Headphones for calls – JBL Quantum 200 vs JBL Quantum 400.

I do many calls and my environment is often noisy – coffee shops, kids around, and ninja turtles on TV. I’ve tried finding headphones that have a good microphone and are comfortable for my ears. I believe the headphones need to be wired so I don’t charge them. I like retractable microphones. Over the last months, I used JBL Quantum 200 with a good success. Unfortunately, they broke so I bought a replacement. The local electronics shop only had Quantum 100 and 400, and here we are.

JBL Quantum 100 doesn’t have a retractable microphone but otherwise looks like my old headphones.

JBL Quantum 200 has a retractable mic with no cover and a roller for volume control. When folded, the mic is muted. That roller was a bit inconvenient until I got used to it because it would roll while the headphones were in my backpack. They broke soon-ish but come with a 2-year warranty.

Quantum 400 has a retractable mic with some cover, volume control, some other roller with unclear purpose, and a mute button. They also mute when the mic is folded.

Here are some mic samples from Starbucks, the speakers are right over my head and quite loud:

Quantum 200

Quantum 400

My backup Devia headphones for reference

Here is how they look.

The patch is not the broken old headphones, it’s the new ones. The reason is that the mute button is loose and makes a clicking noise that annoys me. So here I fixed it. I’ll upgrade myself with a fancier patch at some point.

Out of those three, my old JBL Quantum 200 headphones were the top pick. Sure, the 400s come with buttons, rollers, extra cables, and flashy LED lights packed in a fancy box. But, the loose mute button and the extra roller with no clear purpose actually made them worse. The microphone quality is sufficient in both.

Matt Mullenweg wrote a much more detailed post on the same subject – his recommendation was for a Sennheiser, which I followed 5-6 headphones back. The locally available set didn’t have a retractable microphone and couldn’t use it for calls from coffee shops. I moved on quickly.