JBL Everest 310 Wireless Headphones Review

The Everest 310 are very similar to the Everest Elite 700, but have an on-ear design that more closely resembles that of the JBL E45BT. They look decently well-built and have thick padding on the ear cups. The headphones are mostly made of thick plastic, and they have decent padding on the headband as well. You can also see the buttons, which protrude a bit out of the edge of the ear cups.

Update: 08/09/2019 After comparing these headphones to other similar models, we've raised the comfort score of the Everest 310 as we feel there's more padding than the similar E45BT and Live 400BT.

These are somewhat comfortable headphones, but the on-ear fit won’t be for everyone. They're fairly lightweight, but the cups are a bit large for on-ears, which might pinch the top of your ears and cause a bit more ear fatigue during long listening sessions. However, the headband is decently padded and puts less pressure on your head than the E45BT. You can also check out the over-ear, more comfortable variant, the JBL Everest 710.

The Everest 310 have a decent control scheme that is easy to use. The physical buttons are right on the edge of the ear cups, and you get access to common functionalities like call/music management, volume control, and track skipping. You also get two additional buttons for Bluetooth sync and sharing your music. This means you can connect any second pair of Bluetooth headphones to the JBL Everest 310 and both can listen to the same audio content. The buttons are easy to distinguish as the middle play/pause button is raised, but the feedback is not the best, and some presses can feel a bit mushy.

Like most on-ears, the Everest 310 aren’t very breathable, but they trap less heat than over-ear headphones. Their design allows a bit of airflow to cool your ears, but you might still feel a slight difference in temperature when wearing these. They won’t be ideal for sports like in-ears, since you might get a bit of extra sweat when working out with them.

The Everest 310 are not very portable on-ears. Even if they are smaller than most over-ears, they aren’t easy to carry around. Thankfully, their cups can swivel to lay flat, making it easier to carry them around your neck or slide them into a bag. They also fold into a more compact format and fit inside their great hard case, which doesn’t add too much bulk and protects the headphones well.

The JBL Everest 310 come with a great hard case that protects the headphones against minor water exposure, scratches, and impacts. The case is somewhat molded to help keep the headphones in place and limit the wiggling room.

The JBL Everest 310 have a decent build quality. They creak a lot when unfolding them and putting them on, but the headband has a metal frame that makes it solid. The ear cups are also dense enough that they won't get damaged if the headphones fall once or twice. However, the hinges are somewhat weak points, and the plastic coating on the ear cups and headband feels prone to scratches.

These headphones have a somewhat loose fit and aren’t very stable on-ears. They are definitely less stable than the JBL E45BT and could come off your head easily during physical activity. The Everest 310 won’t be a great option for sports. However, since they are wireless, you don’t have to worry about a cable getting stuck on something and yanking the headphones off your head.

• JBL Everest 310 headphones
• 1/8” TRRS audio cable
• Micro-USB charging cable
• Hard carrying case
• Manuals

The Everest 310 have a good frequency response consistency. The treble range is quite consistent across multiple re-seats, with the maximum deviation below 10KHz being about 3dB. In the bass range, the delivery is also quite consistent across re-seats and multiple human subjects, with a maximum deviation of about 4dB. Users should get very similar results if they manage to put on these on-ear headphones in a similar position every time.

The JBL Everest 310 bass performance is great. Their LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 10Hz, which is excellent. The bass response is fairly flat and even, but there is a 3dB bump in low-bass, resulting in a bit of excess in thump and rumble. However, there’s not a lot of music with low-bass frequencies, so this might not be too audible. Mid-bass, responsible for bass guitars and kick drums, is flat and is very close to our target curve. However, high-bass is slightly underemphasized by about 2dB, which will result in a slightly thin sounding bass and lack of warmth.

The mid-range performance of the Everest 310 is also very good. The response is flat and even throughout the range, which indicates an accurate reproduction of vocals and lead instruments. However, the small underemphasis in low-mid will make vocals sound a bit thin.

Their treble performance is decent. The range is fairly even other than the broad dip centered around 5KHz, meaning the Everest 310 will lack a bit of brightness and detail surrounding these frequencies. However, they might be slightly sharp and piercing on sounds around 10KHz for some people.

The imaging for the Everest 310 is great. Their weighted group delay is 0.31, which is within very good limits. The GD graph also shows that the group delay response is almost entirely below the audibility threshold. This ensures a tight and fast bass, and a transparent treble. Additionally, the L/R drivers of our test unit were well-matched in frequency, amplitude, and phase response. This helps with the accurate placement and localization of objects, (voice, instruments, footsteps), in the stereo image. However, these results are only valid for our unit, and yours may perform differently.

The JBL Everest 310 has a poor soundstage. Due to their on-ear design, the drivers don't have enough distance to activate the resonances of the pinna (outer ear) like a loudspeaker, and that shows in the inadequate PRTF accuracy and size values. Also, they don't show a notch in the 10KHz region, further indicating that their soundstage will be perceived to be small and located inside the listener's head as opposed to in-front.

The isolation of the Everest 310 is mediocre. Since they don’t have an ANC feature, they don’t reduce outside noise in the bass range, which is important to cancel out the rumble of bus and airplane engines. In the mid-range, important for blocking speech, they achieved 17dB of isolation, which is good. In the treble range, occupied by sharp S and T sounds and fan noises like A/C systems, they reduce outside noise by more than 34dB, which is also good.

These headphones have a good leakage performance. The significant portion of their leakage is spread from 400Hz to 4KHz, which is a relatively broad range and will mostly consist of speech, leads, and cymbals. The overall level of the leakage is not very loud, either. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away will average around 36 dB SPL and peaks at 49dB SPL, which is just under the noise floor of most offices.

The integrated microphone on the Everest 310 has a mediocre performance. In quiet environments, speech recorded/transmitted with this mic will sound a bit thin, and quite muffled and lacking detail. However, it would still be decently understandable. In noisy situations, it will struggle to separate speech from ambient noise, even in moderately loud environments, like a busy street. These headphones also come with an included audio cable that has an in-line microphone, which we expect to perform better than the integrated one.

The microphone has a below-average recording quality. The LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 261Hz, suggesting speech transmitted/recorded to be noticeably thin. The HFE (high-frequency extension) of 3.3KHz results in speech that is muffled and lacks detail.

The integrated microphone is mediocre at noise handling. In our SpNR test, they achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of 14dB, indicating that the microphone performs best in quiet environments and may struggle in moderate and loud environments.

They have a great battery life that will last you a whole workday without a problem. We’ve measured about 24 hours of continuous playback, although JBL advertises its battery life to be at 20hrs. They only take about 2 hours to charge fully, which is great. They also turn off automatically after 10 minutes to save some power. However, if you’re using their microphone and are talking for 10 minutes straight, the headphones will still turn off if no audio is fed through the drivers. They can also be used wired, even when the battery is dead.

These headphones are not compatible with the JBL Headphones app, even if they are an Everest model. For similar on-ear headphones that have access to a nice app and a great parametric EQ, check out the JBL Live 400BT.

These headphones are Bluetooth compatible and can be connected to two devices simultaneously, which is useful if you want to switch between your work computer and cellphone. Also, they can act as a Bluetooth transmitter with their share functionality. You can connect any other Bluetooth headset to these and listen to the same content simultaneously.

The latency of the Everest 310 is average for Bluetooth headphones. You might notice a delay when watching video content. However, some devices and apps seem to offer some sort of compensation so you might not notice this delay as much. Nevertheless, 197ms will still be too high for gaming.

You can use these headphones passively with the included 1/8” TRRS audio cable. It also has an in-line microphone that will be supported on PCs and consoles.

The Everest 310 don’t have a base or dock. If you're looking for headphones with a dock for customization options, look at the Arctis Pro Wireless. If you want a charging dock, look at the Astro A50, and if you're looking for wireless headphones for watching TV, look at the Sennheiser RS 185.