JBL Vibe Beam Review

The JBL Vibe Beam is a shoot-and-miss, entry-level pair of wireless earbuds that sound mediocre at best.

Performance Comparison

Sound Quality

Our panel of expert listeners put the JBL Vibe Beam through their paces, listening to an extensive playlist and scoring their experience. They found the sound to be consistently subpar across all genres.

While the sound feels muted across all frequencies, the midrange is clear enough to pick up on subtle details, like the distinctive shift in harmonies at the 3:51 mark of “Emotional Detachment Demo” by Jessie Reyez.

The bass and treble frequencies struggle. The bass is present but faint in most tracks. (Thankfully, if you turn the volume up to increase its power, it never distorts or blows out.)

At the same time, the mid and treble tones can sound piercing, especially in the higher frequencies. For example, the cymbals in “Supercut” by Lorde, starting at 0:16, are flinchingly sharp at high volumes, leaving you to choose between a weak bass line at low volumes and shrill high notes if you turn it up.

Soundstage

The soundstage, or the sense of where music is located in a three-dimensional space, is typically limited in earbuds. As sound tech advances, it's increasingly possible for earbuds to make the music seem as though it's coming from the world beyond your ears.

While these earbuds create a limited and confined soundstage, they do offer a large enough sonic landscape to allow listeners to pick out individual sounds and textures. There is enough clarity to identify and locate instruments in space.

When listening to “Worth It” by RAYE, we're pleasantly surprised by how good the song sounds. The world it builds is compact, but we still enjoy the tones of each instrument and appreciate the way they blend together. While these earbuds can't create a mind-expanding experience, they can be enjoyable.

Finally, we put these earbuds into in a high-tech sound testing rig and measured their frequency response. We checked it against our GearLab House Curve and then scored the JBL's based on its discrepancies. These earbuds deviated from our curve in the bass and treble ranges more than most other buds that we tested. Surprisingly, it managed to keep up with our preference curve in the upper-mid range but was otherwise drowned out by poor overall performance.

All told, the Vibe Beams can't be recommended if sound quality is a priority. Even at this entry-level price point, there are better options if sound quality is what you care about the most.

User Experience

We tested how the JBL Vibe Beam fit in various ear shapes and sizes. Then, we ran through a stress test to see how well they stayed secure during physical activity. Finally, we tested their accompanying app for ease of use and customizability.

Comfort

The Vibe Beams fit quite well across the board. From small to large ears, you can expect these buds to fit comfortably.

Stability

Though they fit comfortably, users may struggle with the stems getting caught and pulled out of their ears because of how far the stems stick out. This makes it hard to recommend these for physical activity unless you have large enough ears to accommodate these buds.

Customization

These buds have decent app functionality, working on both Android and Apple devices and allowing for EQ adjustability. They have an “Ambient Aware” mode, allowing the listener to hear their environment more clearly if they choose to, and they even have a location tracking feature. Many of the more premium competitors on our lineup don't have many of these features, and while not perfectly executed by JBL, it is nice to see them at this price point.

Connectivity

While we can only describe the sound quality of the Vibe Beams as mediocre, it was at least consistent. Our in-house testing team did not have any trouble pairing the earbuds or randomly losing connection mid-song, nor did we experience any variability in sound quality while listening. We also performed a review of 1-star Amazon user reviews, keeping track of all the ones that mention connectivity issues. We converted that into a percentage of total user reviews for each model so we could fairly compare ratios between different earbuds. The Vibe Beams have a reported issue rate of 0.22%, which shows that other users also experienced a relatively low rate of connectivity issues.

Noise Cancellation

While the JBL Vibe Beam earbuds do not have active noise cancellation (ANC), we still tested their ability to passively seal out background noise using our testing rig.

Due to their secure fit, they do a decent job of blocking out noise, per the graph below. The passive seal does best in the treble and high-mid ranges, but low frequencies still find their way in.

These are not ANC levels of isolation, but better than many in our lineup. They also have an Ambient Aware mode that can allow all background noise through if you want to hear your environment better.

Battery Life

To test the battery life of the JBL Vibe Beam, we set them to a fixed gain level and then let them play until they die.

The Vibe Beams performed very well here, with a whopping 9 hours and 10 minutes of playback, 1 hour and 10 minutes longer than the manufacturer claims. You can charge them another three times using the charging case for a total of 27.3 hours of playback before needing to plug them in. A 10-minute quick charge will also net you another 2 hours of playback. Overall, this was the best performance we saw at this price point, even outperforming many of their premium competitors.

Call Quality

To test the microphone quality of the JBL Vibe Beam, we set them up in our testing rig and played phrases in various simulated background environments. Below, you can listen to recordings of what these earbuds sound like in our tested environments (remember to unmute the video).

In a transit setting like the Subway, the background is even more noticeable, and lower voices remain clear while higher-pitched voices become harder to hear.

In an office environment, background noise becomes noticeable, but voices are still clear.

These buds sound great at baseline, with voices audible when speaking in a quiet room.

Should You Buy the JBL Vibe Beam?

If you're on a strict budget and sound quality is your top priority, the JBL Vibe Beam buds are not the best option. However, if you don't care too much about good sound and just want a comfortable pair of affordable wireless earbuds that have great battery life, these are a decent option.

What Other Earbuds Should You Consider?

With that strict budget in mind and an ear for more quality sound, the options still aren't amazing, but both the Amazon Echo Buds 2023 and the Bmani Sport with LED perform better in this metric. If you're willing to spend a bit more, both the Jaybird Vista 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro had much better listening experiences and a slew of improved features over the Beams.