The cost of Jabra Elite 85h is significantly lower than its major rivals – Sony WH-1000XM3 and Bose 700. A high-end package with a reasonable price tag that provides 36 hours of consistent playback with noise-canceling enabled. Worthy noise canceling power can suppress most unwanted sounds, comfortable, and mixes different quality materials as well as an aluminum headband, resulting in a robust and consistent assembly.
Jabra Elite 85h is an affordable fantastic sounding headphone that offers what most of its competitors offer but cheaper. The materials of choice render the headset a very strong and reliable constitution. Elite 85h implements a fantastic ergonomy, but also on-ear detection with smart sensors that can tell whether you listen to music or not; it can fold and put music on pause when you remove the headphones.
Jabra Elite 85h Review
Jabra Elite 85h Specifications
Type: Closed-back Over-ear Noise Canceling Headphones | Bluetooth: 5.0 | Bluetooth-Profile: SBC, A2DP 1.3, HSP 1.2, SPP 1.2 | Latency: 300 ms (average) |Battery: 36 Hours | Charging Time: 2.5 Hours | Quick-Charge: 5 Hours in 15 mins | Drivers: Dynamic | Weight: 296g | Microphones: 4 NC + 4 Voice Capture | Frequency Response: 10 – 20000 Hz
Pros
- Beautiful audio reproduction
- High overall performance & affordability
- Powerful active noise reduction system
- Intuitive controls
- High autonomy (36h)
Cons
- Sound quality diminished with NC
- Bulky appearance
Jabra Elite 85h Review
The Bluetooth headphones with noise-canceling offer the desired quietude, resilient autonomy, a low starting price for a high-end pair of headphones, and beautiful sound quality comparable to that of PXC 550 from Sennheiser – a fantastic, slightly more expensive, NC headphones. Its look might not be the most stylish, in which case Bose 700, Bowers & Wilkins PX 7, or Sony WH-1000XM3 are far more elegant and aesthetically pleasing.
Jabra Elite 85h is an easy recommendation, and focuses on practicality and functionality above all, being able to offer top-quality sound reproduction, intuitiveness, plenty of customizations, and a powerful noise-canceling system for a bargain.
Design & Ergonomy
Inside the package, Jabra included a compact hard case, USB-C cable, 3.5 mm audio cable, airplane adapter, and also a two-year warranty.
Jabra Elite 85h is a comfortable headphone with very intuitive interactions and good user-experience. Its weight of 296 g doesn’t squeeze onto your head; the pressure is well distributed and ensures overall an excellent feeling of comfort. For a pair of Bluetooth over-ear headphones, the weight is typical and not bothersome at all.
Controls & Bluetooth Technology
Regarding the battery life when pairing Elite 85h via Bluetooth, Jabra boasts with 36 hours of playtime with ANC. The difference without noise-reduction isn’t substantial, obtaining 5 more hours of working time for a total of 41 hours. Moreover, the quick recharge function offers 5 hours within 15 minutes, whereas the charging time via the USB-C port is by far the fastest, with 2 hours and 30 minutes required for a full charge.
What’s more impressive is the ability to pause the music when taken off your head. Certain commands are accompanied by a pleasant female voice that announces the changes made when the noise canceling is enabled or what the battery level is. The volume control equipped on the right earpiece adjusts the music volume smoothly.
The control for Voice Assistant (Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa, for example) is located on the same earcup. Activation is done through the press of a button and doesn’t require any assistance from your smartphone. The left earpiece includes a switch control responsible for ANC activation and deactivation; the function improves the quality of listening by attenuating the background noises.
Noise Cancelling
The ability to diminish external noises is powerful. Its power is not spectacular in the sense that it does not exceed Sony WH-1000XM3 or Bose QuietComfort 35 II, but fine-tuning the level of noise reduction and other exciting features make the headphones more attractive.
Elite 85h doesn’t have a special feature that analyses specific frequencies and cut them out. Its ANC is adaptable based on the surroundings and can be configured to either adjust itself based on location or not. The processing time is undesirable, and the feature itself isn’t too intuitive. It is thus way more convenient with it disabled.
We ought to give credit to the clarity and intelligibility of Jabra’s microphones. Communication through phone calls was impressively coherent, which resulted in a practical and convenient conversation in a typical, office-like environment and on the street and louder areas.
The headphones integrate eight microphones, of which up to six are responsible for crystal-clear voice capture, recording, and noise-cancellation to improve the speech quality.
Sound Quality
Elite 85h maintains its timbre and is ideally suited to play popular music genres along with Pop, Hip-hop, Rock, Dance – generally electronic music. The consistency and cleanliness in the reproduction of modern genres are surprising. Being able to hear the lows and mid frequencies down to every note. The guitar riffs, basslines, and melodic singing of vocalists are amazing with these Jabra headphones, too.
The sound was a little less enthusiastic for me when watching movies and listening to classical music. I would not mind getting here a better separation of instruments and a slightly wider scene. In the early days of testing, I also got the impression that the Jabra Elite 85h sounds more artificially and digitally than it should. And I found a reason for this.
As I watched some videos and played classical songs, the tone of Elite 85h became a little less intense for me. I wouldn’t mind experiencing a much larger sound scene and a more precise separation of musical instruments. It felt as if the sounds of Jabra Elite 85h were digitalized, which resulted in a shallow performance when watching movies.
Jabra’s quick and straightforward application Jabra Sound+ provides additional features that enhance the user experience, such as:
A graphic equalizer offers 5 bands of frequencies to adjust. Jabra might not be very strict with the sound reproduction when it comes to the classical or more complex music genre, which doesn’t confer the most pleasing listening experience. Therefore, its simple-to-use equalizer has the ability to personalize your music and tune your songs into your favor.
It seldom happens for a noise-canceling headset of this tier to negatively influence the character of its sound reproduction when the ANC is turned on, which is unfortunate because its ability to silence unwanted noises is powerful, and the default sound is appealing, accurate and uncovers many aspects of the music.
With the noise-canceling feature enabled, the sound is dramatically affected, and its quality is diminished significantly. Turning off the NC mode, Jabra’s sound response returns to its normal state, an organic, warm sound reproduction that reveals plenty of details. The trebles also feel more precise and less condensed, which improves radically Elite 85’s sound scene.
Conclusion
Considering that you’re a budget user looking for an exclusive listening experience, the Elite 85h is the perfect model. A high-end noise-canceling headset whose performance is comparable to that of the leaders of noise-canceling, WH-1000XM3, and QuietComfort 35 II.
Overall, Jabra Elite 85h is a fantastic all-round headphone, but if you’re looking exclusively for sound and don’t get much value from features, then Sennheiser PXC 550, or Sennheiser HD 350 BT are better endowed in that respect, offering the same degree of comfort and Bluetooth convenience for a similar price.
Pros
- Beautiful audio reproduction
- High overall performance & affordability
- Powerful active noise reduction system
- Intuitive controls
- High autonomy (36h)
Cons
- Sound quality diminished with NC
- Bulky appearance
