Enjoying music from your smartphone has changed over the years. We were once used to storing our purchased music on our device, listening via a 3.5mm audio jack and attached to our heads like a leash. Today, we stream music via subscription services, our phones don’t necessarily have 3.5mm audio jacks and we’re wireless. The phone can rest on the floor at the gym while we enjoy our music, it can sit on the desk while we take our calls and pace the room, and our swinging arms don’t get caught in wires as we go for a walk.
Finding the right bluetooth earphones for our lives is a tough decision in a now flooded market. Some will have a wire connecting the left and right buds but many are so wireless that all you have are two small ear buds waiting to connect to your phone for music and calls.
The Jabra Elite 65t is one of these solutions and we’ve been testing them for a few weeks now. The pair of earbuds are stored in a small black case which holds and charges the Jabra’s three full times. With each pair capable of 5 hours of usage, this means that you could listen to 15 hours of content before you need to charge the little package. Charging is done over micro USB.
The earbuds themselves aren’t just a basic speaker and microphone squeezed into the sides of your head. The 65t has four microphones combined with an acoustic chamber which enables advanced noise suppression and voice enhancement for every type of environment. These earbuds also allows music to be personalised using a music equaliser accessed from the Jabra Sound+ companion application.
The four microphones are not just used for making you sound really clear, they can also be used to capture and pass audio through to you of your surroundings. This is really important, the buds fit so well into your ears that it can feel like fingers pushed in. This isn’t exactly safe however it is great that the microphones can listen and relay that audio into your ears while not interrupting calls or music. That feature can be turned on and off, which is also important because when it is off you’re hearing yourself breathe, your steps, your sniffles, everything, all through your head, which is disturbing. We probably would have preferred a less tight fit so that we didn’t have that problem while also not requiring a feature to bring ambient noise back into the experience.
The audio from these little buds is however very impressive. You’ll almost put your hands to your head to double check you didn’t actually put larger over ear headphones on. The bass and treble are profound while the mid range is well expressed also. Listening to music on a daily commute to the office, taking calls or even commanding Siri or the Google Assistant is clear, vibrant and comfortably placed in your ears.
The Jabra Elite 65t comes in at $299, this is a slight premium over the Apple AirPods at $229. The design of the 65t was enough to convince us it was worth the extra spend due to how discreet it looks and the improved listening and hearing experience in calls and music accordingly. They’ll work with any bluetooth capable device and their charging case is so light, small and valuable that you’ll be surprised how rare you charge the product.
