Design and features:The Tune Buds has touch controls for music player transport, call connect/disconnect, noise cancellation on/off and ambient sound monitoring, and digital voice assistant activation; it also has volume controls, but they are disabled in the default setup. Either earpiece can be used alone for one ear monitoring of Bluetooth streamed audio and telephone communications. It supports Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and BIXBY digital voice assistants when used with Bluetooth devices that have those capabilities. The carrying case/charging cradle has built-in rechargeable battery that the manufacturer claims can be used to add an additional 36 hours of play time for a total of 48 hrs. with noise canceling off, or additional 30 hours of play time for a total of 40 hrs. with noise canceling on. The free JBL Headphones app download for Apple and Android mobile devices can be used to adjust and customize these earphones, and more.
Sound quality:The Tune Buds provide excellent active noise reduction and deliver sound quality that falls in the very good range - they reproduce music and voice very well although they do have some noticeable sonic quirks. The overall sound can best be summarized as somewhat bassy, grainy, and bright. With the Equalizer set to off and noise cancelation set to on using the JBL Headphone app (the as received state of the earphone) the bass (as in bass drums, bass guitars, stand-up bass, etc.) has good impact and goes deep, but is somewhat prominent and boomy. The midrange (voices, guitars, horns, etc.) is somewhat grainy, a bit hazy, and congested (think sonic traffic jam), and the mid and upper midrange is a bit prominent. The treble (cymbals, the upper range of violins, etc.) is extended, but is somewhat prominent and a bit sizzly (sounds that should have a delicate shimmer have a sound reminiscent of bacon frying) and smeared. The sound also has a good sense of liveliness and is somewhat open--sound-wise it almost seems like you don't have anything plugging up your ears. It also does a decent job of recovering the room ambience of recordings. The tone settings of the JBL Headphone app do have a noticeable effect on the sound of these earphones. These earphones provide excellent noise reduction across the entire frequency range with the low frequencies reduced the most. The noise cancelling electronics do not produce any background noise that is noticeable even in low ambient noise environments.
Comfort and Fit:As typical of in-ear models they produce a sense of pressure in the ear canal opening that might be uncomfortable for some.
Small
Users with small ear bowls might find that the earphone body feels a bit bulky in their ear bowl and that they stick out too far and feel like they may lever out of place, but that they will stay in place during casual use and are stable during fairly vigorous head movement.
Medium/Large
Users with medium and large sized ear bowls will probably find that this model stays in place with no problems for casual use and that they are stable during fairly vigorous head movement.
Incidental contact with the touch controls can cause unintentional playing/pausing or noise canceling engagement/ambient sound monitoring.
