Forty hours of battery on a headphone that costs less than dinner is the kind of maths that makes you look twice. The JBL Tune 510BT lists around $49.95 and usually sells nearer $38, and the battery really is the reason to consider it: over 40 hours a charge, with five minutes on the charger buying about two more. It’s an on-ear wireless design, so the cups sit on your ears rather than around them, with a plastic chassis, fabric-wrapped cups that fold flat for a bag, Bluetooth 5.0 with multipoint, and a mic with playback controls on the cup. Charge it monthly. Forget about it.
Sound is bass-heavy with a lift below 150Hz and boosted treble, which JBL has been doing for years and which most people like. Overall reproduction is very good for the money. Listen properly though and the seams show: it’s boomy and grainy with a hazy, congested midrange and a closed, warm character that flattens busy music. There’s no aptX. Measured against everything else, they land around 5.9 out of 10. For podcasts and background listening on a commute it’s genuinely fine. For anything you’re paying attention to, it isn’t.
Battery is the honest headline and 40-plus hours at this price is real value. The fold-flat design travels well and the whole thing weighs very little. But on-ear is the format’s curse rather than a detail. The cups press directly onto your ears rather than around them, which is pretty unpleasant if you wear glasses, and the pads got hot and sticky on me inside two hours. Larger heads run out of headband adjustment. And the wrinkly fabric on the cups produces an audible rustle when you move, which you will notice once and then never stop noticing.
Bluetooth 5.0 with multipoint lets a phone and a laptop stay connected together, which is generous at this price. Controls are physical buttons on the cup, with a built-in mic for calls. There’s no active noise cancelling here, and passive isolation on an on-ear headphone is poor to begin with, particularly for low-frequency noise, so bus engines and air conditioning come straight through. If you’re shopping for quiet on a plane, this isn’t the shape of headphone that does it, and that’s a category limitation rather than a JBL failure.
Get these if you want cheap, light, long-lasting wireless headphones for podcasts, calls, and background music, and you don’t wear glasses. At under forty dollars the battery alone justifies it. Skip them if you want quiet, if you listen critically, or if you’ll be wearing them for hours at a stretch. The usual alternatives are the Sony WH-CH520 at similar money and the Jabra Elite 45h if you can spend more, or JBL’s own wired Tune 500 if you want to spend even less.
Pros
• Over 40 hours a charge at a very low price
• Multipoint, which is unusual this cheap
• Folds flat and weighs almost nothing
• Bass-forward sound that suits podcasts and pop
Cons
• No active noise cancelling, despite category listings
• On-ear cups are unpleasant with glasses
• Boomy, grainy sound with a congested midrange
• Fabric on the cups rustles audibly when you move
Our score: 6.3/10