Recently, JBL released some earphone offerings for the budget-minded. The first we're checking out is the JBL J22i, a $59.95 (direct) in-ear pair with some seriously booming bass. If you favor a well-balanced relationship between highs and lows, this may not be your pair, but if you prefer to feel as if there's a subwoofer in your ears, pushing out intense lows, the J22i does so with gusto—something some pairs twice as expensive have trouble doing without distorting. It would be nice if the J22i balanced out its thunderous low-end with a bit more high-mid and high frequency brightness, but things don't veer too much into muddy territory, and the distortion-free delivery of the J22i is a pretty solid bargain at this price.

Design

Available in black or white with metallic and orange accents, the simple design of the J22i's($29.99 at Amazon) earpieces, which are emblazoned with the JBL logo, is given a little flair by the flat-style cable and inline remote with its bright orange button. The remote is actually of the three-button variety, so you can adjust volume as well as answer calls, play, pause, and skip tracks. This is the way all remotes would be ideally, at this point, but since I recently reviewed some budget and expensive options that are still going the volume control-free, single-button remote route, we'll call this is a plus on the affordable J22i.

The earpieces fit securely once you've fiddled with them a bit, but they never seem to create a great seal on the first try—this can be annoying, but using the included shirt clip helps take a bit of the cable tug out of the equation, and makes getting a secure fit easier.

The J22i ships with three pairs of silicone ear tips (small, medium, and large), a shirt clip, and a snap shut carrying pouch. Call clarity through the inline mic is fine; your call partner will understand you clearly enough.

Performance

On tracks with tremendous sub-bass content, like the Knife's "Silent Shout," the J22i does not distort, even at maximum volumes—although it produces vibrations at maximum volumes that seem to imply the drivers are awfully close to getting fuzzy. At reasonable listening levels, however, the J22i packs some serious bass thump, and the vibrations disappear. This is a pair of earphones for big bass lovers, pure and simple.

The drumming on Bill Callahan's "Drover' receives a healthy dose of low frequency boosting, and his baritone vocals do, as well. Luckily, there's enough high-mid presence to keep things from getting muddy and inarticulate, but his vocals would definitely benefit from a bit more treble edge. The J22i's bass-heavy mix has just enough high-mid and high frequency presence to keep things clear, but if you favor a bright sound, or crisp vocals, these earphones might not do it for you.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop lacks the crisp, bright punch on its attack that gives the mix more dimension. Instead, the loop here seems to exist mainly in the mids and lows, with a focus on its sustain rather than the attack of the beat. Meanwhile, the sub-bass synth hits that occur every so often beneath the beat are given some serious boosting. Even at moderate levels, the J22i sounds like it's packing a subwoofer inside. You can still hear the vocals on this track just fine, but they do battle with the massive low-end thump on this track the whole time.

On classical tracks, like John Adams' "The Chairman Dances," the overall mix seems less bass-heavy, mainly because the sub-bass range that the J22i focuses on the most occurs less often in an orchestral piece like this. The lower register strings and large drums still get a heavy dose of deep low end, which makes the piece sound more like a dramatically-mixed film score rather than a transparently-recorded classical track. Since the higher register strings and brass typically dominate this mix, they fare a bit better than high-mid elements in pop mixes—they can afford to lose a bit more presence and still sound bright enough. It's not an accurate sound we get here, but overall, it's more balanced than any other genre sounds through the J22i.

So, obviously, this pair is for bass lovers. If you're a purist on a budget, your options are limited, but consider the less bass-heavy, crisper Moshi Dulcia($236.47 at Amazon). If you can go up in price, the Shure SE215 and the Velodyne vPulse In-Ear Headphones are both solid options that match differing levels of bass response with crisp highs. And if $60 is still more than you'd like to spend, the RHA MA150( at Amazon) is just about the cheapest option we can recommend—but don't expect excellence. For the price, the JBL J22i is a bargain for bass lovers—you get an inline remote and mic for mobile devices, and you get distortion-free, deep low-end.

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