Jabra Elite 4 True Wireless Earbuds – Active Noise Cancelling Headphones – Discreet & Comfortable Bluetooth Earphones, Laptop, iOS and Android Compatible – Light Beige

I’ve had these for about a week now, and overall pleased with them. I’m not certain they are worth the price tag though. I’ll explain.

I got these as an upgrade from some older bluetooth earbuds I have. My old earbuds sound GREAT, I mean really fantastic. Completely satisfied. Coulax QY8 in case you were wondering. The Coulax earbuds were less than $30, and have a wire between the two buds (battery on one side, processor on the other, so the wire is necessary). Recently the battery has been dying quickly and I needed to move on.

So, I thought I’d splurge and get true wireless earbuds, and figuring I’d spend a good deal more money, I would get a good quality product from Jabra. So, I’ll say at the beginning: It is a good quality product.

– The sound is good. A bit bass heavy, which I don’t mind, and not *quite* as clean as my old earbuds. I’m not saying I’m dissatisfied with the sound quality here – it’s very good, but worth another $200? No.

– The build quality is very nice. The buds are impressively compact and I commend Jabra for making something that doesn’t stick way out of your ear.

– Battery life appears to be “meh”. I haven’t drained them very far, but it seems like they wouldn’t last the 5.5 hours they claim. I will test this more accurately when I have the time. They fire a “pause” command when you remove them, so I have to carve out 6 hours one day to wear them. I guess I need to catch up on some movies (Amazon Prime, of course). I’ll update this post when that happens.

– The charging case and the fit of the buds in the charger is nice. All magnetic positioning makes it easy to place and pull. I like that the case has USB-C.

– Connectivity is fantastic. I had absolutely zero problems connecting to both my phone and computer (MacBook Pro) and there doesn’t seem to be any glitching when doing this. They connect so quickly that I can’t even get them in my ears before they are ready to go. My Coulax buds always had issues with establishing a connection.

– Noise cancellation (ANC) is really good. One thing that I liked about my old earbuds is that they are “closed” and block out the sound that way and that was quite satisfactory for me. These are “open” and I wasn’t sure how much I would like that, but my fears were unfounded. The “open” nature of these doesn’t push or suck your eardrum when putting in or taking out, or adjusting. I like that a lot. And with ANC on, I can’t hear my wife yelling, so that’s a plus (I kid). No really, background noise just goes away. Sometimes I find I’m wearing them without playing any music because it’s nice and quiet. You can shut ANC off, and also enable “hear through” where the mics will pass what they pick up to you. I probably won’t use that feature very often.

– They are comfortable and don’t feel like they are going to fall out of my ears. I can shake my head fairly vigorously and they stay put just fine. They have an oval soft rubber tip in three different sizes and I think they will fit any ear well.

– The accompanying software for your phone is “ok”. Nothing to write home about, but it lets you configure your earbuds with custom eq settings, button control settings, and a few other tweaks. What I like about it is that the configuration is uploaded to the earbuds themselves, so the config works the same way with my computer. You can also upgrade the firmware on the earbuds through the app, but I don’t see a big need for that.

So, overall, I’m satisfied with these earbuds. I’m just not happy about the price point versus what you get. I would guess that Jabra is making at least $100 profit on each one they sell, probably a good bit more. I understand about the R&D that goes into the product, but given the volume of sales, they are making a killing. And yes, I contributed to their profits. But I won’t return them. I like them.

I’ve been waiting a couple months to give these a try before sharing a review, but I can honestly say that I am impressed. After trying some other brands that hurt my ears so bad I returned them, these Jabra Elite 85t are comfortable enough to stay in place all day, provided you can keep the battery charged. With moderate activity I can feel them start to slip out of my ear, so they are probably not the pair you want to take running.

The noise cancellation (ANC) and HearThrough modes are novel features, but honestly I don’t spend the time switching through them and rather keep them off to conserve the battery. What I want is a hearing aid that can amplify the ambient sound around me, but also let me hear the audio from all my devices or act like ear plugs. There is not that much amplification from the HearThrough mode unless there is nothing else playing through the speakers and you are right in front of the source you are trying to hear. ANC works to dull the sound around you if the speakers are muted, but with music playing there’s not much difference since the volume drowns out any other noise.

The battery life is somewhere in the 5-7 range, but be warned that the last hour you will be interrupted every 15 minutes that the buds need to be recharged. It hasn’t been a problem to find time to return them to the case at some point during the day, but expect to plan your day around charging at least once in the middle. Having a wireless charging pad has made charging effortless.

Now for the pet peeves that are just a fact of life with these buds. The right bud is the primary bud and in fact, the left bud can not be used without using both buds. You might think you can get five hours out of one ear and then switch to the other ear for another five hours, but that is not the case. This may not affect you, but seems like an odd feature.

The next peeve deals with pairing and connectivity. You might have read some reviews that discuss issues with connectivity, but you should know that Bluetooth pairing has been a straightforward easy experience to get up and running out of the box. My issue is that the specification states that the buds can be paired with up to 8 devices, but only 2 at any given time. I haven’t tried that many since after 3 devices I could tell it was going to be confusing to figure out which device they are connected with. If the buds are connected to 2 devices and you want to use them with a third, you must first manually disconnect or turn off Bluetooth on one of those first two devices before the buds will connect to the third. You may think this is a connectivity error but really they will only do what you tell them and they will prefer to connect to the last connected devices. Once you are connected to two devices, because you can only connect to two devices, you might think the buds have sort of a built in mixer where you can hear audio from both sources at the same time. Again, don’t be disappointed, but only one device can actively be sending an audio signal to the buds. You can not have music playing on one device and watch a movie on the other. You must stop all audio transmissions from one device before it will allow the second audio to play on the buds. Both devices are connected, but only audio from one device can be played at a time. This seemed to not affect in coming calls ringing from a phone though. I believe the makes the phone take priority of the audio stream. This might actually be a limitation of the Bluetooth protocol, but again different than I expected.

Well, there you have it! These are the top issues I’ve found with these buds, but I’m still happy with them enough to use everyday. Also, no problems with sound quality and the full range is good enough for casual listeners.

Omg i overly love these earbuds the bass is jamming & you can also set it to your liking in the app & the noise restriction, i wear them to them gym & they never move out of place & i sweat alot & i like that they’re small stay snugged. The best part you get a free 2 year warranty through the app that’s awesome. I’ve used the TOZO for about 2 years but these are top notch for me. The case is so tiny & cute I’m afraid ima lose them. I have absolutely nothing negative to say i just gotta get use to how they go in the case it’s kinda confusing but I’ll deal with that & get use to it over time. I think these will be my go to’s from now on. I be very truthful & honest on my reviews because i know some people just complain for no reason so if you come across my review definitely go with these you can’t beat the 2 year warranty, comes with a app, you can use just one if you prefer. You will not be disappointed!!!