The JBL Tour Pro 2 earbuds have a neat trick: they come in a smart case. The case provides some useful features, but most of its functionalities seem a little unnecessary. It did enhance its design and look though, so I’d love to see it amped up with better features in the next model. Either way, these buds are ideal for you if you’re into bass or if you’re looking for a good pair of noise-canceling earbuds.
JBL Tour Pro 2 – Design and Features
Priced at $249, these earbuds really do stand out because of their innovative charging case. Unfortunately, the case needs a little more work to feel like more than a marketing gimmick. While it is definitely attractive and amusing, it lacks a bit of purpose and depth to it. We’ll get into specifics in a moment – for now I’ll just say that the functionalities it offers don’t make up for the increase in both the case’s weight and size and the price of the product.
JBL’s flagship buds ship with three ear tips of varying sizes (small, medium, and large) and a Type-C charging cable. Aesthetics-wise, the buds do look like they’re mid-range. Not only is the case attractive, but the buds exude sophistication too. They feature a glossy and matte exterior, a ridged interior, and an overall good-looking body. Weighing 6.1g each, the buds aren’t exactly what you’d call lightweight, but their weight is far from a dealbreaker as well.
The stems on the Tour Pro 2 are short. Like, really short. While this didn’t bother my small hands a lot, I can completely imagine someone with large hands getting very irritated by these. Not only do longer stems make using the touch controls easier, but they also allow you to conveniently adjust the buds in your ears without resulting in accidental taps.
Apart from the potential issues featuring short stems would cause, the buds are pretty comfortable. The various tip sizes are quite helpful and, when plugged in, the buds form a nice seal around your ears with some degree of passive noise isolation. Don’t expect complete cancellation, of course, but the seal was good enough to considerably silence the whirring sound of the construction site next to my house.
The controls on the buds are fairly straightforward. And they’re remappable with JBL’s mobile app for iOS and Android, so you can always tweak them if you don’t find them straightforward. By default, the right bud controls media playback, accepts/declines calls, mutes/unmutes your mic, and activates your phone’s voice assistant. The buds also feature both Google and Alexa as built-in assistants. The left bud allows you to do the same except it replaces controlling media playback with cycling between ANC, Ambient Aware, and Talkthru modes.
JBL Tour Pro 2 – Smart Case
When I mentioned the smart case may be lacking, I didn’t mean it doesn’t offer enough features. In fact, it offers quite a lot. Maybe a bit too much. However, most of what it offers is unnecessary or redundant.
Here’s a full list:
- Media playback (Pause, play, rewind, forward)
- Volume control
- Switching between ANC, Ambient, and Talkthru modes
- Equalizer presets
- Timer
- Spatial sound
- Screen brightness
- Setting a lock screen wallpaper
- Turning Voiceaware on/off
- Turning autoplay and pause on/off
- Displaying message previews
- Find my buds
- Flashlight
Cycling between 13 modes can feel like a chore. The good news is that you can tweak what shows up for you and keep the ones that you need often. Still, many of these options are controls that are easily accessible with the buds, so it does feel a little redundant to have them on the case as well. If you’re someone who always carries the charging case on you, you might love this concept. But for folks who don’t always wish to stay glued to their case and are comfortable with the bud controls, the smart case doesn’t add much value. And one of the few things the buds can’t do, the message previews feature, doesn’t actually display your messages on the case. It just notifies you by saying “New message on mobile device”, which isn’t terribly helpful.
This isn’t to say that all the controls are useless. It is definitely more convenient to change your equalizer preset with the case rather than heading over to the JBL mobile app. Features such as timer and flashlight are also always welcome, as is the Find My Buds feature. I also like the idea of getting to set a wallpaper as it personalizes the experience. My review unit came with a preloaded IGN wallpaper which I thought was a cute gesture by the company.
JBL Tour Pro 2 – Performance
One thing’s for sure. The bass on the Tour Pro 2 is excellent. I can’t say the same about its treble, though. While the latter isn’t non-existent, it doesn’t come at you the way the bass does. If you’re a big fan of treble, definitely pass on these. It isn’t rich, clear, and vibrant as you’d like it to be. It also sounds a bit clustered and doesn’t have a separate layer of its own. I put on many songs, particularly treble-heavy ones, too, and I still didn’t get to enjoy the high-end. The mids are quite good, and I didn’t hear any flaws in them. They feature clarity and depth and sound pretty rich.
The bass is the real winner on these buds. JBL has found a way to make the bass sound amazing without overdoing it too much. The power that the low-end packs is the first thing that’s going to stand out to you. It is extremely noticeable – even by non-audiophiles. Though, I must add, the Bass EQ setting on the smart case didn’t add much value. My songs sounded pretty much the same. While we’re at it, except for the Jazz and Vocal presets, none of the other presets changed a lot for me. My personal favorite was the Vocal one; it did a brilliant job of putting the artist’s voice on another layer and was very helpful when I listened to my favorite podcast on these, too.
Another feature that really impressed me was the buds’ ANC. There is an incredibly loud pedestal fan at my local library that is impossible to be silenced. You might think a library is not the best place for testing ANC, but this fan’s sound was what I really wanted to test with. It might be interesting to note that I sat right next to it on the testing day. To my surprise, it muted it entirely. I couldn’t hear even the faintest whirring sound; it was too good to be true. The ambient mode could have been much better, though. It produced that weird hiss that’s common on the ambient mode of many buds. This hiss was too loud and, coupled with the sound of the fan, was quite bothering. The Talkthru mode was very different from what I expected. It claims to reduce the volume enough for you to have a conversation with someone. However, the volume was reduced so much that it sounded as if you’d paused your music. I didn’t really see a point in the feature because I can easily use the pause option to achieve the same outcome.
I called my friend and was told that my voice came through crisp and clear. I also asked about noise reduction, and they reported it’s doing a pretty neat job considering I was out on a very busy street in Manhattan. They said that the mic did a better job at canceling low-end sounds, as compared to high-end ones. The sound of the car engines whirring was significantly muted, but the high pitched horns and a shrill chirp from a nearby bird was more audible.
JBL claims that the buds rate at 10 hours of battery life and the charging case at 30 hours. That’s more than the average for true wireless earbuds and is pretty impressive. Enabling ANC will reduce the battery life by two and six hours respectively. The actual battery life of these buds is ultimately dependent on your listening volume.
