JBL Tour Pro 2 Review: Excellent Headphones That Crush With Their NextGen Case

JBL Tour Pro 2 Review

JBL continues to offer one of the widest ranges of earbuds on the market, from $50 stocking stuffers to innovative entries like the JBL Tour Pro 2. Not only do the chrome-accented black or champagne earbuds look good in the ear, but they also charge in a case that brings full control to the listening experience through a high-resolution display. Some reviews see the display case as a gimmick, others as redundant to the app. Those are valid opinions. All I know for me is that every time I wear the Tour Pro 2s, I tweak my experience using the charging case.

Specifications

What we like

Pros

• Charging case with a display and user interface moves control from phone to case
• Great sound
• Solid Active Noise Cancellation (ANC)
• Good App
• Clear calling with noise reduction
• Silent Now to mask out the audio of the world
• Smart Ambient feature to amplify nearby voices

I’m going to start with the charging case first. It’s not that the JBL Tour Pro 2s aren’t good earbuds, but they are just earbuds, regardless of how good they are. The case proves the immediate differentiator for the Tour Pro 2 experience.

The 1.45-inch touchscreen LCD offers a number of features. Its eye-catching brightness suggests why JBL went with an LED rather than an alternative such as eInk. While eInk might save battery, it just isn’t an exciting, responsive interface technology.

The case display experience begins with a swipe over a screen saver. The app (not the case) supports uploading custom logos. My now sports a Serious Insights logo. The swipe accesses several control features.

So, what exactly does the display do? A lot!

• Playback controls
• Volume
• Sound mode (ANC, transparency, etc.)
• Equalizer
• Timer: the earbuds will power down after your chosen time elapses
• Spatial audio 
• Screen brightness
• Wallpaper selection
• VoiceAware: determines voice detection sensitivity
• SilentNow: enables ANC for a preset amount of time even without music
• Automatic play/pause ear detection
• Notifications (messages and mail)
• Find My Buds
• Flashlight

I don’t think any of these items require additional explanation, but I do have a few notes for JBL. They all fall into the “I like it with qualifications” category.

Volume. Who decided 16 was the maximum value? That’s some interesting audio math I haven’t seen before.

Card inclusion. Users should be able to delete or hide any cards from the case app. I never use the equalizer because I default my Apple iTunes to Dolby and let it worry about the sound profile. I’m never going to use the equalizer, so I hide that card and reduce the number of swipes. Along with the equalizer, ambient sound, spatial sound, VoiceAware, Auto Play & Pause, and SilentNow can be turned off. Others cannot be hidden. I think JBL should allow all cards to be hidden.

Reducing the number of cards focuses on the UI’s more important frequently accessed functions, making it even more useful.

Card order. The first swipe opens to Playback. But maybe I want sound mode first. I would like to see the card order. Along with the card-hiding feature, I would like the ability to reorder the cards on the case.

On a further positive note, the case also supports wireless charging.

This case is a start, as is the one from the Poly Voyager Free 60+ reviewed here. I think Poly primarily aims at conferencing applications, while JBL focuses on consumer use. But both point toward a more integrated listening experience, perhaps even the return of music to something other than a phone. I do not, however, look forward to a future with ads on my earbud case or a full-tilt competition between screens.

With memory size and prices continuously shrinking, however, and display technology also getting cheaper and less power-hungry, we will likely see many more earbud cases with displays moving into the market. At some point, they will stop looking innovative, and then the market will need to decide where exactly they fit into the ecosystem of user experiences.

With memory size and prices continuously shrinking, however, and display technology also getting cheaper and less power-hungry, we will likely see many more earbud cases with displays moving into the market. At some point, they will stop looking innovative, and then the market will need to decide where exactly they fit into the ecosystem of user experiences.

The audio

Now, what about the audio?

The sound is very good, as would be expected from $250 earbuds. Using the volume limiting feature constrains the sound stage. That feature protects hearing. It also protects a full-bodied audio experience.

Turned off, the JBL Tour Pro 2s hold their own against the best earbuds in my collection, which include the Sennheiser Momentum 3s and the Tozo Golden X1s. Dua Lipa’s vocals seduce above the deep base. SZA does anything but snooze as she undulates through her toons. Miley Cyrus’s raspy tones bloom on “Flowers”. And Taylor Swift scorches on her confessional “Anti-Hero.” Toosii reinvents the concept of the singular song with “Favorite Song” in the tradition of Elton John’s classic “Your Song.”

The JBL Tour Pro 2s produced the sound I expected for the track I was listening to—plenty of bass, clear vocals and never a muddying of the two. From the ethereal, mournful but uplifting detail of Hamilton’s “It’s Quiet Uptown” to the sonic beats of the Beastie Boys on “Brass Monkey,” the Tour Pro 2s performed exceptionally well regardless of genre.

Calls are also clear, as is the owner’s voice, thanks to six microphones and noise reduction, coming in from those microphones.

I have no complaints. Just lay back and chill to Billie Eilish and learn why she thinks and concludes that, “Therefore I am.”

Features

JBL checked most of the boxes when it comes to features, with the case being the icing on the audio cake.

The JBL Tour Pro 2s, of course, support all of the features that can be controlled from the case, like ANC, transparency and hear-through, all of which work effectively. I have not tried the JBL Tour Pro 2s on a plane yet, but if my opinion changes on my trek to CES in January 2024, I will update the review. A unique attribute on the JBL “True Adaptive Cancelling” comes from its four microphones dedicated to sensing the environment and adjusting to exactly the sounds detected rather than a more general algorithm.

JBL offers its own Spatial Sound. In conversations with various headphone manufacturers, they suggest not using on-ear modifications to the audio if the audio service provides its own way to amp up the experience. For those on Apple Music, for instance, with lossless audio and Dolby/Apple’s Spatial Audio set as a default, songs that leverage those mixes will control the listening experience. Turning on another sound-expanding feature may defeat the advantages of both. My ears attest to the cleanness of this choice when listening to the Beatle’s “In My Life” in its 2023 mix. It’s just gorgeous.

Depending on ANC settings, the JBL Tour Pro 2s deliver between 10 and 30 hours of playback. Speed charging converts 15 minutes of waiting into 4 hours of listening.

For those who want to go through the process, JBL offers personalized listening profiles and ear fit tests to maximize the auditory experience.

And BTW, if you’ve heard enough of everything, the JBL Tour Pro 2s offer what I think is a unique feature: SilenceNow, which just cranks up the ANC, placing the owner in an audio bubble. And if you want to hear a nearby conversation better, their Smart Ambient feature identifies nearby voices and amplifies them.

Bluetooth® 5.3 includes Windows and Google rapid pairing.

JBL Tour Pro 2s also support touch controls on the earbuds, with the left earbud mostly concerned with ambient sound and noise cancellation, while the right bud manages playback and voice assistance. Both earbuds respond to a double-tap for accepting a call. Unlike some earbuds, the touch controls are fixed. And like all earbuds, owners will need to master the taps and holds to get the most out of their purchase. The Tour Pro 2s, however, make many of these features available through the case, which makes forgetting which taps do what less of an issue in the moment.

Not only do the JBL Tour Pro 2s, which come in black or champagne, sound great, but they are fun to use. While some may dismiss the case, I think it offers a hint at how to create “sticky” products that are usually passive once people start using them.

What could be improved

Cons

• Sketchy Bluetooth® connection to laptop
• No support for Apple’s AAC codec or Qualcomm’s aptX
• Needs to be put into the JBL sustainability program

When attached to my Apple MacBook Pro, I found that, on occasion, I receive garbled audio. I did not experience that with the iPad Pro. I thought there was some relationship between the case receiving updates and the garbled audio, but I turned off notifications and still experienced the issue. It’s very intermittent but annoying when it happens.

I would also like to see a wider range of Bluetooth codecs supported to enhance audio quality.

The plastic hang tag doesn’t complement the otherwise paper-based packaging. Unlike some JBL “eco” products, the Tour Pro 2s make no claims toward sustainability so I rate them as average for the general lack of package plastic.

JBL Tour Pro 2: The bottom line

I don’t find the smart charging case a gimmick. I find it useful, but also a 1.0 version. I am interested to see other feedback on the case, and how adaptive JBL’s firmware is in terms of updating features without waiting for the Tour Pro 3s.

JBL provided the Tour Pro 2 for review. Images courtesy of JBL unless otherwise noted.

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