JBL Everest 100
THESE FAIR-PRICED WIRELESS BUDS DELIVER GREAT AUDIO AND EXCEPTIONAL BATTERY LIFE.
FOR A LONG time, it’s been almost impossible to find a set of wireless in-ear headphones that doesn’t involve some sort of compromise — it’s like the old adage that you can ‘pick any two’ out of the three things you actually want. In this case, that trade off is between compactness, good audio quality and battery life.
The Everest 100s come about as close to ticking all three of those boxes as we’ve found. Physically, they’re about medium-sized when it comes to the in-ear Bluetooth category — there’s no neckband, meaning they can be bundled up quite small and easily carried in a pocket. Despite that, they offer battery-life that actually rivals some of their lower-end neckband competitors — at a claimed ‘up to 8 hours’, they’re about double what most other wireless in-ear sets deliver and they recharge via microUSB.
In testing, we found that audio-quality was generally great — depending on what you’re looking for. These are tuned to be crowdpleasing rather than flat and neutral; audiophiles might find them a bit too forward in the midrange, and they could perhaps be a little clearer and crisper at the top-end. They cope well with a wide variety of music styles, however; during our time with them, we listened to classical, rock, rap and jazz, as well as numerous podcasts and never found the audio wanting — and it always filled-out nicely, providing a rich and full-bodied sound.
Moreover, they’re even super-comfortable in-ear and easy to pop in and out, even if you’re using the optional rubber hook attachments that can help keep them a bit more stable (useful for when you’re exercising) — although, that said, we never had any problems with them falling out.
In sum, after using these wireless buds, it’s going to be genuinely hard to go back to any other set — and that’s, perhaps, the highest praise we can give.