan situation is a minor anomaly – I wasn't even aware of the problem at other times – but both the Sony XM4 and Bose 700 handled it flawlessly, with the Bose being by far the best of the three.
The Silent Now mode is useful if you just want to be quiet: it activates ANC, but keeps Bluetooth communication switched off, saving the battery when you need it.
In short, I've never tested wireless headphones with better call quality than the Tour One.
JBL gives you two different transparency modes to choose from, and both of them have their advantages. For a better general awareness of your surroundings, you can choose Ambient Aware – which lets in a lot of external sounds without affecting your music. Or, if you actually need to talk to someone, you can activate TalkThru mode, which is just like Ambient Aware but also drops the volume of your audio to a point where it is barely noticeable.
Oddly enough, you can toggle between full ANC mode and TalkThru by double-clicking the multifunction button. However, if you want to switch between ANC and Ambient Aware, you need to switch between three modes: ANC>, Ambient Aware>, Ambient Aware Off> ANC.
Call quality
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So far, most of the qualities of the JBL Tour One have more or less placed them where one would expect them to be compared to the Sony WH-1000XM4 and the Bose Noise Canceling Headphones 700. But one area where the Tour One blows away those other headphones is their call quality.
I could walk down a very busy street, with varying degrees of traffic noise, including loud buses and some construction equipment, and yet if you listen to the recording I made you would swear I was sitting alone in a quiet park – so little outside noise got recorded by the microphones of the Tour One.
Not only will your voice be interrupted by these competing sounds, but it will sound really good too. The Tour One captures and preserves the lower notes of your voice, adding depth and resonance to it, which is in sharp contrast to most other headphones and earbuds.
In short, I've never tested wireless headphones with better call quality than the Tour One.
The only caveat here is that JBL has dedicated all of the Tour One's microphones to noise suppression and voice quality optimization, which means there is no sideline and no way to be in Ambient Aware mode or TalkThru mode while on a call to stay. While your callers will love your sound, they may not hear your own voice as clearly.
Battery life
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JBL claims that the Tour One gives you 50 hours of battery life if you disable ANC, and about half that if you leave it on. I didn't run it for a full charge / discharge cycle, but after about 10 hours of playing music at 50% volume with ANC, the JBL Headphones app gave me a 55% battery level, which is pretty close to what JBL claims.
These are great numbers. Better than Sony, better than Bose, and even a tiny bit better than the Marshall Monitor ANC II, our best premium cans for battery life to date.
They take two hours to empty, but you can get three hours of playtime on a 10 minute quick charge.
Extras
JBL's Tour series, which includes the Tour One headphones and Tour Pro + True Wireless earbuds, is one of the few on the market that offers hands-free access to the Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa of your choice.
Once you've chosen your assistant, you can say “Hey Google” or “Alexa” and then ask for anything – including controls for playback, answering calls, and volume. When you use this option, one of the gestures on the multifunction button is released, giving you more control over other headphone functions.
I only tested Amazon's Alexa, but it worked just fine. JBL hasn't stated whether using the speakerphone will reduce battery life (and I haven't been able to determine if it does), but it is very likely that it will.
You also get JBL's My Alarm feature, which lets you choose from a variety of soothing sounds, combined with a customizable sleep timer.
Our opinion
For those looking for premium noise-canceling headphones, the JBL Tour One offers an excellent (and cheaper) alternative to Sony and Bose, with only a few sacrifices for the cheaper price. And they're killers for phone calls.
Is there a better alternative?
Yes, overall it is Sony WH-1000XM4 are still a better set of noise-canceling headphones that outperform the Tour One in sound quality, ANC, comfort, and Hi-Res wireless audio. But if you can't find them on sale, they're a fair bit more expensive than the JBL Tour One. If you don't mind the compromises, I see no reason not to buy the Tour One instead of the Sony's.
How long will they last?
As far as I can tell, both the build quality and materials of the Tour One are superb, and I suspect they are roughly on par with the Sony and Bose models in terms of durability. They may even have an advantage thanks to their longer battery life, as batteries in a set of wireless headphones are usually the first part to deteriorate.
JBL supports the Tour One with a one-year guarantee.
Should you buy it?
Yes. They're a solid option for anyone looking for comfortable noise-canceling headphones with good sound quality, great battery life, and great call quality
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