Pros & Cons
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- Powerful, bass-forward sound signature
- Fully waterproof, dust-tight design
- Highly adjustable and effective in-app EQ
- Strong battery life
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- Massive, hard-to-open charging case
- Annoying auto-off function
JBL Endurance Peak 3 Specs
| Connection Type | Bluetooth |
| True Wireless | |
| Type | In-Canal |
| Water/Sweat-Resistant | |
| Wireless |
JBL set its sights on the fitness crowd with the Endurance Peak 3 true wireless earphones ($99.95). A fully waterproof and dustproof design protects them from anything you might encounter at the gym, ear hooks help create a secure fit, and extensive battery life means you won’t need to waste much time near an outlet. They also deliver a quality audio experience with laudable bass depth. You don’t get active noise cancellation (ANC), but every other aspect of the experience is top-notch, earning the Endurance Peak 3 our Editors’ Choice award for affordable exercise-friendly earphones.
Durable and Secure
The earpieces, which are available in black or white, sport ear hooks that reach up and over the ear to help the units clamp gently into place. The resulting fit is exceptionally secure and we can't imagine these falling out even during intense workouts. The hooks don't interfere with my thick glasses frames, which isn't always the case for models with this design. The earphones ship with three total pairs of silicone ear tips in S, M, and L sizes.
Internally, 10mm dynamic drivers deliver a frequency range of 20Hz to 20KHz with an impedance of 16 ohms. The earphones are compatible with Bluetooth 5.2 and work with just the AAC and SBC codecs, not AptX. Android users get Google Fast Pair functionality.
The ear hooks cleverly function as a power switch—whenever the tips magnetically contact the body of the earpiece, the unit turns off. But this implementation can get annoying. If you ever need to temporarily remove them from your ears, make sure to prevent the tips from touching the body lest they shut down. Perhaps more frustrating, pairing them to your device for the first time can be challenging until you realize that the ear hook ends can't touch the earpiece enclosure, which they do by default. JBL illustrates this requirement in the included quick start guide, so make sure to consult the documentation.
You tap the outside of the earphones to control them. It takes some practice to figure out the optimal place to tap the capacitive touch panels because they offer more surface area than most models. The controls feel responsive once you figure that out, though the layout could be more intuitive. By default, one tap on the left earpiece toggles between Ambient Aware and Talk Thru modes. One tap on the right earbud handles playback, two taps take you to the next track, and three taps skip back to the previous track. You can customize these controls to a degree in the companion app.
JBL continues to up the ante with its waterproof offerings—this is the second pair of earbuds we’ve recently tested from the manufacturer with an IP68 rating (the other is the JBL Reflect Aero). They are fully dustproof and you can submerge them in water at depths beyond a meter for more than 30 minutes. The advantage of such a rating is that neither a downpour nor a sweaty workout should cause problems. You can confidently clean them off under a faucet or dunk them when they get dusty.
The IPX4 charging case is massive, difficult to open, and has a slippery surface; a rubber exterior or silicone lip on the lid would have gone a long way to improve the experience. The back houses a USB-C port for the included USB-C-to-USB-A charging cable.
JBL estimates the earbuds can last roughly 10 hours per charge, but your results will vary based on your typical listening volume level. The charging case holds an extra 40 hours of battery life. The company claims that 10 minutes of charging gets you roughly an hour of audio playback and that you can recharge the earphones completely in about two hours.
JBL Endurance 3 App Experience
The JBL Headphones app (available for Android and iOS) displays an image of the product on the main screen, alongside a battery life readout for each earpiece. Below this, the Ambient Sound Control section allows you to switch between Ambient Aware and TalkThru modes, or turn off both.
Scroll down to get to the EQ section. Here, you can select between several presets, as well as create a custom EQ curve (with up to 21 points in testing). It ranges from 32Hz to 16KHz, and the adjustments make a noticeable difference in the sound profile. Simply, this EQ is among the best we've tested in any companion app.
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Elsewhere, the Gestures section lets you customize what various taps accomplish. Below that, a Voice Aware section lets you adjust how much of your voice you hear on calls. On Android devices, you can also assign Google Assistant access to a press-and-hold gesture on the earpiece of your choice. Another option enables the earbuds to switch between video and audio modes automatically. The former decreases latency so dialogue matches more closely with mouth movements on screen, whereas the latter offers higher quality sound at the expense of slightly more latency.
Otherwise, the app offers the standard options for toggling voice prompts and updating firmware. Overall, we like the app experience because it is simple and effective; you won't find much clutter or many unnecessary features.
Clear, Bass-Forward Sound
On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the earphones deliver powerful low-end thump. They don't distort at top volume levels and still produce robust bass depth at more moderate volumes.
They didn't have any trouble reproducing the sub-bass tones at the 34-second mark of Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty.” As the synth line descends deeper into the subwoofer realm, the drivers deliver the rumble with gusto, while the various vocal performances on the track sound crisp.
Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the sound signature. The drums on this track get some additional heft that makes them sound full, but never overwhelming. Callahan’s baritone vocals benefit from some extra low-mid richness, while the acoustic strums exhibit plenty of definition. The drivers certainly push the bass harder than the highs, but the track never sounds muddy in the slightest. If you want to add a little more high-mid presence, the in-app EQ can easily accommodate.
On orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary, the earphones present the lower-register instrumentation with a bit more body and depth than is natural, but not to the point that they drown out the higher-register brass, strings, and vocals.
Both of the ambient modes, Ambient Aware and TalkThru, are easy to use and present surroundings clearly. The TalkThru mode isn't entirely necessary, however, because the Ambient mode is just fine for having conversations without removing the earphones from your ears.
The mic array works well. We didn't have any trouble understanding every word of a test recording from our iPhone, and the mic signal sounds strong and crisp.
Fitness Front-Runners
JBL's Endurance Peak 3 earphones are a fantastic option for fitness fanatics. Their bass-forward sound signature makes them ideal for motivating your workouts, their in-ear fit is exceptionally secure, and a best-in-class IP68 rating means you don’t have to worry about dust and water exposure. We also appreciate the long battery life, despite the charging case’s cumbersome design. For all these reasons, the earphones earn our Editors’ Choice award in the budget-friendly fitness segment. If you're looking to spend even less, you can get the waterproof Tribit Flybuds 3, though their sound signature is much more sculpted and not adjustable.