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I have spent the last couple of weeks with the new Jabra Elite active 75t and I have to say I am impressed. Until now, it has been tough to find an In-Ear headphone that is both good sounding and functionally feature rich. I have been using the Bose Sound Sport Free for the past year and although I love them for music, the inability to have a phone call or zoom call go through both ears was driving me nuts.
The first thing that jumped out at me was the app that was recommended I download. The app is feature rich and even features the ability to ‘find my Jabra’. We have all been in the situation where we have left our headphones somewhere and that is never any fun. These In-Ear headphones also come with different size rubber rings. Everyone’s ears are different and having the versatility to chose the correct size is key. I have tried many different type of headphones, and if you can’t get them to fit without falling out then there is no point.
There are a couple of tech features that really impressed me with these new Jabra. The fist is ‘hear through’ technology. Everyone loves the idea of noise cancelling headphones, however there are times you want to hear the world around you. A cyclist for example needs to be aware of traffic. A simple tap on the left ear will enable or disable hear through. If the outside noise is always cancelled out it could be dangerous. This is achieved by the mic being enabled and allowing some noise in. Being able to adjust volume by holding down the right or left ear I found super convenient. I was on the driving range hitting golf balls and some songs are just louder than others. Being able to adjust this without pulling my phone out was super handy.
The next thing that was fun to play with was the Sound + App. The different Equalizer settings were done really well. You can set it to be heavy on speech, neutral, bass heavy or even energetic. It seems as if Jabra is trying to cater to how you as the listener want to hear your content. I was able to customize what each press does as well. There are tons of options, but should you just want to be able to control volume you can do so and leave the rest of the functionality turned off. I like that I wasn’t forced to have to use all of it. There is also a section dedicated to ambient noise like ‘ocean’ or ‘rainy day’ should you wish.
My last and favourite part was the Jabra ‘My sound’. I have enjoyed the benefits of calibration when it comes to home audio, but to have them on a headset was wonderful. I was impressed with the frequencies it used to calibrate sound based on the sensitivity of my ears. The process takes about 2 minutes and you need to be in a quiet room. After the calibration, the headphones came to life. I had found the ‘stock sound’ of the head phone to be average. After calibration I would put them right up there with the Bose Sound Sport Free I currently use. I found my music could really ‘breathe’. The bass was responsive and there was very little if any distortion with the high treble notes. The calibration really opened up the headset to sound like I was more listening to an Over-Ear larger headset.
There were a couple of things that I didn’t love about the headset. The first was that there is no where on the case that you are able to see the battery life. You can see it on the app if the headphones are connected however that’s it. In order to check and make sure I have enough juice for the next day, I have to not only open the case but take out the buds and put them in. Then I need to wait for them to pair and open the app.
The second thing I didn’t love was that if you don’t open the app, the headphones sound lifeless and you are forced to learn all of the various functions of the buttons. I realize this is a first world problem, however you do need to spend some time setting them and your preferences up for these to really come alive.
Overall I love these. The sound quality after calibration was far beyond my expectation. The app itself deserves to win an award with its functionality. Being able to track your lost headphones, calibrate the sound based on your ears and even being able to turn on calming sounds like ‘ocean’ or ‘rainy day’ directly from the app is impressive. There are a couple things I didn’t love, however that list was rather short compared to the positives.
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