JBL Endurance Jump
Grade: B
$56; jbl.com
Sound
The frequency response of JBL’s Endurance Jump skews toward the bottom end, providing the mids and lows that add a little extra oomph to workouts. It’s not a pure studio sound, but we didn’t care when we were struggling for reps on the bench.
Design
At $70, these headphones offer the best value on any headphones we tested. For starters, they’re fully waterproof. The Bluetooth signal will get lost if you go underwater, so they’re not technically swimming headphones. But we wore them into the locker room shower with no problems. (JBL’s Endurance Dive headphones come with MP3 storage for playback in the pool.) We found the touch controls intuitive, but a little wonky—if you adjust the bud you might accidentally stop or skip a track. The silicone band was comfortable against our sweaty neck, and thanks to the 8-hour battery life, we set out on a few long bike rides with confidence that they’d keep blasting until the end.
One odd thing is the “PowerHook” feature, which is designed to turn the headphones on automatically when you put them on. The downside is that they also turn the headphones off when you take the right bud off—even if you’re just popping it out to hear, say, an announcement on the subway platform. The solution is to simply train yourself to remove the left bud. Either way, they reconnect so easily that the quirky feature didn’t become much of a problem.
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