The TWS earbuds offer an IP57 rating for water and dust resistance.
Jabra is promising over 28 hours of overall battery life.
Sound+ app lets you customize audio and other features.
The True Wireless Stereo (TWS) headphones are all the rage these days. Right from top audio companies and smartphone makers, manufacturers are releasing TWS hearables at an ever-increasing rate. Jabra is one of the popular names in the audio industry, and the company’s Elite 65t and Elite Active 65t TWS earbuds were very well received and set a high bar for the latest Jabra Elite Active 75t to surpass. Priced around $250, the Elite Active 75t offers better durability and water resistance to cater to sports enthusiasts. But just how good are they? Our review finds out.
Design: Attractive, Dust- and Water-resistant
A lot of TWS earbuds available today are sweatproof, meaning you can wear them when working out. But they are not waterproof. The Jabra Elite Active 75t is specially designed for athletes and sports enthusiasts, and so it comes with an IP57 rating. This rating makes it sweat-, dust- and water-resistant. So, whether there are light showers or heavy rain, you can wear these earbuds and go out without any fear.
Design-wise, the Elite Active 75t looks similar to the Elite Active 65t, but with a smaller form factor. Both these models are made of plastic and do not have any stem as most TWS earbuds. Jabra had sent me the Navy Blue color variant and it looks and feels good.
The charging case is compact and easy to keep in your pocket. It is made of plastic and has a rubberized finish to it which helps in keeping smudges away. The case has a magnetic lid, and magnetic connectors inside to keep the earbuds locked in. On the backside of the case, you get a USB Type-C charging port and an LED indicator.
Sleek design, comfortable fit and IP57 rating make the Active 75t stand out in the segment.
Comfort, Controls and Features
The earbuds are lightweight and snugly fit into the ears. This allows for comfort and passive noise isolation as well. Jabra has also bundled three silicon tips (small, medium and large), allowing you to choose one based on your comfort and needs. During my usage, I was wearing the earbuds for over three hours at a stretch daily and did not feel any fatigue.
Each earbud has a circular button to control music playback and other features. These buttons have Jabra branding on them and an LED light indicator to show battery, pairing and connection status. The buttons produce a nice click when you press them. You can press and hold a button on the left earbud to decrease volume, whereas doing the same on the right earbud increases the volume.
You can also single press, double press and triple press the buttons to play/pause tracks, skip or reverse tracks, or summon the voice assistant. These clicks can also be used to accept or reject incoming calls or put an ongoing call on hold. All these settings can be configured using the Sound+ app, which is available on both Android and iOS platforms.
The Elite Active 75t has a lot of customizable button controls, but they can also get too confusing initially.
However, these many press-button control options can also prove to be complicated. I would often press the wrong button to skip tracks or to summon the voice assistant, simply because I forgot the combination.
The Sound+ app also has other settings, including a bunch of equalizer options to customize your listening experience. Secondly, there is a “hear through” mode that lets you be aware of the surrounding noise, which can come in handy when commuting or running outdoors. It enables you to listen to vehicles passing by, metro announcements, or takeaway orders at a restaurant. I found it to be quite useful. The app also lets you adjust how much of the surrounding noise you can hear.
Lastly, the app also has an option called “Soundscapes” that lets you mask the noise around you. For instance, you can activate waterfall, ventilation fan, ocean wave, storm or rain sounds among others. It is something that you can also use to bring down the anxiety levels.
Soundscapes is a great addition, not something you will get with other TWS earbuds.
Performance: Will Leave You Impressed
A good pair of TWS headphones will let you enjoy your music-listening and binge-watching experience, among other features. And the Jabra Elite Active 75t does exactly that. Throughout the review period of a month, I had been using the earbuds to connect with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ and an Asus Zenbook laptop. But most of the time, it was connected to the smartphone only. I listened to different genres of music, streaming high-quality audio across Spotify and Apple Music apps.
Talking about audio quality, David Guetta’s Dangerous offered crisp highs and punchy bass, while the mids were perfectly balanced. Moving to deep house music, Dissensions – Wood Remix by Ben Bohmer offered raw thumping bass without overpowering the highs and mids. Even the reverb effects were pretty neat.
Moving on to some calm and relaxing music, Angels in the Sky by Oliver Shanti sounded peaceful. The instruments were audible, and so were the waves splashing in the background. Lastly, the Temple of Silence by Deuter offered a wide soundstage and crisp vocals, while not overpowering the background instruments.
Thumping bass with balanced audio will surely appeal to a lot of listeners.
Connectivity-wise, there was no issue either. Bluetooth 5.0 ensures a stable connection. I was able to enjoy uninterrupted music even when I was about 15 to 20 feet away. The earbuds support both SBC and AAC audio codecs. Sadly, there is no aptX connectivity.
Call quality was also good and the recipient could hear me properly. I play PUBG Mobile daily with my nephews and we chat on Discord when gaming. During one session, there was a carpenter working at my place, with a bit of cutting and hammering noise creating disturbance. But the mics were able to minimize the noise so that the recipient could hear me well.
Good Battery Life on the Earbuds, and Some More with the Case
Jabra says the earbuds can offer up to seven-and-a-half hours of battery life on a single charge. During my usage, I got close to seven hours and 10 minutes of usage, which is not bad. The charging case offers up to three additional charges, which means you can roughly get 26 to 27 hours of total listening time. Jabra also offers fast charging, where 15 minutes of charging gives you up to 50 minutes of listening time. A full charge takes about two hours and 30 minutes, both for the case and earbuds. You can check the battery percentage of the earbuds and the case in the Sound+ app.
The Elite Active 75t offers above-average battery life. Fast charging is a bonus.
Conclusion: Impressive Design, Good Sound and Above Average Battery Life
A successor to the Elite Active 65t, the Jabra Elite Active 75t does a great job of refining quality and performance. The TWS earbuds offer a comfortable fit while offering excellent noise isolation. Competitors such as the Apple AirPods Pro and Sony WF-1000XM3 also offer Active Noise Cancellation features, but the Elite Active 75t does a good job with passive noise cancellation.
The TWS earbuds offer crisp and detailed audio along with punchy and powerful bass. The hear-through mode is a good addition and so is the Soundscapes mode. With good battery life and clear voice quality on calls, the Elite Active 75t offers a complete package for TWS buyers. The IP57 rating is an added advantage for water and dust resistance.
However, there are a couple of areas the TWS earbuds miss out on. They have sensors for wear detection to automatically pause playback when you remove them from your ears. You can just use one earbud to listen to music or talk on the calls. But sadly, the Elite Active 75t uses a master and slave type of connection, which means you can only use the right earbud for mono-listening. It would have been better if Jabra allowed using either of the earbuds.
Secondly, gesture control on earbuds for controlling a few features, such as swipe up and down for increasing or decreasing volume, could have been better. There were times when I wanted to increase the volume, but as I pressed and held the button on the right earbud for a few seconds, it turned off instead of increasing the volume. These are minor refinements that would make the product even better.
Also Read: Strategic Reviews and Insights on The Latest Smartphones
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Author
Ritesh Bendre
Ritesh is a Global Content Manager with Counterpoint Technology Market Research. With over 15 years of experience, he is joining us from BGR India where he was the Head of Features. At BGR, Ritesh also used to cover tech news, product launches, and review consumer tech. Ritesh is a science graduate from Mumbai University, with major in Physics. He followed his passion for tech, took up writing as a career and is also a well-known tech journalist in the industry.
