IT Brief Asia - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
Story image
Hands-on review: Jabra Elite 75t earbuds
Thu, 11th Feb 2021
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Over the past few years, Jabra has been climbing its way to the top when it comes to audio devices. They especially shine when it comes to office-based products like their Jabra Evolve2 that I can't survive at the office without. This is why I was excited to take a look at the Elite 75t.

Design

The Jabra Elite 75t are well designed in comparison to other earbuds on the market. They are not too small and not too big, and they fit comfortably in my ears. They seem like they would be the right size to fit anyone. Jabra claims that the design was based on scans from different people's ears worldwide. While there is no way to prove that, the earbuds are still comfortable. They also fit in a way that feels secure enough for exercises like running or jumping. I was never worried that they were going to fall out.

The Jabra Elite 75t have a single button on each side. This button is used to control them. I like the fact that pressing and holding increases and decreases the volume, as with most other earbuds you have to do that from the phone. The play and pause are also quick and intuitive, and the buttons even allow you to activate the phone's assistant if that is something you chose to do. I personally refuse to talk to Siri in public.

The charging case is also well designed to be compact and efficient. One of my main problems with other earbuds, like the Airpods Pro, is that when you drop the case the pods will definitely fly across the room. Thankfully the case for the Elit 75t is designed with stronger magnets that prevent that.

Charging and battery

The Jabra Elite 75t uses USB-C and supports fast charging. This means the micro-USB wire next to our beds can finally die. The earbuds themselves have an 8-hour battery life when active noise cancelling is off and around 5 hours when it is on. That is an excellent playback battery life, as realistically no one will use their earbuds uninterrupted for longer than that. The case then provides an additional 20 hours of battery life. I've been using these for a couple of weeks, so I got into the habit of charging them before I went to bed. They never died on me.

Sound quality

Straight out of the box the Jabra Elite 75t sounds good for the most part. While it mostly has an all-rounded sound with well-defined high and middle notes, the bass can become a little too much on certain songs. Luckily, if that is not the user's preference, the earbuds are compatible with Jabra's EQ application. I highly recommend downloading the application and playing around with the equaliser. For me, once I fixed the bass, the Elite 75t became my go-to for listening to music on my walks.

Jabra also did an excellent job on the active noise cancelling. You need to make sure your earbuds are up to date with the latest software, but it works exactly as expected once that is done. It is as impressive as the Airpods Pro, which used to be my favourite earbuds for the noise cancelling, so that is saying a lot. While it does not provide 100% silence, I would say it removed 75% of background noise with no problems.

Verdict

The Jabra Elite 75t are a great well-rounded option for anyone in the market for new earbuds. They retail for around half the price of the AirPods Pro but can compete with them in every way. They look great, they feel good in the ears, they sound great, and they have a good battery and noise cancelling. I can definitely recommend them.