JBL Tune 520BT Wireless Headphones Review

The JBL Tune 520BT are monochromatic on-ear headphones, with a very similar look to the JBL Tune 510BT Wireless. Their yokes integrate into the ear cup's housing, and their matte and shiny smooth plastic textures add some visual interest. Your color options include 'Black,' 'Blue,' 'Purple,' and 'White.'

The JBL Tune 520BT feel okay for comfort. They're very lightweight, so their insubstantial padding along the headband isn't too noticeable when you wear them. Their yokes swivel horizontally, and the ear cups' vertical range of motion is good to fit on different head and ear shapes, but they're stiff and can distribute clamping force unevenly. The ear cups are shallow, so your ears can push up against the driver's grille. Lastly, the friction of your ears rubbing against the faux leather padding makes an unpleasant scratching sound when you walk around.

Their four-button control scheme is decent. All but two of the buttons have distinctly different feeling shapes so that you can differentiate them for the most part. However, while they're clicky, so you can sense when you've input a command, the buttons feel a bit loose and shift around in the housings. They chime if you minimize or max out the volume, and a voice prompts you during pairing mode, but there aren't any other sound indicators.

'+' button:

• Single press: Raises volume.
• Press-and-hold: Skips to the next track.

'-' button:

• Single press: Lowers volume.
• Press-and-hold: Skips to the previous track.

Multi-function button:

• Single press: Play/pause playback. Answer/reject incoming call.
• Press-and-hold: Activates voice assistant. Mute/unmute the microphone during a call.

Power button:

• Double press: Power on/off.
• Press-and-hold: Enter Bluetooth pairing mode.

The JBL Tune 520BT are decently portable. They're on-ears, so they're a bit smaller than over-ear headphones. Their hinges bend, and the ear cups can rotate flat to make their footprint smaller. You can wear them around your neck easily because they're light and small, but they don't include a case.

The JBL Tune 520BT have passable build quality. Their frame, housings, and hinges are plastic and don't feel particularly dense. The moving parts, such as hinges and yokes, are stiff and not very durable, but they all have a good range of motion. Meanwhile, the padding feels cheap and makes noise against your ears when you move. The headphones could probably survive a drop, but a bad angle on a joint could cause a crack.

The JBL Tune 520BT have sub-par stability. Like the previous JBL Tune 510BT Wireless, they're on-ear headphones with a low clamping force, so they don't hold on to your head tightly. Tilting your head forward or backward can shift them off, and high-intensity movements will knock the cans off, too. You can walk around and sit at a desk just fine, but they're too unstable for exercising.

• JBL Tune 520BT Wireless headphones
• USB-C to USB-A 9.8-inch (25 cm) charging cable
• Quick Start Guide and warranty paper

The JBL Tune 520BT have a somewhat excited sound profile by default, which works well for rock, pop, and R&B music. The tuning exaggerates high-bass frequencies, such as kick drums, but without low-end extension rumble to sub-bass synths. The mid-range is a bit uneven, but lead guitars and keys sound natural for the most part. Treble frequencies, such as the detail and harmonic content of cymbals and vocals, come across as inconsistently bright, dark, and piercing, depending on the frequency.

If you use the headphones for calls, they sound quite different—here's a comparison with the default sound profile. This works fine for voices, but if you're on a video call with others sharing media, music will lack a lot of boom, while high-treble frequencies are severely cut, leaving a warm and not detailed sound.

The headphones' companion app includes an EQ with seven presets, which you can see here. You can create your own, too. If you leave the EQ flat, it's the same as the headphones' default frequency response. We also observed that our unit has one driver that's quieter than the other (more on this in Imaging), which we corrected somewhat using the L/R channel balance function in the app.

Their frequency response consistency is fair. The combination of the ear pads' material and stiff hinges can make it challenging to achieve a good seal. You'll want to take the time to force the hinges to apply even pressure against your ears. If you wear glasses, you might struggle to get a proper seal and fit for a predictable delivery of bass and treble.

The bass accuracy is great. The headphones roll off low-bass, so they're not especially rumbly, but the boom of a kick drum sits prominently in the mix. As a result, the walking bassline, kick, and toms during post-punk songs like Academy Fight Song by Mission of Burma sound weighty. For genres like EDM and dubstep, the low-bass doesn't quite have the depth, but for the most part, you'll hear a good amount of thump.

Their mid-accuracy is outstanding. They convey a balanced and natural-sounding mid-range, with keys and guitars sounding true to life. A slight peak where the mid-mid transitions to the high-mid can sound a tiny bit boxy on vocals. Only a gradual roll-off in the high-mid pushes the presence of guitars down in the mix slightly.

These headphones have decent treble accuracy. They're somewhat inconsistent, so while they have decent articulation of trebly guitar parts, a dip midway through the low-treble that continues into the mid-treble strongly dulls the details of sibilants (S and T sounds) of vocals. A prominent peak follows and can sound overly bright and piercing on cymbal hits.

The JBL Tune 520BT have an okay peaks and dips performance, indicating they control their sound profile to an extent, but not exceptionally well. In the bass range, there's a large peak with dips on either side, leading to a weighty bass sound. A series of small dips in the mids slightly thins out lead instruments and weakens them compared to the bass and treble, while the small peaks add some boxiness. In the low treble, a peak causes a somewhat artificially bright harshness to vocals and trebly guitars, while a significant dip hollows out harmonic detail. Following the dip, a strong peak causes sibilants (S and T sounds) to sound too bright and fatiguing.

These on-ear headphones have a decent imaging performance. Other JBL headphones we've tested have variable imaging results, so while one pair can exhibit excellent imaging, another might have sub-pair performance. This inconsistency can indicate the manufacturer's quality control and ergonomics, but it's worth noting that imaging varies between different units, so our results are valid only for our unit.

Our unit's group delay is below the audibility threshold, so the bass is tight, and the treble sounds transparent. Their phase response shows deviations in the mid-range and high-treble, which isn't noticeable in real-world use.

The right driver of our unit is quieter than the left driver, which you can see here. If your pair of these headphones presents the same issue, you probably won't notice when playing normal content. However, if it bothers you, you can correct it using the channel balance function in the companion app. This reduces the amplitude of the louder of the two drivers. Using the channel balance feature helps to even out the L/R drivers to about the same amplitude as we did with our unit.

The JBL Tune 520BT have sub-par passive soundstage performance, which isn't unusual for closed-back on-ear headphones. They don't meaningfully interact with your outer ear or with the room you're in while wearing them. As a result, your audio sounds focused like it's coming from the inside of your head, instead of from the room itself.

These have decent weighted harmonic distortion performance. At high volumes, the high-bass and mid-range distort more, while at lower volumes, the treble range sees peaks of distortion. Your audio will still sound fairly clean and pure, but you might notice some slight harmonic distortion in the treble range and at high volumes in the mids and bass.

These are the settings used to test the JBL Tune 520BT. Our results are only valid in this configuration.

These have poor full-range noise isolation, which is common for on-ear headphones without active noise cancelling (ANC). Deep rumbles from jackhammers and bus engines will reach your ears unimpeded. Similarly, chatter and ambient din aren't blocked much at all either. However, high-pitched shrieking and clinking sounds like brake squeals and dish clatter in a cafe are muffled somewhat by the headphones' passive isolation.

These don't block noise very differently between scenarios because there's no onboard ANC that adapts. As passive isolating headphones, how well they handle noise in various environments depends on your ability to get an effective seal and the inherent isolating qualities of their materials. You can expect high-pitched sounds to get muffled a bit, but you'll still hear your environment well.

A note on the bump in the lowest frequencies in the graph: it's not noticeable when you actually listen and wear the headphones. After numerous checks (shown here for the Airplane Noise attenuation), compared with experiential use, we know it's limited to the testing rig and not representative of your day-to-day experience with the headphones. However, we're still looking into it.

Their sound leakage performance is good. What escapes is mostly a bright and mid-rangey representation of your audio, with not much audible bass. This depends on how loud you set your music, but in a moderately quiet space, vocals, leads, and bright percussive elements will be audible but not too bothersome.

The integrated mic's recording quality sounds fair. While your voice is intelligible, the severe cut to the high frequencies causes you to sound congested. This effect will be more noticeable if your voice sits in a higher register. Similarly, the roll-off of bass frequencies causes speech to lack body; if your voice is deep, it'll sound thinner. Compared to the previous JBL Tune 510BT Wireless, the mic lacks clarity, which hinders the articulation of your words.

The noise-handling performance of their mic is mediocre. The mic doesn't really reject constant background noise except by cutting the high and low frequencies as it does with your voice. As a result, background sounds are rendered nearly as clear as your voice. Still, most of your speech remains intelligible, except with overwhelmingly loud background sounds, which can obscure your voice.

The JBL 520BT have excellent battery performance. They're advertised to last 57 hours, and in testing, they reached about 65 hours of playback. Compared to the JBL Tune 510BT, that's roughly 25 more hours of juice. Your actual mileage can vary depending on use; for example, if you listen to music at a lower volume, you'll probably experience a longer battery life.

The headphones charge via a USB-C cable, and according to the manufacturer, you can get three hours of playback with a five-minute charge. In their companion app, you can adjust the auto-off timer to conserve the battery.

The JBL 520BT's app is good. It's the same app that many other JBL headphones use but stripped down because they don't support all of the same features; for example, they don't have ANC. You can take a look here to see how the app works. Inside, you can access a parametric EQ with presets or make your own. You can adjust the sidetone during calls, whether you want it at all or at a different volume. The app includes a volume limiter you can enable at 85 decibels (dB) for your hearing health. There's access to audio and video modes to compensate for latency (you can find more on that in Bluetooth Connection). The left and right channel balance feature is accessed through the app, which we successfully tested to better match the drivers' amplitude. You can set a timer to automatically turn the headphones off (either 30 minutes, one hour, or two hours). Lastly, you can change the language of the voice prompts.

The headphones include a USB-C to USB-A cable that only works for charging. The port's location makes it difficult to listen to music over Bluetooth while they're charging. They can't send audio over a wired connection.

They have great Bluetooth connectivity. You can pair the headphones with two devices to switch between. They have Quick Pair for Android devices and support Swift Pair with Microsoft devices. In their companion app, you can select between an audio and video mode, and while video mode reduces delay, it's still pretty noticeable. As expected, the video mode's latency is lower than using audio mode. Compared to other headphones that also don't support adaptive codecs, their latency is better than plenty of others. Latency varies between devices, and some apps compensate for it, so your experience may differ. Despite using Bluetooth 5.3, these headphones only support the basic SBC codec and don't support higher-quality codecs like aptX for Android or AAC for iOS devices.

The JBL Tune 520BT can only connect wirelessly to Bluetooth-compatible PCs for full audio and mic support.