JBL Everest Elite 700 Review

While Sennheiser and Bose have been ruling over the high-end Bluetooth/Active-Noise Cancelling Market. JBL has amassed a wide collection of Bluetooth and Noise Cancelling headphones that shouldn’t go unnoticed. The Everest Elite 700 is JBL’s most advanced Bluetooth Active Noise-Cancelling headphone on the market right now. This headphone is comparable to Sennheiser’s Wireless Momentum and Bose’s QuietComfort 35.

JBL Everest Elite 700 Review

Design

Having a pretty streamlined and simplistic design the Everest Elite 700 comes off pretty sleek. The headband padding is a little firm and can become a little uncomfortable if not properly adjusted, but the earpads sit just right and have a good amount of cushion to them. The headphone has a lot of control functions on the earcups for volume, noise cancelling, and skip/play/pause for a lot of phone free control which is a really great feature that all Bluetooth headphones should have. The battery life in the headphones is pretty solid at 15 hours which gives days of listening when combined with the auto turn-off feature that I accidentally end up using every time I put down the headphones and walk away, whoops.

Noise Cancelling

The Everest Elite Series offers a controllable amount of noise cancelling called Ambient Awareness. Featuring 4 settings OFF which is complete noise cancelling , LOW which offers slightly less noise cancelling, MED which is a more open environment, and HIGH which is a very transparent setting. With the App you can control the amount of Ambient Awareness by ear and even completely turn off the Active Noise-Cancelling. While the features are nice the Noise Cancelling itself is not that strong and is only average while it should be stronger for a top of the line model.

Smartphone App

Like most companies JBL has designed a smartphone app for additional control over their headphones. I usually don’t mind smartphone apps but if they hide features from the user then I start to get a little miffed. While this isn’t entirely the case the TruNote feature is only available from the app, which tunes the headphones response based off your ear structure. Also only available from the app is the Medium Ambient Awareness setting. The UI is pretty basic and all of the information is available on one page. So you can easily monitor battery life, ambient awareness, and noise-cancelling. And what app would be complete without EQ settings, coming packed with standard EQ presets like Jazz, Vocal, and Bass. The App gives you the ability to create your own preset with a very generous 10-Band EQ to sculpt your preferred response.

Sound Quality

For an Active Noise-Cancelling Bluetooth Headphone the Everest Elite 700 offers a pretty good sound quality. Tonally the headphone have a warmer sound characteristic that bass lovers will enjoy. I feel like Active Noise Cancelling has a way of flattening out the sound quality so I try and avoid them for my listening sessions if possible. While the Everest Elite’s Noise Canceling can be turned off it doesn’t have too much of an affect on the overall sound quality just a slight volume increase.

Low End

Being more of a bassy headphone the Everest Elite 700 offers a good extension into the sub-bass territory, and gives things more of a punch than a detailed quality. The bass content can come off a little sluggish because of the additional coloration in the low end. There is more low end present in the Everest than the Momentum or QC 35.

Mid Range

The mids come through clearly while not overly detailed. There isn’t a revealing nature to the headphone so your getting a pretty standard experience in the mid range. Vocals come though powerfully and clear. All in all the mid range is present and full-bodied giving a slightly colored listening experience.

High End

The high end comes off a little darker which makes the upper end lose some detail and crispness. There isn’t as much extension into the high end as there is in the low end which makes the headphones lose the upper air and spacial depth of a refined high end. That being said the high end isn’t bad sounding at all, since the headphone is more focused on the low end and mid range, so it has a very conventional sound that a lot of listeners are accustomed to.

Overall Impressions

Offering a really good headphone for the price JBL has a product that most name brand competitors start offering at a $100 price increase. Through the conventional sound signature and long battery life the headphones are a good investment. JBL has packed a lot of additional technology & features into the headphones which are great, but in my opinion they could have worked a little more on the sound response of them. With that in mind it’s more of a fact that the sound signature isn’t my preferred type.

Recommendations

Definitely not a bad investment in a Bluetooth Active Noise-Cancelling headphone. Strangely enough one my favorite features is the ability to turn off the Active Noise-Cancelling. When not needed I dislike it’s affect on the sound quality and my ears, and when needed it can easily be switched on. The custom 10-Band EQ can help tune the sound to anyone’s liking and offer more precise control over the frequency response.