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    Review: Jabra Elite 75t wireless earbuds

    If you’re in the market for new headphones and prefer wireless earbuds, then the new Jabra Elite 75t may be perfect for you.

    After reviewing the 65t last year, I was keen to try out this year’s upgraded model and see how much progress has been made by the engineers at Jabra.

    The Jabra Elite 75t is targeting those users who are chasing great calls and music and are really focused on having a compact design while also being really comfortable.

    DESIGN

    Curves in all the right places

    In terms of design, there’s small tweaks to how the earbuds look, but generally the biggest change is the internal audio performance and the charging case.

    The charging case this year moves to USB-C, updating from the microUSB of 2019. I find the charging case far easier to open and it’s actually more compact than last year, which make it easier to slip in your pocket.

    Personally I found the earbuds really comfortable, they fit my ears perfectly, creating the necessary seal to allow noise cancelling to function and resonate the sound inside your head. Before declaring these were super comfortable, I asked my wife to try these and discovered they really didn’t fit her ear canals well at all. Thankfully Jabra include different tips that definitely helped, so I’d definitely recommend you try these and persist through initial reactions if you don’t have my experience.

    FEATURES AND PERFORMANCE

    How good does it sound and what are the stand out features?

    Almost instantly, I was flawed by the improvement in audio performance on offer with the 75t. There’s simply far more bass than you’d think possible with an in-ear earbud.

    This audio quality and performance is achieved from earbuds that are really light which is surprising given everything inside them. The Jabra 75t earbuds feature 4-microphone technology to not only provide input for phone calls, but the also to listen to the ambient environment around you, then remove that noise from what you hear through active noise cancelling.

    What’s really fun about the 75t is that you can tap the left earbud to listen to the outside world, opening a microphone and feeding that into your sound mix, without stopping audio playback. This is fantastic if you have colleagues, or family approach you and attempt to initiate a conversation. This allows you to keep the earbuds in place, interact with the person for a couple of minutes, then tap the button again and go back to isolating yourself from the disractions of the world.

    The Jabra 75t offers up to 7.5 hrs of battery life. If you use these to go for a walk, say an hour a day, these can last all week. When they do run flat, you simply place them in the USB-C charging case with 28hrs of charging. This means you could easily charge up the case, then head off on a weekend trip, or even a week away (when we can travel a little more), and not be concerned you’ll run out of battery.

    Given the now common USB-C connection, you’ll likely be able to borrow your phone charger, or laptop charger to charge them if you ever did run out of juice.

    If the out of box sound doesn’t suit you, Jabra offer personalisation to the sound, through the Jabra Sound+ App. This reflects Jabra’s understanding that personal preferences vary and the implementation is nice and easy to use.

    ISSUES

    Not everything's perfect

    While it is possible to use just one earbud for mono playback of audio or for calls, you cannot simply choose either of the earbuds to use. The Elite 75t earbuds work on a master/slave relationship. This means you can use the right earbud by itself, which handles the connection with your phone or laptop, while the left earbud simply connects wirelessly to that to create the stereo pair.

    While it would likely bump the cost slightly, it would be nice to have the ability to use either earbud independently. This could also enable you to charge one while using the other.

    PRICE & AVAILABILITY

    How much and when can you get one ?

    Available now, the Jabra Elite 75t earbuds are available for A$299.00 from Amazon, JB-HiFi, Harvey Norman and Office Works.

    They come in a choice of 3 colours, Titanium Black, Black, Gold Beige.

    For the more sporty among us, there’s also an Elite Active 75t version that costs A$329.00. Given this year’s new models, that also means last year’s 65t model is now at A$199.00.

    At that price, the headphones are certainly on the higher end of the price range, but if you’re anything more than a casual music listener, then you should be able to justify this purchase. The features definitely represent good value for money, offering great audio quality, a great set of features and these are likely to be with you for the next couple of years.

    OVERALL

    Final thoughts

    When we weigh up the price versus performance and features on offer here, I think Jabra have a really compelling offering.

    Not only can you get great audio quality while you’re on the go, across music, podcasts or audiobooks, you could also leverage these relatively small earbuds, but even when watching a YouTube or Netflix video. It may sound obvious, but when many of us live in close proximity to others and have done for some many weeks and months now, we can get on each other’s nerves. Having competing audio in your environment is one of the fastest ways to create an issue, so ensuring your audio is just heard by you, is really important.

    I love the battery life on offer with the 75t, especially when backed by the multiple charge cycles from the charging case. Inadequate battery life has been the single biggest hurdle for me to adopting wireless headphones or earbuds and I think Jabra got the size versus hours balance just right.

    When it comes to value, not everyone will be in the market for $300+ earbuds, but if your budget does stretch to these, you’ll be happy you spent the dollars. Finally my favourite feature is the support for your phone’s native voice assistant, so regardless of your preference of Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant, you can access then at the touch of a button and drive your device using your voice.

    Jason Cartwright
    Jason Cartwrighthttps://techau.com.au/author/jason/
    Creator of techAU, Jason has spent the dozen+ years covering technology in Australia and around the world. Bringing a background in multimedia and passion for technology to the job, Cartwright delivers detailed product reviews, event coverage and industry news on a daily basis. Disclaimer: Tesla Shareholder from 20/01/2021

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