Jabra Elite 75T Wireless Earbuds Review
Jabra had a decent sale on the 75T. I normally would not have purchased another set of earbuds, but my Active Elite 65T set was starting to have reduced battery life. These new ones were listed on sale for $79.99 at Amazon or Walmart. There was some trickeration involved using the Jabra site, but I did manage to snag them for the advertised price.
Per Amazon wizardry in logistics, the earbuds arrived in a day or two. Jabra still must sell these at retail stores as the box and packaging are so much larger and more substantial than needed for tiny little earbuds. It comes with the basic kit: USB charging port, different size ear rubbers, an instruction booklet you’ll never read and the headphones with case.
If you are new to the wireless earbuds arena, the case has a battery and can charge the earbuds on the fly with a decent recharge rate of an hour or two for full battery in the earbuds. That feature comes in very handy on days when you use them for workouts and for business calls.
Speaking of the case, it now uses USB-C which I’m on the fence about. My Galaxy Note 9 uses USB C, but most of my other stuff does not. After letting them completely charge up, I dove in. You could ignore the Jabra app, but it is actually useful so just download it and then power them on to pair them with your phone. I have found in the past that Jabra usually does a great job with the pairing system and these pair very quickly without having issues. During the initial setup, these were no exception. I spent some time with the app fine tuning the EQ and Jabra includes a hearing test to better EQ the sound levels to your level of being deaf. Apparently, from all the race engines I’m a bit deaf in my left ear. The rest of the app allows you to customize what the buttons do and that was where these started to disappoint.
My current Active Elite set has an up/down button on the left bud. The new 75T does not. You cannot adjust volume easily. That is a huge problem. Many times that I am working out and I need a quick volume adjustment. I tend to have playlists ready to go and leave my phone in a bag so I can focus. Now I have to keep my phone on me at all times just to play with volume, or you have to press and hold the right earbud to go up and left to go down in volume. So, it does have volume control, but the speed at which the volume goes up is not great and lacks the fine tuning available with the up/down button. I also suspect the reason for doing this was the massive decrease in bluetooth range with the 75T. I feel as though these earbuds took a step back to a previous version of bluetooth as my range when wearing them went from 50–60 feet down to about 15. They started to cut out very quickly which was disappointing.
Ear feel was different as well. These buds like to sit lower in the ear. I tried some of the larger rubbers for the ear pad and ended up struggling to get them to stay pinned. They didn’t fall out, but when the seal is lost so is the great bass response; which was one of the advantages over the 65T. Bass response was much better and deeper with the 75T when sealed. Sibilance was prevalent no matter what I did with the EQ which wasn’t the best. Overall volume level was a little lacking, but so were the 65T sets I’ve tried.
Calls were decent, but still struggled in loud environments with background noise. ANC works, but will not cancel out spoken word well. Call clarity was good in a quiet environment. Sometimes I use earbuds in the car in place of the vehicle bluetooth if I am struggling to hear someone. These were not good at cancelling out vehicle noise and callers had a hard time hearing me on the other end.
These earbuds “retail” at $149.00. They definitely do not appear to be worth that cost. I am not sure the $80 I paid was worth it. Jabra has an 85T and they also make an “active” version of the 75T. I am going to look into the 85T and see if there is a way to control the volume better and if the range is extended. If not, I may be crossing Jabra off my list for the next set. However, after looking at the site it appears they still advertise the Active Elite 65T. My current set has been going strong for 3 years, so maybe I will get another year before needing to really make the decision.
So, here is a rating (1–10 scale):
Part Quality — 8
The kit looks nice and the earbuds feel fairly substantial. Buttons have a good feel to them, but the overall shape is a bit hard to index and hold on to.
Ease of install — 9
Jabra does a great job of pairing and the app has some good features. Consistent and instant pairing when the buds are removed make for a pleasurable experience.
Cost — 5
Given they were on sale for $80 they should have ranked higher, but the performance and lack of volume control sends these much lower in ranking. If they were full retail there is no way these would be worth the cost.
Performance — 3
Ear seal was a big issue, as was the lack of a good volume button. Range was very poor and worse than the previous generation. Too many issues for a supposedly better version. Maybe the 85T is that much better?