JBL Tune Beam 2 Wireless Earphones Review | Terrific sound and hardware dragged down by buggy app

As Indians across the country board flights and trains for their summer travels, many will leave their headphones at home and instead pack their lighter wireless earphones that provide high-quality audio as well as immaculate noise cancellation. After all, what’s the point of playing your music if it’s lost in the racket of the passenger behind you rudely playing aloud short-form videos without earphones of their own?

To save you from such a predicament, The Hindu reviewed the JBL Tune Beam 2 wireless earphones that retail at an MRP of ₹11,999 and a discounted launch price of ₹5,499.

Let’s dive in.

Design

The JBL Tune Beam 2 wireless earphones come in the Black, Blue, and White variants. We reviewed the Black variant, which offers a sober and generic look with a matte finish. The Blue variant delivers a fun pop of colour while the White variant has a more premium feel.

The device case is a little on the larger side and prone to causing a bulge in your pockets. It requires you to insert the earphones by the stem, which always involves some fumbling when compared to a flatbed design. There are battery indicator lights on the case as well as on the earphones.

We were a touch concerned about the durability of the product, because the case’s matte finish saw scratches after a few days of moderate use and the hinges were slightly creaky. But it fared well in spite of being dropped several times, though it looked rather aged by the end of our review period.

The device is rated IP54 for water and dust resistance.

Audio

We were floored by the audio quality of the JBL Tune Beam 2, which offers a plethora of customisation options for nearly every type of content you might want to lose yourself in. These earphones are a perfect match for sound puritans who enjoy playing with the equaliser, as well as those who want pre-set musical modes for jazz, club music, vocals, bass, and extreme bass that is on the muddier side. Meanwhile, the spatial sound quality is brilliant, and a neat little Personi-Fi feature can test your hearing in each ear and build for you a customised sound profile tailored to your hearing needs. The audio quality is fantastic across all ranges.

The noise cancellation mode was excellent, instantly cutting out surrounding irritants or at least muffling them for your peace of mind. This mode is further enhanced by a tight yet comfortable fit that is perfect for gym-goers and commuters. The mode worked so well that at times we were totally oblivious to concerned co-workers or irate family members standing right behind us and calling out our name. To the gadget’s credit, the noise cancellation mode does not “break” when exposed to loud sounds such as powerful desk fans or public transportation.

Travellers who want to get some shut-eye even when surrounded by crying babies or short videos playing at full volume can confidently choose the JBL Tune Beam 2. Listeners get 10mm drivers, six microphones, adaptive noise cancelling technology, and Bluetooth 5.3 with LE audio.

App

It is exasperating to try out an excellent product that wins points for its hardware, only to find out that the software ruins it all. This is exactly what happened with the JBL Tune Beam 2 wireless earphones. While we were more than satisfied with the audio and noise cancellation mode, the accompanying app (that lets you tweak the sound profiles, adjust the equaliser, enable spatial audio, and create a personalised audio profile) was close to unusable.

Even connecting to the earphones took upwards of ten seconds, while simple actions such as switching between screens or enabling new settings meant getting a loading screen instead. This often made us give up and return to the basic, app-free listening experience. Applying multiple levels of customised settings was glitchy at first and needed several attempts.

The earphones do not pause your music when you take them out, which is a major letdown. There is also no rolling volume controller, which we think should be an included feature when considering the device’s MRP.

You can also access Gemini through the earphones and get AI-powered voice assistance whenever necessary, which is a handy feature for most. Again, however, the workflow for this feature could have been more seamless.

Call quality

The JBL Tune Beam 2 earphones will suffice for occasional short calls, but the people with whom I spoke were not impressed by the clarity and could still hear objects such as a whirring fan on my end.

What’s more, when you receive a call with the earphones in, you are automatically shifted to the ‘Talk Through’ audio profile, which makes the surrounding world louder and adds a microphone-like resonance to your voice that is completely unneeded. We found this feature to be distracting, and wished we could override the existing setting to take all calls in the noise cancellation mode. However, the app did not allow this. Whenever we happened to get a call while wearing the earphones, we would have to take them off or end up shouting because volume levels were in total disarray.

Battery

The JBL Tune Beam 2 comes with a behemoth of a battery that never failed to amaze us. After using the earphones almost daily for three weeks straight, we charged the case perhaps thrice, at most. Within half an hour, the device is about 70% charged when the earphones are in the case, while just a few minutes of charging gives you hours of listening time. And in 15 minutes, the battery went from 1% to 55% without the earphones in the case.

According to JBL, a listener gets up to 48 hours of total playback, comprising of up to 10 hours of playtime, plus three full charges totalling 30 hours in the charging case, with ANC on. Alternatively, they get up to 12 hours boosted by another 36 hours in the charging case when ANC is off.

In summary, the device’s battery life will be a godsend for those whose travels take them far away from charging points.

Verdict

The JBL Tune Beam 2 is as close to perfect as you can get in terms of sound quality and hardware, but is unfortunately dragged down by some easily correctable software bugs and glitches. At ₹5,499, these flaws are easily forgiven.

If you are searching for comfort, stellar audio quality, high levels of sound customisation, powerful noise cancellation, and seemingly endless battery life, the JBL Tune Beam 2 at its launch price can safely be your first pick. On the other hand, if you want a more intuitive pair of TWS earphones for work that will let you go hands-free and enjoy better call quality, this may not be the product for you.