After the excellent Jabra Elite 85t and its great active noise cancelling, the new Elite 3 model is an option for those who want great music performance and passive noise isolation at a more economical price point.
You probably guessed the main difference between the top-of-the-line Jabra Elite 85t and the new Jabra Elite 3 is the lack of active noise cancellation you will find on the more expensive model.
But the Jabra Elite 3 makes up for it with great quality sound and an active HearThrough feature that helps you interact with the world even while wearing the earbuds.
Even though these different earbuds look very similar you will notice the new Jabra Elite 3 is actually even smaller than before, providing a very comfortable fit. The company has also tapped into insights from its research work into more than 62,000 unique human ear scans, allowing them to redesign their products to create a unique shape that fits a wide range of ears.
You control call and music playback through flat buttons that cover the surface of both left and right earbuds, making it very easy to interact with the earbuds while on a call or during music playback – single, double and triple taps each have different functions, as well as holding the buttons. For example, push and hold the left button to reduce the volume or push and hold the right button to increase it. In some cases, feedback comes in the forms of tones for example when you take the earbuds out of the case or when you turn HearThrough on or off using a double tap on the left earbud).
Apart from being very comfortable, the Jabra Elite 3 brings sound to life with its 6mm speakers and a selection of music equaliser presets available through the Jabra Sound+ app. These include Neutral, Speech, Bass boost, Treble boost, Smooth and Energise. The sound quality also greatly benefits of its support for Qualcomm aptX HD audio, which should work with most modern phones to give you that high-definition audio you crave.
In real life, these earbuds sound great with nice and deep bass.
The app also allows you to turn the HearThrough feature on and off, as well as to configure the voice assistant you want to use. Here the options are the Android default assistant or use the built-in Alexa assistant (which means even if your default assistant is Google Assistant the Jabra Elite 3 will use Alexa without any additional software on your phone).
For voice calls, the Jabra Elite 3 uses four microphones (two on each earbud) to make sure your voice is easily captured. This works well and calls are crystal clear.
The Jabra Elite 3 can be paired with up to six Bluetooth devices, including phones, computers or tablets. In my tests, it only connected to one device at a time though.
The case doubles as the charger and spare battery – if you run out of power on your earbuds after seven hours just pop them into the case and get more charges for up to 28 hours total playback. A quick ten minutes charge gives you an extra hour and if you do run out of power just plug a USB-C cable to recharge everything again. The case lid stays shut thanks to a small magnetic lock.
Lastly, Jabra Made the Elite 3 shower resistant (IP55), which means you can wear these earbuds while out and about, even while raining.
Another interesting feature is the Find My Jabra function in the Sound+ app, which logs the last location of your earbuds when you turn them off (push both buttons at the same time) or put them back in the case. You can then use the app to see where they were the last time you’ve used them.
The Jabra Elite 3 is available in New Zealand from mid-October 2021.
