JBL Tour Pro 3 Review: Excellent Audio In A Feature-Packed Unit

When it comes to wireless earbuds, it’s a pretty competitive market. When you’ve got brands like Sony, Sennheiser and even Apple constantly attempting to one-up one another, you need a solid hook to stand out amongst the crowd. 

This is why the Tour Pro 3 earbuds from JBL make for an interesting release. They offer a feature that no one else has — a smart display built into their charging case. But it’s one thing to slap a screen onto something and call yourself innovative, and another to pull it off. 

Does the JBL Tour Pro 3 measure up to the competition as a pair of earbuds, or is it a case of innovation for the sake of innovation?

Related: JBL’s New Tour Pro 3 Earbuds Unlock Wireless Freedom Everywhere – Even At 36,000 Feet

JBL Tour Pro 3 Review

Design

The charging case is bulky, but that’s the trade-off for including the 1.57” touchscreen. It’ll fit nicely in a jacket pocket or deep pants pocket, but there’ll be a bit of bulge in a pair of slimmer pants. The case itself has a rubber backing, so it’ll stay put on your desk or seatback tray table when flying.

At a glance, the lock screen shows the battery life of each earbud, along with how much charge is available through the case. Once unlocked, the case will let you swipe through the available widgets, accept phone calls and preview messages. You can even customise the lock screen’s background.

I did find that the touchscreen wouldn’t respond to my gesture to unlock it sometimes unless I kept my finger exactly on the toggle icon and moved the slider slowly. Once unlocked, it would let me swipe through the widgets fairly quickly with no issue. 

As for the earbuds, it’s a stem design with touch control pads. While they’re quite light the design feels beefier than competitors, which may be an issue depending on the shape of your earholes.

With other earbuds, I usually settle for the medium silicone ear tips provided, but the Tour Pro 3 felt a little on the looser side. I swapped to the XL tips for a better fit. While they never fell out of my ear – even when wearing them while eating or jogging – there was a semi-constant feeling that they were about to. On a few occasions, they would pause my music because the on-ear sensor thought they weren’t in my ear.

Aside from that, these earbuds are incredibly comfy to wear. I wore them for around four to five hours straight on a few occasions and never felt any earache set in.

JBL also provide a pair of foam tips, and the ability to toggle sound settings to one that accounts for your choice of tip.

Features

The Tour Pro 3 uses Bluetooth 5.3, so you can maintain more than one connection at a time. I found swapping from my phone’s audio to my laptop’s to be pretty seamless.

By plugging the charging case into an audio jack or USB-C port via an aux cable, you’re able to transmit audio to the earbuds, essentially giving non-wireless devices a Bluetooth connection. The big win here is in-flight entertainment for frequent flyers. While you’ll lose some features in the process, like being able to pause/play, you can still toggle ANC, spatial audio and the EQ. Better yet, you can finally ditch the cords at 36,000 feet, which is a huge step up in the wireless earbud game. I didn’t manage to catch a flight during the time I had to pen this article, but I’m very excited at the prospect.

The broadcast quality is pretty good – while using this feature plugged into my laptop’s audio port, the difference between this and a standard Bluetooth connection was pretty unnoticeable. This feature also offers Auracast, so you can transmit it to more than one pair of JBL earbuds. 

What surprised me most was the battery life. After spending around 4.5 hours listening to music non-stop with adaptive noise-cancellation on while walking around the busy CBD, I only managed to burn through half the battery of each earbud.

At that pace, I would’ve hit zero battery in around nine hours, which is impressive considering that, according to JBL, the Tour Pro 3 has an expected playback time of around seven hours with ANC on (with an extra 24 hours available via the charging case).

Each earbud can be mapped with touch controls, although you’re forced to pick between three presets – Ambient Sound, Volume and Playback – which means one of them won’t be available. I chose to leave out volume, as that’s easily adjusted via the smart case.

There’s also a “Find My” feature, that’ll have your case or individual earbuds emit a high-pitched whine that’s pretty hard to miss.

Sound

On a basic setting, the Tour Pro 3 have a fairly neutral sound that’s well-balanced. Chalk that up to JBL’s hybrid ​​armature and 10mm dynamic drivers, which are designed to optimise different frequencies to ensure high-quality audio playback. They do the job very well.

While bouncing around various genres, I was pretty happy with how everything sounded. From the reverb-soaked shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, the intergalactic electro-pop of Daft Punk’s Discovery to the scuzzy punk rock of The Stooges’ Raw Power, everything I listened to felt well-defined and full. Even on more layered albums like DJ Shadow’s Entroducing, Bjork’s Post and Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, there’s a clear richness and depth.

If you’re someone who prefers to customise how your earbuds sound depending on what you’re listening to, the JBL companion app offers an incredibly robust equaliser feature. There are a few preset options available from the jump, but you can really get into the nitty gritty with your own custom mix.

When it comes to earbuds, one of their biggest shortcomings can be their lack of good bass reproduction. At worst, it’ll distort the low end while overwhelming the mids and highs. When boosting the bass on the Tour Pro 3, it still felt well-rounded and punchy, with very minimal distortion when pushed to a higher volume. 

The companion app has a feature called Personni-Fi, which runs you through a short hearing test and gives you a custom sound profile. After doing this, I found that my music sounded a bit brighter with increased treble.

The Tour Pro 3 also offers spatial audio, with optional 360-degree head-tracking, which sounds pretty good. While I don’t personally go in for this feature, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by it.

Noise Cancellation

That sound quality is paired with an equally impressive Active Noise Cancellation feature, which can be set to adaptive mode, so it’ll automatically react to the environment you’re in, or be manually adjusted.

I spent the better part of a day walking around the Sydney CBD and found the adaptive ANC to be pretty faultless. I felt nicely isolated from the busy world around me, so I could focus on whatever I was listening to. Silence has rarely sounded this good. 

On the other end of the spectrum, the Tour Pro 3 has an Ambient Aware setting that’s quite fantastic as well. I had no problem holding a conversation with a barista or shop clerk with that feature active.

The Tour Pro 3 also has a Smart Talk feature, which will drop your earbud volume to zero the moment it registers that you’re speaking. It’s pretty precise, although I wish it’d pause my audio instead of just muting it. You’re better off pausing things manually.

The Verdict?

At $399.95, the JBL Tour Pro 3 have the same retail price as the AirPods Pro 2 and Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds, which is some tough competition if we’re looking at it on a purely dollar-for-dollar level. The big question is whether or not the smart screen is enough of a selling point to tip your favour towards JBL.

As someone who hates the hassle of having to navigate through audio companion apps to tweak a setting, I think the Pro 3 has been great in that regard. I can’t fault the convenience of being able to adjust how the earbuds sound. JBL has packed a lot of features into these earbuds, so being able to access them more conveniently has been good. Honestly, I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed using the case.

However, if you wear a smartwatch 24/7, you might find some of the Tour Pro 3 features a bit redundant – particularly the phone and message notifications. While the ability to give any device a Bluetooth connection via the case’s aux is good, it’s a specific use feature – particularly helpful for those who fly a lot.

Outside of that, the JBL Tour Pro 3 does everything you’d want a great pair of earbuds to do, and I’d recommend them on the strength of those features alone. 

While I had issues with the fit, I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker (your ears might fare better than mine). They sound great with plenty of EQ options, offer reliable active noise cancellation and a strong battery life. The smart case might not be for everyone, but there’s enough functionality in this little package that it doesn’t feel like a novelty.