Quiksilver JBL on-ear headphones review

Quiksilver and JBL have come together to create these fantastic and stylish on-ear headphones.

As seems to be the trend of headphone recently, the Quiksilver JBL On Ear Headphones sound like they’ve been optimised for dance music, the bass response is outstanding. You almost expect to feel the floor shake with the beat and they deliver this deep and rich bass without sacrificing clarity. the higher frequencies are clear without sounding shrill, even at high volumes there’s no distortion or piercing sound.

Sadly the mid range does seem to lack the clear nuance of the low frequencies. This does lead to acoustic and rock music sounding muddier than they would on headphones with a flatter output. That being said, I am being picky here, with so many different styles of music out there it would be near impossible to make a headset that suits all styles, I can’t blame Quiksilver and JBL for hedging their bets by delivering the best sound for dance music.

The design has a 3D axis folding system so you can pack them down to a more convenient size, however doing this does feel risky. The strap appears to be a little too flimsy, it may be flexible enough to take the shock of dropping the headphones on the floor but you do get the sense they could snap if twisted too much. One advantage of the plastic material used for the head strap is that these headphones are really lightweight, they’re super comfy and they’ve also got a closed back design so a lot of ambient noise is isolated. The closed design also means that a lot less music escapes, perfect for wearing on a long haul flight.

The headphones also come with inline controls with hard gold-plated jack plug compatible with:

• iPod nano 5th generation
• iPod touch 2nd generation
• iPod nano 4ht generation
• iPod classic (120GB/160GB)
• iPod shuffle
• iPod touch 3rd generation
• iPhone 4G
• iPhone 3GS
• iPad

The headphones are available in black and white.

Gillan Williams