Started at Rs 29,999 and now we are here…at Rs 9,999
We are talking of the JBL Club One. It was launched in July this year as the flagship of the JBL Club series, which was “inspired by touring musicians and pros like Armin Van Buuren and Nicky Romero.” And was priced at Rs 29,990. Yes, right alongside the Sennheiser Momentum 3, the Bose 700 and (at that time), the Sony WH-1000 XM3 (the XM4 now!).
Competition? What’s that?
Honestly, at that price, these headphones pretty much blow every other competitor out of the water. And that is because their feature set is extremely contemporary. The headphones come with 40mm graphene drivers, have a Hi-Res certification, and have an extraordinarily wide frequency response of 10 Hz to 40000 Hz, and adaptive noise cancellation that JBL claims cancel out external sounds. What’s more, noise cancellation can even be used without music, allowing you to just work in relative silence. Noise cancellation is actually quite good, a bit below the WH-1000 XM4 and Bose 700, but better than most below Rs 20,000. Battery life is in excess of forty hours (yep!!) and you can connect to multiple devices (two at a time) if needed. But the real strength of the headphones is their sound. And that is remarkably high quality. We have not heard the headphones ourselves for an extended period of time but their performance for the hour or two for which we used them was exemplary – and surprisingly, they were not as bass-heavy as we had expected. The sound was a little bass accented but vocals and other instruments also stood out well. Mind you, you can change that with a companion app that changes the tuning of the headphones according to that of selected DJs depending on the one you pick. It is definitely not the sort of “flat” or “neutral” sound that the audiophile crowd adores, (well, they ARE called Club One, Duh!) but there is no doubt that the sound you get is unlikely to be matched by too many headphones, not just below Rs 10,000 but even below twice that price.
Look great, sound great…and whattay price
The best we left for last – these are very well designed. Yes, they are a little heavy (from the short time we used them), but the materials used are premium and they totally cover the ear and are among the most comfortable we have used. Controls are button-based which might not be to everyone’s liking (we have those who love touch) but are solid enough, if slightly confusing (actually we did not use them long enough so again do not take our opinion as holy writ on this matter). All of which makes the JBL Club One perhaps the best headphones below Rs 10,000 at the time of writing. The Skullcandy Venue might give them some competition in terms of some features, but even they cannot match these in terms of sheer sound quality. This is DJ level sound. At a stunningly low price. Our advice? Get. Buy JBL Club One
