JBL Tour Pro 2

Verdict

A perfectly decent pair of true wireless earphones but one that lacks the excitement of its rivals despite its lengthy feature list and good comfort levels.

Introduction

In what feels like a long time ago (early 2023) JBL refreshed its premium headphone line-up with its Tour models, one in over-ear form in the Tour One M2 and the other a pair of true wireless buds that are the focus of this review.

I liked the Tour One M2 and similar to those pair of headphones, the Tour Pro 2 boast an exhaustive list of features to match its closest competitors, but what looks good on paper doesn’t always translate into real-world performance.

Design

• Smart Battery case
• Black or grey finish
• Good comfort

Most premium true wireless earbuds of recent years have gone in the direction of being smaller and more compact – yet the Tour Pro 2 are a little large. Is this a good or a bad thing? That would depend on the size of your ears, but if they’re small and dainty then the JBL will feel a bit on the chunky side.

They’re also a little loose, so I often had to adjust the fit, and in light of the £250 price tag they launched at, they’re also rather nondescript in terms of visuals. Aesthetically they don’t look or feel as premium as I’d imagine, whether you get them in the black or grey finish. IPX5 rating protects them against water and sweat, and is a slightly higher level than the usual protection afforded to premium true wireless.

The charging case is the most novel aspect of the Tour Pro 2 with its 1.45-inch touchscreen that allows the user to adjust settings and see information that you would normally have to fetch your smartphone to view. It’s an interesting way of getting information, as is being able to customise settings on the fly.

I suppose it could be viewed as a gimmick considering you could just reach for the app on your smartphone but you can adjust the volume (which sort of makes up for it not being enabled by default on the buds), though for firmware updates you need to open up the app.

Features

• Bluetooth 5.3 support
• JBL Spatial Sound
• Adaptive ANC

The JBL measure up to other premium true wireless well with an abundance of features. You’ve got adaptive ANC, support for spatial audio, the ability to personalise the sound through EQ, voice assistance and a lengthy battery life.

Not all is great though. The noise-cancellation, for example, is good but not as suppressive as the previous gen models of the Bose and Sennheiser true wireless earbuds.

It lacks the same assertiveness in dealing with voices, while with persistent noises (air conditioning and such) it’s not as strong. On a plane comparing the three earphones, I could hear much more of the cabin noise with the JBL than I did with the others, and on London streets it sounded as if more noise was peaking through. Compared to a newer, less expensive pair in the Cambridge Melomania M100, the JBL aren’t as successful in dismissing noises.

Ambient Aware and TalkThru are the transparency modes provided, the latter lets in general sounds, while the former latches onto voices to make them more audible.

Bluetooth 5.3 is the means by which the JBL Tour Pro 2 connects to other devices, but in terms of streaming quality it’s restricted to SBC and AAC, so there’s no hi-res wireless audio support.

Like with a number of JBL products, the Tour Pro 2 doesn’t discriminate when it comes to voice assistance with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant available to activate in the app.

The app is comprehensive in the options it provides. You can check for the best fit, and there’s a ‘Find My Buds’ option if they get lost. You can alter the balance of sound from left to right (perhaps your left ear is stronger or vice versa), or change how the earphones sound as there’s an equaliser with five presets and the ability to create your own one.

There’s limited customisation of the controls – you’re essentially given presets you can swap between but in this situation it means you can’t have playback and volume together, you have to choose between one or the other.

The Spatial Sound feature upmixes stereo audio into a bigger, wider performance but in my opinion it’s worth steering clear as it doesn’t have much of an impact.

JBL claims that battery life is 40 hours max, with eight hours of listening on a single charge. Doing my usual drain test of listening to a Spotify playlist for an hour, the Tour Pro 2 lost 10%, so they seem good enough for ten hours of playback.

Sound Quality

• Clear, inoffensive sound
• Decent bass
• Spacious soundstage

JBL prides itself on delivering a clear, detailed audio through whatever product it makes, and that is what you get through the Tour Pro 2 but the result is one that sounds somewhat bland and lacking in personality.

It’s not as if the Tour Pro 2 sound altogether different from the Live Pro 2 – one of the best affordable true wireless – but at the price point the earphones launched, they lacked the character and excitement of its rivals.

The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II have a similar profile to the JBL with a neutral, clear sound – but the Bose play music with more clarity and detail, and are better balanced across the frequency range.

JBL’s treble performance is on the safe side: clear, but also a little recessed with Gogo Penguin’s Erased from Sunlight. In that track, it’s the bass that carries the biggest emphasis and the treble struggles to have any impact, lacking much in the way of brightness, variation or insight.

The midrange is clear with vocals handled well, although there’s not much dynamism both on a small and a large scale.

The soundstage is a spacious one, and there’s a richness to the low frequencies at times that provides a pleasing thump to some tracks – turn the volume up and the earphones hit harder but overall there’s a lack of energy to the Tour Pro 2 – they sound easy on the ear and slow-paced at times rather than demanding your attention. For all the solid aspects of their sound, the Tour Pro 2 lack excitement.

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