Jabra is a well-known brand in the business world, thanks to its speakerphones and video conferencing devices and systems. The brand also designs and manufactures headsets and headphones for the consumer market and I look at their latest release, the Jabra Elite 85t earbuds.
Designed for music and calls, the Jabra Elite 85t earbuds are the company's most advanced earbuds and it shows. The design is very pleasing to the eyes, the fit is perfect and the mobile app is feature-rich - read on.
The small earbuds measure only 23.1 x 19.0 x 16.2 mm and weigh a minimal 7 g each. They are small and yet have all the tech inside, including 12 mm drivers that cover from 20 Hz to 20 kHz for music and 10 Hz to 10 kHz for calls, batteries, a chipset for sound processing, microphones, Bluetooth 5.1 and the control buttons.
These two earbuds fit inside a charging case, which can be charged via USB-C or by simply dropping it on any Qi-compatible wireless charger. A fully charge pair of earbuds can keep you going for almost 5.5 hours with active noise cancellation (ANC), and the charging case can recharge those for a total of up to 25 hours of sound before you need to plug it again and a fast 15-minute charge can give an hour of playback time.
Jabra says they have scanned and studied 62,000 ears to help design the earbuds. The earbuds were designed to fit comfortably inside your ears while keeping all that tech going. The new design also includes new silicone ear gels that have an oval shape instead of the usual round ones.
This is a good point to talk about the mobile app. When you connect the Jabra Elite 85t earbuds to your phone and first start the app you will be guided throug a series of options to adapt the earbuds to your unique profile. This includes a feature called MyFit that measures the audio inside your ear while the earbuds are fitted and determine if the positioning and the ear gels size are correct. This is done automatically and will give you recommendations to either refit the earbud or change to a different sized ear gel. The most impressive part is that this custom fitting is individual for each ear.
Another feature in the app is the MySound profile. The app will send different sounds to the earbuds and you give feedback by tapping on the screen when you hear the sound. Based on this the app create a profile of High, Mid and Lows that is just for you and sends this setting to the earbuds. The result is really an amazing sound quality with music that sounds great at any volume.
Each earbud has a flat control button that is basically the whole of its external surface. You can use the app to change the functions for each button - one, two or three taps. These include play/pause music, skip to the next or previous track, cycle through the noise cancellation levels or connect you to a voice assistant.
For voice assistant, you have the option of using the phone's default (Google Assistant or Apple Siri) or the built-in Amazon Alexa (this is my preference). If using Amazon Alexa you register the earbuds with your Amazon Alexa account and it works like any other Alexa-enabled device. Regardless of which assistant you use, you can access it by default with two taps on the right earbud.
The big feature of these earbuds is Active Noise Cancellation (ANC). You have access to three different modes which include Off, ANC and HearThrough. Both ANC and HearThrough have five different levels each 3 dB apart, adjustable from the app. You can assign different levels to three "Moments" so you can quickly switch them through the app - those are called "My Moment", "Commute" and "Focus".
You can also assign different equaliser levels to each moment with individual controls for bass, mid-range and treble or you can use some equaliser presets: "Neutral", "Speech", "Bass Boost", "Treble Boost", "Smooth" and "Energize".
The ANC is very efficient. I am talking seriously good here, similar to what you'd expect from a pair of headphones. The Jabra Elite 85t earbuds use six microphones to achieve this - including a feedforward mic to cancel incoming noises and a feedback mic to cancel internal noises - like your breathing and heartbeat.
And if you still need a bit of the external sounds you can cycle from ANC to HearThrough and be able to hear external conversations. A sidetone feature is also available for use during calls.
For those that want some help relaxing, the app also has a white noise function called Soundscape - just select from a list that goes from Crowd, Cavern, through Storm, Waves and Rain to Waterfall, Diving, Pink and White noise.
Lastly, the Find My Jabra functionality is a welcome addition to the app. Basically when the earbuds are put back in the case and turned off your phone will store the location at that point so later you can check on a map to see where the earbuds were last "seen". Brilliant.
The Jabra Elite 85t earbuds are not a sports kind of earbuds and while not completely waterproof, they are IPX4-rated meaning they are water splash resistant.
After experiencing these for a couple of weeks, I can say they are highly recommended. You can find the Jabra Elite 85t earbuds in New Zealand now.
