We looked for premium yet affordable wireless headphones in the market of Nepal and found these two JBL headphones: JBL E45BT and JBL E55BT. After using those headphones for a couple of weeks, here’s what we think about these two headphones. Let’s find out if they are worth buying or not.
Design
Being from the same E-series headphones from JBL, they share a similar design and pretty similar specs. Where they differ is the E45BT is an on-ear headphone whereas E55BT is an over-ear one. So, E55BT is little bigger and obviously a little heavier and packs the bigger 50mm dynamic driver and a bigger battery. They differ in pricing as well since you can grab the E45BT at 12,500 and the E55BT is priced a little higher at 15,800.
Both the headphones have soft and well-fitting leather padding on the earcups. The adjustable headband covered with fabric is as comfortable as it looks. The ear-cups can have 90 degrees of the rotation making it lay flat over the chest while wearing around the neck. And for easy carrying around, the headphones are foldable. However, the carrying pouch is not included in the box and needs to be bought separately.
Controls
Coming to the controls, the right earcup has all the controls and the buttons give satisfying click sound. The controls include power button, music control buttons and the Bluetooth button. These music control buttons are multi-functional ones as you can switch to the next or previous song by long pressing the volume up or volume down button. And in the case of incoming calls, you can answer it by pressing the play/pause button. I answered few calls through the headphone and the experience was pretty neat.
Connectivity
The Bluetooth connection was pretty decent. I left my phone on charge in one room and walked around another listening to music and I didn’t notice any skipping at all.
Performance
Coming to the performance, these JBL headphones didn’t let me down in their overall performances. Since they are from JBL, they have pretty dope bass and the vocals sound crisp with much clarity. They do handle mids and lows well enough. But the headphones crack a little when on full volume. But wait, who’s gonna put their headphones to the maximum, right? So, in overall, the headphone can be said to be a good performer for the music of any genre.
Battery
I’ve become a crazy fan of these headphones for their battery backup. You know what, I listened to the E55BT for a whole week with an average listening time of 3 hours each day before I plugged the headphone to the power for the first time. Again, after two hours of charging, the headphone gave me 19-20hours of music playback, which is simply awesome. And, the smaller E45BT has a lesser playback time of around 15-16hours. The box doesn’t include charging brick but only the charging cable that will work with your phone’s charging adapter. The box also comes with 3.5mm aux cable for wired use. That’ll come handy when the device loses its battery completely or when your music playback device doesn’t support Bluetooth.
Conclusion
To conclude, if you have a budget of around 15,000 and wanna buy some premium headphones then you won’t regret buying any of these headphones. As far as my preference is concerned, I think the best would be to buy the JBL E55BT which is an over-ear headphone that is more comfortable to ears and it has lesser music leak. And going with the bigger headphone, you’ll get to enjoy longer and a little better music playback as well.
