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JBL OR300 Headphones Review - Do Not Buy!

dougchism
Expert Protege
These are headphones for the oculus rift that are supposed to be a big step up in audio quality. I picked up a set of these about 3 weeks ago and immediately thought they were broken. There was zero base, and by that I mean the audio below a certain frequency is clipped making everything sound bizarre. For instance people voices sound like they inhaled helium, music sounds completely different and weapon and explosion noises and such are bizarre and odd sounding because they lack the punch of the base. 

After dealing with JBL customer support which is pretty lousy if you are used to amazon, I got an exchange. It took them almost 3 weeks to arrive, because they wont send the replacements until they receive and evaluate your return, and return shipping is not nearly as fast as when you purchase.

I got the replacements in this afternoon and to my horror, they suffer the exact problem! I suppose its possible they just sent the originals back after passing some sort of diagnostics, or they made a bad batch, and they all have malfunctioning parts but either way they are completely unusable. I just got off the phone with them for processing my return. 

My advice, stick with the stock ones, they are really good and the alternatives are awful! 


4 REPLIES 4

flexy123
Superstar
I agree that the stock headphones are REALLY, REALLY good in terms of sound quality - they only have one disadvantage that they don't block outside sounds at all. For me no problem (except that my wife sometimes complains what shitty music I am listening to since I love European 90s EDM which is mostly very cheesy) 🙂

If for some reason you want sound blocking and good audio quality, you can consider IEMs (In-Ear-Plugs). I am a cheap guy but I recently came across talks on the internet about extremely cheap Chinese IEMs which are supposed to be excellent. (I am still waiting for them in the mail). The brand is KZ, and some of the best KZ plugs are supposed to be the KZ ZS3 and according to reviews the KZ EDR1 (which I have coming in the mail to check out). When I mean *cheap* I mean cheap,, these are IEMs which you can buy at ebay or dx/gearbest for $5, the ZS3 about $12. However, the KZ guys are former Audio-Technica engineers and the reviews etc. are all very good.

I consider ear plugs/headphones a "consumable" so I would never spend a lot of money on them, mainly also because my cats love to eat them.

As for your JBLs....seeing that Oculus did a really good job with the vanilla ones I have difficulties seeing that they could offer crappy ones without bass etc. (I am a bass-head pretty much) and JBL is not an unknown company either. Maybe it's something with your sound settings?

dougchism
Expert Protege
Yes its possible its a configuration issue, but I tried them on 2 different computers so if that is the issue, its something that windows defaults to. I agree its very odd that a big company like JBL who advertises the product as having a lot of base, would actually have none, but this is the only conclusion I can come to with what they sent me. I am truly disappointed I have to get a refund but I cant risk keeping them past the 30 days. 


revmouse
Explorer
Bought the OR100 earbuds. love them. so much better than the over the ear HPs that came with the rift. Still not as good as my Razer KRAKENs.

matskatsaba
Adventurer
Bought the Denon DJ DN-HP1000 for gaming some 10 years ago. So far, nothing was able to beat it.
I have mentioned it a few years ago, but it's simple: If you want professional quality, simply just buy the professional equipment. It might cost a few hundred dollars but it won't break in a year.
JBL is something like Beats by Dre. Looks cool, promising brand, but in reality, a piece of overhyped poop.
Going to cinemax and noticing 30% of the jbl speakers were already broken with noticeable sound distorsion should have warned you.
Probably the lower frequencies are cut off with a HPF since I imagine their speakers would shit themselves trying to go below 100hz.