Jabra Elite 85h Wireless Noise-Canceling Headphones, Copper Black – Over Ear Bluetooth Headphones Compatible with iPhone & Android – Built-in…

EDIT: After sending these back, I came across a good deal on a used pair and I couldn’t resist. I still find them uncomfortable at times, but this is the first pair of headphones I’ve had where the benefits outweigh the discomfort.

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The only problem I have with the Jabra Elite 85h headphones is that they aren’t comfortable on my ears, and that’s why I’m sending them back. However, after experiencing this with many different brands/models, I’m fairly sure that the problem is the shape of my head, and not the headphones. So, let’s talk about why the Jabra Elite 85h headphones are so great, and why you should try them.

There are lots of professional reviews talking about their sound quality and noise cancelling, so I won’t go into those areas very much. Suffice to say that I agree with the reviewers: the Jabras are among the best in both aspects, but not quite the very best.

From a design standpoint, I think they’re excellent. They feel sturdy, and I really like the cloth surfaces, which feel nice to the touch and stand apart from the soft-plastics of many others. They’re sporty and classy at the same time.

The controls are similarly good. Jabra avoided touch-based controls, which are great when they work and frustrating when they don’t (or when you accidentally brush against something and skip tracks). Some things are just better served by physical switches and buttons, and Jabra got the E85h’s controls mostly right. There’s a button for a voice assistant (no long-pressing play/pause) on the right earpad and a button for noise-cancelling on the left. These buttons are are nowhere near the media controls, so you’ll never have to guess what you’re pressing. And when you do press them, a pleasant voice (in a variety of user-selectable languages) tells you what you’ve done.

The only miss is that you have to long-press the volume keys to skip tracks. I would have preferred dedicated switches, which should have been easy to do. However, they’ve at least compensated by having a friendly “knock knock” sound to tell you that you have successfully skipped forward/back, which is more than most other headphones.

I love that they turn on/off when you swivel the earpads, and I love how quickly they connect. As well, there are sensors inside the earpads so that they know when you’ve put them on. When you connect to a device, they’re smart enough to wait until you’re wearing them to tell you the battery status. If you’re playing music, they’ll automatically pause when you take them off and play when you put them on again. I’ve tried others with this play/pause feature, and the Jabras feel like the most responsive. You can turn it off in the app, and also have them automatically answer phone calls or mute calls when you take them off.

The Jabras can connect to two devices simultaneously, which I haven’t had before (and really like). Unfortunately, you can only have one media stream at a time, so you can’t listen to music on one device while playing a game on the other. As well, I noticed that when I had my Windows 10 laptop and Samsung phone connected, audio playback from a video on my laptop was choppy. When I disconnected my phone, the audio was fine. Hopefully this will be fixed in a firmware update.

The app is straightforward. You can’t adjust the noise-cancelling strength, but you can turn it on/off or set the headphones into hear-through mode, which pipes in sound from around you. Of course, you can also do this via the button on the headphones. The big deal is SmartSound, which analyzes your environment and switches to one of three modes: commuting, in public, and private. You can customize each mode, but I don’t really see the point and have turned it off. I’d rather just manually set the ANC when I need to change it.

The app can also play a variety of background noises for when you want to concentrate or relax: pink noise, white noise, ventilation fan, waterfall, diving, ocean waves, rainy day, songbirds, perfect storm, babbling brook, cavern, or crowd. It’s a really simple feature that you can easily get from free apps, but I like that they built it in.

The headphones come in a case that feels really nice, but will probably get scratched up easily. However, Jabra did something that’s stupidly obvious and brilliant at the same time. Most cases have dividers to keep the headphones from jostling around and scratching themselves up. Some cases have dividers that are molded in, and others have fabric pieces sewed into the case. Jabra uses a fabric piece, but it’s attached by velcro. Remove it and the case becomes one big compartment that you can use for all sorts of things besides your headphones. I have a bunch of headphone cases that are largely useless for anything else and live in the closet. I’ll actually use this one, which adds value to the purchase.

My overall feeling is that Jabra put a lot of thought into everything about these headphones. You can see it in the details, like the versatile carrying case and background noises. You can get sub-$100 headphones that are perfectly fine in most ways, but everything about the Jabras is a little bit better, and it adds up to them being worth the price.

If only my ears were shaped a little better…

I’m an headphone guy. I owned and still own many. From Jabra, I’ve had the small Elite 65T buds that I replaced with the 75T a couple months ago. The 75T are brilliant earbuds, they sound great (yet bass heavy but fine during commuting or workout) and are an excellent value. When I needed ANC cans for home and saw the 85H that shared the same technology and app, it was a no brainer, thinking I would get the same excitement as when I got my 75T…

I really like music and wear headphones 8-10 hours a day. When I want the best of the best, depending on what I’m listening to, I use my Sennheiser HD800S or Beyerdynamic DT880 open back headphones with a good amp. Now that I work from home with the wife and kids around, a good set of ANC Bluetooth cans was also required for my own sanity… So I tried several different “top tier” models over the last couple months (QC35II, 700, 1000XM3, PX7, H9, Monitor II, Momentum 3, 85H). None of these are perfect but they all have advantages over the others. I won’t go into details of each model, but besides the great microphones, I would say the 85H are the least “interesting” of all.

From an audio standpoint, I would consider them boring (even more than the QC35, that at least put the emphasis on something… !) There is no “oomph” anywhere in the spectrum, they don’t focus on anything in particular. They are just “OK” headphones, not worth the price premium in my opinion. Add the size of the plastic cans that makes you look like an extraterrestrial, the noisy (popping / clipping) plastic headband, the buggy app that does not always connect (even after a painful firmware upgrade), the sound artifacts added by the manual EQ, the hard limiter that kicks-in and compresses the audio way too early, the SBC codec, … I am sorry but as much as I love my 75T, I’ll have to pass the 85H. YES they have great microphones for phone calls, but these only benefits to the others you’re talking to, not YOU. Great microphones are like buying an expensive webcam, you’re doing it for everyone besides you, so why bother, if everyone else doesn’t ?

The package I received didn’t have a charging brick. Not really an issue for me at first as I thought I could just use any charging brick I have- but the headphones could never charge to full. Battery would always just be at “medium”. My battery was at 57% only when I received it as well.

I raised these issues to Jabra Support but I’m not sure how long it would take for them to respond.

The headphones themselves were good but had syncing issues. The only way I can sync to my laptop is by forgetting and then syncing again every single time. Mobile syncing is good. It’s just that at this price range I expected much better.