Wireless noise canceling headphones are more popular than ever, which immediately explains why manufacturers are releasing such devices en masse. From JBL we receive the Club One, a new top model with adaptive noise cancellation and adjustable tuning provided by big name deejays such as Armin van Buuren and Tigerlily. Can these headphones therefore immediately be classified as only interesting for teens and twenties? No, that would be very blunt.

JBL Club One The Club One that we look at in this review is the new JBL top model within the noise canceling segment. The word ‘top model’ means many things, but first and foremost that these are headphones with a heftier price tag. What exactly you get for 349 Euro, we’ll talk about that in a moment, but because of the size of that amount, you already know that this JBL competes with several other premium headphones. Think of the Bose Noise Canceling Headphone 700 and the QC 35 II, the DALI IO6, the Denon AH-GC 30, the Sony WH – 1000 XM3, and a number of others. The Club One thus enters anything but an empty playing field. On the contrary, there is already a lot, and what there is is playing at a high level. Yet JBL manages to offer something slightly different with the Club One than the other participants.

Sturdy design You may have been aware of the Club One name and references to Armin van Buuren and co say that JBL wants to provide these headphones with a trendy clubbing look. The design is also completely based on this. Thanks to its all-black color, thick ear cushions, the well-padded headband and the hefty hinge system, the Club One balances perfectly between functional design and a premium look. Not easy to bring these two things together, but JBL has succeeded.

The luxury feeling is really there, partly due to the materials used and how these sturdy headphones are stings. It feels very solid and durable from the first moment. A real eye-catcher is the chamfer or the chamfered metal edge on the driver housing. It regularly reflects the light, which sometimes makes it seem as if the Club One has an illuminated stripe all around. It contrasts nicely with the jet-black appearance and also makes you think that more metal has been used than is really the case. A clever trick, that. The most important parts – in particular the three hinges per ear – are made of aluminum and come across as extremely strong. No squeaks and no play on the moving parts. This is what you expect at this price point.

All that toughness does yield a higher weight (378 gram) than some rivals, such as Bose and Sony. The fit is also more DJ-ian: the ear cushions are a bit larger (but cozy) and exert slightly more ear pressure. Nevertheless, we dare to say that the wearing comfort is very good. The Club One fits very well on your head, partly thanks to the thicker padding on the inside of the headband. Even if you don’t have hair on top – nothing wrong with that – it feels comfortable. If you wear headphones for a few hours, you have completely understood what the pros and cons are in terms of comfort. Besides the fact that you will experience some ear swelling due to the artificial leather of the ear pads (which is inevitable), the Club One scores very well. Thanks to the triple hinge system, it fits perfectly on your ears – and stays in place even when you move vigorously.

Done listening? The Club One folds into something relatively compact, so you can store it in the included hard case. That case is a bit narrow, because you have to make some effort to put the headphones in and then close it properly.

They Know What They’re Doing JBL is part of the Harman group, in turn part of Samsung. As a brand, it has a clear mission within the group: to appeal to younger music lovers. JBL does this with a specific design philosophy and targeted marketing, but also with a specific sound. Make no mistake, this aspect has also been carefully considered. JBL is not a brand that puts random products on the market, like some companies that want to score fast-fast with young people. It remains a company built on the deep audio know-how of the wider Harman group. For example, today JBL would consistently tune its headphones to the latest version of the Harman curve, a sound reproduction that is determined on the basis of large-scale inquiries. Some kind of greatest common denominator, you could say. That sounds negative and not everyone thinks this sound is perfect, but many do. And that is of course precisely the point: finding a sound that appeals to as many people as possible, not just tuning to the issues of the day or the taste of a haphazardly chosen marketer. JBL does adjust the curve and adds more bass to it than, say, sister brand AKG. After all, research shows that younger listeners prefer that.

The term ‘sound’ is a bit more relative at Club One. When we talk about the accompanying app, you will soon discover that you can change the sound radically. Most rivals can do that too, usually via an equalizer in the accompanying app. JBL offers Club One users slightly more choices: you can choose a sound from a well-known DJ at any time, opt for a genre equalizer (such as ‘jazz’ or ‘vocal’), or simply draw a curve yourself. You can do all this via the JBL Headphones app (iOS and Android).

Very good battery life The Club One is a wireless headphone and yet you will find a cable in the box back. You can even choose which side of the headphones you connect the cable to, because there are two inputs. And yes, a mini hype in headphone land this year appears to be the return of the curly cable that some associate with professional use. You also get one at the Club One. But why then supply cables? Simply because a cable or two is not a big cost, and that it is useful in some circumstances. If you use the JBL Club One wired, the battery will last longer, for example. Although Bluetooth chipsets have now become so efficient that the difference is no longer so great. If you choose the cable, the battery will remain 25 hours alive. With Bluetooth you only get two hours less. With the cable you can also use the JBL for exceptional situations, such as when you quickly need a headset to plug into an Xbox or DualShock controller. An autonomy of 25 hours with noise canceling and Bluetooth switched on is an above-average score. There are some wireless headphones that last longer, but 30 hours is more than enough so that you do not have to charge too often. Without NC but with Bluetooth, JBL claims an autonomy of 45 hours, and that is very good. And because the Club One already filters out a lot of ambient noise passively, you can really use it like that.

Special forces Including the WH – 1000 XM3 (and soon we suspect: the WH – 1000 XM4) from Sony offers you many options and settings through its app. At the other end of the spectrum is the very good sounding Dali IO6, without an app and without much customization. The Club One leans more towards the ‘many-extra-features’ side of this dichotomy, but JBL opts for a limited number of options that are especially useful. In full lockdown period, the house filled up with family members while the neighbors went into remodel mode, and we really appreciated the Silent Now feature, where the headphones keep working with noise canceling – even when not connected to a smartphone. It is really a calming agent. Most NC headphones cannot; if you turn off the Bluetooth connection, they will also turn themselves off after a few minutes.

If you rub the edge of the headphones with your thumb, you will feel a number of buttons. You immediately notice that JBL took ergonomics into account. Many devices come with buttons that are difficult to distinguish by touch, but with the Club One they are far apart so that you rarely accidentally touch the wrong one. On the left side you have a few keys that enable additional functions, such as noise canceling. You determine in the app what the bottom button does. In other words, with a short press of the button, you activate Ambient Aware (whereby ambient noise is partially passed through so that you don’t jump out of your skin if someone shows up behind you) or TalkThru (so that you can have a conversation without taking your headphones off). The difference between the two is that with TalkThru your music will play very quietly, while with Ambient Aware you can keep listening.

Functions like TalkThru work fine on their own, though we notice in practice that conversation partners often find it strange if you wear headphones while talking to them. But in an open office or on the road when ordering a coffee, there may be less social disapproval. We’ll try it out if we ever get to enter an open-plan office again. You can (de) activate the noise canceling by pressing the same bottom button a little longer. You will hear a different sound than if you switch Ambient Aware / TalkThru on or off, so that you know for sure what you are doing.

Train ride on an office chair When setting up the Club One, it takes some getting used to the thicker ear pads. They immediately isolate you from the environment, even before you switch on the headphones. We also notice this when we start our first test. Since we don’t really have many flights to press conferences or audio factories right now, to try out NC headphones, we use a video on YouTube (to be precise, this one ). It’s a four-hour recording of a train ride through a snowstorm, with a lot of rumbling in the low end, played as loud as possible on our iMac. When comparing A / B with the WH – 1000 XM3 we immediately notice that the Club One eliminates much less noise than the Sony. The noise cancellation on the JBL is very effective against low sounds, such as the roar of the wind. These are also the most annoying frequencies that tire you quickly. You still hear a lot of the tapping when the train wheels roll over the connections to the railway sleepers. With the Sony we approach almost complete silence, which is not the case here. But the noise cancellation is effective enough so that you can hear music well, and you experience less of a feeling of being completely cut off from the world. Something that some people find a bit scary.

When we then start listening to music, we don’t find that bit of sound that still comes through really disturbing. It almost completely fades into the background. We can concentrate perfectly on the slow beats of ‘Merrie Land’ by The Good, The Bad and The Queen (a project by Damon Albarn of Blur and Clash guitarist Paul Simonon, among others). We will of course try out the DJ Signature presets that you will find in the app at the Stage + screen, which is certainly worthwhile. There is really some difference and you have to judge according to your own taste what you like. For example, we personally found the Tigerlilly and Ryan Marciano presets a bit too nasal, while Armin van Buuren previously gave us the experience that the neighbors on the other side of the wall were finishing a playlist. If we had to choose, we would rather go for the preset from Sunnery James, who also made ‘LP5’ from German techno outfit Apparat sound the best. But in the end we prefer the ‘Custom EQ’, where we use the Club One Q preset (with a flat hill around 250 – 500 Hz) the most enjoyable. In the app, however, you have a lot of freedom to draw a curve yourself, which works well because you immediately hear what the result is.

You can of course look very suspiciously at EQ possibilities, but the personalization is just part of the JBL experience. The Club One also digests the adjustments you make very well. You don’t get the idea that you are asking the headphones to do something impossible that causes distortion. That is an indication that the Club One is basically well designed.

You have to be careful when trying out the different EQ options. Sometimes the music suddenly dared to play much louder when changing, which seemed like a bug to us. If so, we expect a software update to resolve the issue.

In urban genres, Club One acts like a fish in water.

) But also with other music styles it certainly does not perform badly. ‘War Anthem’, a regular test track by classical composer Max Richter, is very awe-inspiring on the JBL’s, precisely because the percussion (representing artillery) is deep and reverberates for a long time. But the cello line is also quite nicely laid out (although the Dali IO6 with a hi-fi approach presents, for example, just a bit smoother and more detailed). Ultimately, it comes down to your preference for basses: would you like a solid foundation for your music or not? The great thing about the Club One is that it delivers good bass and with a lot of impact and slam, without becoming overfat or woolly.

Conclusion The Club One is a strong entry in the premium segment. The noise canceling is relatively effective (even without NC, you hear little noise) and the autonomy is excellent. We fall for the handsome DJ appearance, which is combined with a durable build quality that is worthy of the pro world. But above all: they are headphones that offer a lot of experience, with a good bass reproduction that does not hinder the detailed reproduction. Pop, techno, hip-hop or other urban genres sound great on it, for rock and metal you might want to add some EQ. Add in a series of presets from famous DJs, and you have headphones that can accompany you for a long time and actively entertain.

JBL Club One

349 euro | www.jbl.com

Rating 4 out of 5