JBL budget-friendly wireless earbuds are good all-rounders
JBL Tune 230 NC TWS. Pic: Noel Campion.
Like so many of the top audio brands, JBL has a broad range of true wireless earbuds and I’ve been testing its budget-friendly Tune 230 NC for the last few weeks.
The Tune 230 NC won’t win any design awards and the black variant I received for this review doesn’t feature any distinguishing accents. However, the long stem design and removable silicone ear tip are a tried and tested form factor that provides excellent comfort with a good fit and never felt like they would fall out of my ears.
The case is rounded edges and is a little larger than an AirPods case. It has a USB-C port for charging but it doesn’t support wireless charging. The buds are easy to put and remove from the case with perfectly moulded slots.
The JBL logo is embossed on the front of the case just under the lid and there are three LED lights that indicate battery status.
The Tune 230 NC come with lots of great features including IPX4 water and sweat resistance to protect them against light rain and sweat.
I bought my first pair of ANC headphones for travel and recently I got the opportunity to go on several long haul flights where good ANC headphones are a must. While I still prefer overhead cans for this, I was able to test several new in-ear headphones during these long flights. The Tune 230 NC have excellent active noise isolation and easily reduces the monotonous low bassy engine tones to a whisper.
Touch controls often work best on earbuds with long stems because you can hold the stem to place them in your ears without accidentally, triggering the touch controls. With tap gestures, you can toggle between ANC and Ambient sound modes. You can also control calls, playback and even summon the smart assistant of your choice. You can customise the controls to include volume control too but it’s not enabled by default.
The built-in support for the latest Bluetooth 5.2 is good to see and there’s also support for the excellent JBL headphone app which provides battery status for the buds and case. The app allows for firmware updates and the ability to create custom EQ settings and pick from a selection of presets.
The Tune 230 NC provide stellar battery life with up to 10 hours from the buds with ANC off and an impressive eight hours with ANC off. The charging case will provide up to 40 hours or 30 hours in total with ANC enabled.
A quick 10 minutes of charge provides a couple of hours of playback and it takes up to two hours for a full charge.
Out of the box, the Tune 230 NCs sound great. They’ve got that distinctive JBL tuning that most people will enjoy but thanks to the EQ customisation options in the app you can tweak the sound to your liking. Overall sound quality is good and nicely balanced for a broad variety of genres. I also found them good for listening to podcasts and YouTube videos with no perceivable issues with lip-syncing.
The call quality is good and callers said they could hear me clearly without hearing the ambient sounds in the background.
The JBL Tune 230 NC are good all-rounders with excellent sound quality, long battery life and one of the best ANC modes I’ve seen in true wireless buds in this price range. For the money, the 230 NC are easy to recommend.
JBL Tune 230 NC (available in four colours) Harvey Norman €59 (RRP €89)
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