JBL Tour One Wireless Headphones Review

The JBL Tour One have a fairly non-descript look. They have the manufacturer's logo embossed on each ear cup and only come in one color variant: 'Black'.

The JBL Tour One are comfortable over-ears. They're lightweight, and they don't clamp on your head too tightly. The padding on the ear cups and headband also feels nice against the skin. However, if you have larger ears, they may touch the inner padding on the cup. Your ears may also feel hot when you wear the headphones for long periods.

The JBL Tour One have great controls. They have a mix of touch and physical controls. The right ear cup has a power button that you can slide down and hold to enter pairing mode. You can also adjust the volume by using the '+' and '-' buttons, but it can be hard to tell which button is which when you're wearing the headphones. On the center of the right ear cup, you can tap once to play and pause, tap twice to skip a track forward or end a call, and tap three times to skip a track backward. You can also touch and hold while in a call to mute or unmute the microphone and touch and hold for voice assistant.

The touch panel provides feedback for the number of taps you make and is responsive. There are also voice prompts for noise cancelling on/off, 'Ambient Aware', which allows you to hear background sounds around you, and Bluetooth pairing. Although the volume buttons feel a bit mushy, they make a slight clicking sound. Unfortunately, it's easy to accidentally activate a touch command when you're adjusting the headphones on your head.

The JBL Tour One have sub-par breathability. They trap in a lot of heat and don't allow for much airflow. Your ears could feel hot, even if you're not wearing them for long periods. If you're wearing them during physical exercise, you may sweat more than normal.

These headphones have mediocre portability. They're bulky, although they can fold into a slightly more compact shape to fit into their carrying case.

The JBL Tour One have a good carrying case. There's a mesh pocket on the outside, and a clip fabric handle, so it's easy to carry with you. The hard case also has a zipper that completely closes. While it can be tricky to put the headphones into the case, there's a removable cardboard diagram inside to indicate the position the headphones should fold in. There's also fabric to help hold the position of the headphones.

The JBL Tour One Wireless have a good build quality. They have faux leather padding on the ear cups and headband, while the rest of the headphones are mostly plastic. There's a metal strap inside the headband that has lines so that you can evenly adjust them on both sides. Overall, they feel like they could survive some accidental impacts without taking too much damage. However, although we don't currently test for it, they lack an IP rating for dust and water resistance.

These headphones have decent stability. They should stay on your head while you're working at your desk. However, they can fall off your head with more high-intensity head movements, so they're not the best choice for use during physical activity.

• JBL Tour One headphones
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• 1/16" TRS to 1/8" TRS audio cable
• Carrying case
• Flight adapter
• Manuals

The JBL Tour One have a bass-heavy sound profile that delivers extra boom and warmth to your mixes. Vocals and lead instruments also reproduce clearly and accurately. If you prefer a different sound, their companion app offers a parametric EQ and presets to help you customize their sound to suit your tastes.

Note: We normally test our headphones with the ANC on. The JBL have an adaptive noise cancelling system, which automatically adjusts its level depending on your environment. During human testing, the ANC seemed like it was switching between being on and 'Ambient Aware' mode, which allows you to hear background noise around you, during the sweep. Without moving the headphones, we received a different audio curve each time we did a sweep. Turning the ANC off seemed to solve the inconsistency issue between sweeps, and the headphones seemed to stop switching to Ambient Aware. As a result, we tested these headphones with their ANC off for all sound tests except for Noise Isolation.

The JBL Tour One have sub-par frequency response consistency. They're very prone to inconsistencies in bass and treble delivery as they perform differently depending on their fit, seal, and positioning. You may especially notice a drop in bass if you have thick hair or glasses.

The JBL Tour One's bass accuracy is very good. It's overemphasized across the range, which some users may prefer. Mixes have a lot more thump, rumble, and boom.

These headphones are very prone to inconsistencies in bass delivery. Our results represent the average response, and your experience may vary.

The mid accuracy is excellent. They have a fairly neutral response, although there's a small bump in the low-mid which can slightly muddy vocals and lead instruments. However, vocals and lead instruments still sound clear, accurate, and detailed.

The JBL Tour One have good treble accuracy. The low-treble is underemphasized, which can slightly veil vocals and lead instruments. The bump in the mid-treble can also make sibilants like S and T sounds piercing.

These headphones are very prone to inconsistencies in treble delivery and are sensitive to fit and positioning. Our results represent the average response, and your experience may vary.

The JBL Tour One's peaks and dips performance is good. A small dip in the low-bass reduces thump and rumble, while an extended peak across the high-bass to low-mid adds a bit of boom and muddiness to your mixes. A dip in the mid-mid nudges vocals and lead instruments to the back of your mixes, while another dip in the low-treble veils the upper harmonics of these sounds. A large peak in the mid-treble makes sibilants like cymbals piercing.

The JBL Tour One's imaging performance is good. The weighted group delay falls mostly below the audibility threshold, resulting fairly tight bass and transparent treble reproduction. However, there are some peaks in the phase response's treble range, and they're audible when listening to real-life content. The peak in the bass range shouldn't be audible for most users, though. While the L/R drivers are well-matched in amplitude, there's also a slight mismatch between the drivers in frequency response, which could result in holes in the stereo image. Imaging is important for the accurate localization of objects like footsteps in the stereo image. Note that our results are only valid for our unit, and yours may perform differently.

The passive soundstage performance is disappointing. While the soundstage seems somewhat wide, it's perceived as a bit unnatural and as if coming from inside your head rather than from speakers placed in the room around you. Since they have a closed-back design, their soundstage also seems closed-off.

The JBL Tour One have a good weighted harmonic distortion performance. There are a few peaks, particularly in the bass and treble range. However, the frequencies fall within good limits at moderate and high volumes, resulting in clear and pure audio reproduction.

These are the settings used to test the JBL Tour One, and our results are only valid using these settings.

Note: All of our sound testing except for Noise Isolation was conducted with the ANC off as the headphones weren't providing accurate and consistent results.

The noise isolation performance is mediocre. Even with their ANC on, they still struggle to block out the low rumble of bus and plane engines and reduce less noise from this range than the AKG N700NC M2 Wireless. They do a better job of cutting ambient chatter, though. However, they're able to passively reduce high-pitched noise like the hum of an AC unit better than with their ANC on.

The JBL Tour One's leakage performance is satisfactory. A wide band of their leakage is across the mid to treble range, which sounds a bit thin. That said, if you're listening to audio at a high volume in a moderately loud environment like an office, people shouldn't be able to hear it.

These headphones have an integrated mic.

Note: We experienced difficulties testing the headphones' mic. We normally test the mic at 95dB. However, the mic could only reach 75dB. As our software requires a minimum level of 85dB, we tried connecting it to our Avantree BT 5.0 audio transmitter to see if we could obtain a higher volume, but the mic could only reach 72dB. We also performed a recording on an iPhone, which was low and sounded similar to our original PC recording.

We experienced issues testing the performance of the JBL Tour One's mic, and we couldn't run the tests necessary to measure its performance. We decided to use a subjective comparison to assess its performance. Due to these unique conditions, we have decided not to score this test.

The mic offers a satisfactory recording quality. Recorded speech sounds similar to the Razer BlackShark V2, and your voice sounds natural and clear. However, it's a bit more bass-heavy than the Razer. You can hear a recording of the mic from our phone here. We also did an average of five passes for the mic's frequency response, and you can see our graph here. However, keep in mind that we process more data than what's represented in this graph.

The mic's noise handling performance is okay. The mic struggles to separate your voice from moderate ambient noise like a busy street. If you need to make an important call, it's best to do so from a quiet environment.

The JBL Tour One have an excellent battery performance. They're advertised to last 25 hours with their ANC on, but we measured over 33 hours. However, battery performance can vary depending on usage, so your real-world experience may vary. That said, they have an adjustable auto-off timer to help conserve battery life when not in use, and you can use them passively with their audio cable in a pinch.

The JBL Headphones app is great. It offers a parametric EQ and presets so that you can adjust their sound to your liking. You can also customize their controls like swapping the function button to trigger voice assistant or changing touch and hold to toggle between ANC, ambient, and off. You can also adjust the auto-off timer, switch voice assistants, and see the headphones' battery life. You can access 'Smart Audio & Video' mode too, which helps lower latency for movies and songs.

The JBL Tour One have great Bluetooth connectivity. They support multi-device pairing so that you can connect them with up to two devices at a time. They have somewhat high latency on PC and iOS. However, their latency on Android is a bit less, which makes them suitable for streaming video. However, some apps and devices compensate for latency differently, so your experience may vary.

The JBL Tour One come with a 1/16" TRS to 1/8" TRS cable. You can't use the USB-A to USB-C cable to receive audio.

These headphones can connect to Bluetooth-enabled PCs. You can also use their 1/16" to 1/8" TRS cable to connect to PCs, but you can only receive audio and won't be able to use their mic.

The JBL Tour One can only receive audio when using their audio cable on PS4 or PS5 cables.

These headphones can connect to Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S consoles when using their TRS cable. However, you can only receive audio and can't use their mic.