Okay Google: make Assistant be on JBL's Everest headphones! Premium JBL over-ear and in-ear cans get an AI makeover

published 8 January 2018

People like headphones and people like AI assistants. Put them together as JBL has with its Everest wireless in-ear and over-ear cans and the result could be purest tech gold. Or at the very least, some already-excellent headphones gain some extra functionality.

The JBL Everest TM 710GA premium over-ears and 110GA in-ears (in Gunmetal and Mountain Silver colour options) get Google Assistant from autumn this year.

JBL is positioning it as a convenient way to control your music when on the move, but you also get all the rest of the GA functionality, from perusing calendar appointments to hearing the news and weather to turning on your smart bulbs. All you have to do is touch the ear cup and speak, "simple phrases like, 'volume up/down', 'tell me about my day' or 'play pop music'."

Audio quality and comfort should be well up to the usual JBL standard, and battery life is up to 25 hours for the over-ears and up to 8 hours for the in-ears, with connectivity via Bluetooth 4.1.

• Pricing? €249 and €99.99. UK pricing is TBC but we expect about £219 and £79.

In other JBL news, the Samsung/Harman Kardon subsidiary refreshed its Bluetooth speaker range with the GO 2 portable waterproof speaker, Clip 3 clip-on speaker Xtreme 2 rugged speaker.

Prices will be £30, £50 and £279 respectively, with the cheaper speakers coming in a huge variety of colours. Launch dates are spring for the ultra-portables and summer for the heftier Xtreme 2.

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Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years.

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."