JBL Tour Pro 3 – earbuds whose case is a touchscreen and an airplane dongle

Long flights have a cruel little ritual. Fancy wireless earbuds in your pocket, a movie on the seat screen, and a headphone jack that only takes a cable. So you end up watching a superhero movie through the free foam headphones from the seat pocket. Sad.

The JBL Tour Pro 3 fixes that in a very JBL way. They’re noise cancelling earbuds whose charging case has a 1.57-inch touchscreen, and that case doubles as a wireless transmitter. Plug it into the plane, and the sound goes straight to your earbuds.

I didn’t know I wanted a charging case with a screen. Now I kind of do.

What is the JBL Tour Pro 3?

JBL, the American audio brand owned by Harman, launched the Tour Pro 3 in August 2024 as its flagship true wireless earbuds. They’re the follow-up to the Tour Pro 2, which JBL sold as having “the world’s first smart charging case”.

The earbuds themselves have two drivers each: a balanced armature for the highs and a dynamic driver for the bass. There’s adaptive noise cancelling, LDAC support for hi-res Bluetooth audio, spatial sound with head tracking, and six microphones for calls.

But you’re here for the case, so let’s talk about the case.

How does the smart case work?

The case has a small color touchscreen. JBL says it’s 30% larger than the one on the Tour Pro 2, in a smaller case. From the screen you can skip songs, change the volume, switch noise cancelling modes, see who’s calling and check the battery. You can even set your own photo as the lock screen. Very important. Mostly a photo of your cat.

The clever part is the transmitter mode. The box includes a USB-C to 3.5 mm cable. Plug the case into an airplane seat, a laptop or a gym treadmill, and it streams that audio to your earbuds. JBL says the direct link between case and earbuds is more stable and has lower latency than regular Bluetooth.

The case also supports Auracast, the new Bluetooth broadcast standard. On paper, you can share what you’re listening to with other Auracast headphones from the case’s screen.

The good and the not-so-good

What I like:

• The airplane trick. No more seat-pocket foam headphones, and no separate dongle like the Twelve South AirFly Pro 2 to lose in the overhead bin.
• You can leave your phone in your bag and still control everything.
• The reviewer at Crutchfield started out skeptical about the screen and came around once he used it to switch to ambient sound with his phone out of reach.

What could be better:

• 91mobiles found the screen a bit gimmicky, since the phone app does the same things, and called it small and fiddly.
• Some early buyers mention software hiccups in retailer reviews.
• The launch price was about 300 bucks. Even on sale, these aren’t impulse-buy earbuds.

Who is the JBL Tour Pro 3 for?

Frequent flyers, first of all. If you’ve ever untangled a dongle in a dark cabin, this one’s for you. It’s also a fun gift for the gadget person who already owns AirPods and thinks they’ve seen everything earbuds can do.

If you mainly want to hear the world around you while running or cycling, open earbuds like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds make more sense. And if you prefer big over-ear cans on the plane, look at the Nothing Headphone (1).

Where can I buy the JBL Tour Pro 3?

Amazon sells the JBL Tour Pro 3 in black and in a light “latte” color. At the time of writing (October 2026) the black pair was about 230 bucks, down from a list price of about 330.

Earbuds with a tiny TV remote for a case. Take my money!