Jabra has been a leader in personal audio for years now, but made a big leap with last year’s Elite 10 thanks to their high-end audio quality and very solid active noise cancellation (ANC). This year, Jabra has focused on bulking up its premium-tier earbuds with some neat additions, as well as some needed upgrades to its second-generation flagship.
I traveled to Jabra’s headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, to learn about Jabra’s latest set of earbuds and what went into designing this latest edition of the buds. As I flew home, I discovered that these earbuds are fantastic for just that — traveling. ANC is quite good for drowning out airplane noise — at least as good as the AirPods Max I usually travel with. Plus, these earbuds do something most others can’t.
Note: As of press time, Jabra has announced that it will be discontinuing the Elite line of earbuds after this release. This is still a product you can buy, and Jabra has committed to two years of support for these earbuds. Our recommendations stand, but it’s important that you take Jabra’s recent announcement into account when making a buying decision.
The Jabra Elite 10 Gen 2 earbuds bring Jabra’s great sound quality back, with a new trick up their sleeve. Now, the charging case becomes a wireless transmitter to your earbuds, so you can plug in to any aux jack and turn it into a Bluetooth device.
What I liked about them
Great sound quality
The Jabra Elite 10 earbuds bring a truly premium sound, look and feel. Audio quality is quite good with a nice balanced profile that emphasizes all frequencies — from deep bass to high-end treble — without drowning out any sound range. The earbuds use 10mm drivers for their sound, and you get very clear tones regardless of what media you’re listening to.
The Jabra Sound+ app also allows you to choose from six equalizer presets and lets you save custom EQs as well; I got up to six custom profiles before I stopped counting. This is important because different kinds of music require different EQs. I’m much more of a podcast listener/movie watcher, so I tend to sit on the Speech setting, but they’re all there for you.
Premium build
Additionally, Jabra put a lot of thought into the design of the earbuds. Unlike most earbuds today, Jabra doesn’t rely on touch-sensitive pads for controls. Rather, there are real buttons that you can press, long-press or press multiple times. Volume control is locked to pressing and holding on the left and right (up and down respectively). You can configure controls for one, two or three presses on each side. Functions you can select include skipping tracks, activating ANC, voice assistant and play/pause, so you have all the controls you could need.
Plus, the earbuds themselves are covered in a soft-touch material that feels really nice both in your hands and in your ears. Jabra mentioned that the soft-touch material adds a bit of surface area, which can help keep the buds in place as well. When you place them into the case, they nestle in comfortably, rather than snapping in like most other earbuds. It’s a minor difference, but it’s one of those things that you never think about until you have it, and then you miss it when you don’t.
A killer travel feature
Jabra brought another trick to the table, though. In addition to improvements to ANC and HearThrough — both of which are quite good — Jabra added a new function. Now, the earbuds ship with a USB-C to USB-C cable, but one end has an attachment on it that converts it to a 3.5mm audio jack. When you put that in place, you can plug your earbuds case into an audio jack for a device that isn’t Bluetooth-enabled.
The most common use case here would be when using an airplane’s entertainment console. On my way home from Copenhagen, I tested not only this functionality, but also the ANC, and both performed very well. The Bluetooth transmits at less than 100 ms latency, which means the audio and video sync up pretty well. I’m a stickler for that, so trust me, if it had been out of sync, I wouldn’t have lasted all the way through “Argo”, Ben Affleck notwithstanding. This is a great perk that saves you from having to buy a separate Bluetooth transmitter from the likes of UGreen or AirFly.
The earbuds also convert audio into spatial audio, which, I’ll be honest, is lost on me. I’m afraid my old and damaged ears gain no benefit from any kind of spatial audio. That being the case, being able to plug in these buds and not drain my phone’s battery watching a movie was quite nice.
What I didn’t like about them
Some issues with voice and wind noise
While the ANC and the HearThrough technology is quite good on these buds, I noted to the product managers on site that I still hear quite a bit of echo in my own head when I speak with HearThrough turned on. Ideally, when you turn on HearThrough (other buds call it transparency mode) it’s as if the earbuds aren’t in anymore. One facet of that is hearing your own voice. It sounds similar to talking while your ears are plugged (which they physically are, so that tracks) but other earbuds like the Nothing Ear earbuds and the Bose QC Ultra earbuds don’t have that issue.
While we’re on the topic of sound, Jabra’s product managers were quick to point out that the Elite 10 Gen 2 have a wind noise reduction setting that is supposed to, well … reduce wind noise. It does, but ridiculously, the CMF Buds Pro still do a (slightly) better job, and at a mere sixth of the cost. Of course, the Jabra earbuds do literally everything else better, and for the record, wind noise is still quieter than it is for most other buds. I want to be clear on this point: Wind noise reduction is good, but not great. For my money, if you’re going to develop a function called “wind reduction” and you’re located in a country with more bicycles than people, you really should be able to spike the ball on this feature.
Battery life isn’t the best
Another small, but important point is that these earbuds only carry about six hours of battery life on a single charge, with another 21 hours in the case. That’s not bad — and roughly on par with rivals like the AirPods Pro 2 —? but if you’re an all-day user who works in an office, six hours won’t do the job. An occasional listener like myself will be fine with that kind of battery life. I have been testing these earbuds for about a week, and I’ve only needed to charge the case once. But I think for a flagship product like this, eight hours should be a minimum bar to shoot for.
Speaking of charging, one oddity I found was that the USB cable that ships with the earbuds cannot charge devices other than the earbuds. That is to say, the cable could not charge any of the phones I had with me in Copenhagen. According to Jabra, “In order to be compatible with the 3.5mm jack connector, we have adjusted part of the wire sequence of the USB-C connector of the cable, which may make it incompatible with the charging ports of some other devices.” That isn’t necessarily a big deal, but it means you need to carry the headphones’ cable plus a different cable if you want to charge both devices.
Bottom line
Jabra has a nice, high-quality set of earbuds here, with extra functionality that makes them very valuable to frequent travelers like myself. The overall look and feel of the buds are stunning, including the new Denim colorway that I’m a little jealous I don’t have.
$279 is on the high side for a set of earbuds, joining the best true wireless earbuds you can find at that premium price point. Other contenders include the Technics EAH-AZ80 and AirPods Pro 2, both of which are great all-rounders. At that price point, you can get our top overall pick in the Sony WF-1000MX5, as well as the aforementioned Bose QC Ultra earbuds, which have the absolute best ANC you can find.
The only other set of buds you can find that includes a Bluetooth transmitter are the HP Poly Voyager Free 60+, which also add a touchscreen to the outside of the earbuds case, allowing you to control your media through it. Jabra directly addressed those (without naming names) and commented that it specifically did not want to create a whole other UI for customers to learn. Very fair point on Jabra’s part.
Put simply, if you’re going to spend this much money on a set of earbuds, there are a lot of great options. These buds are one of those great options, and have the audio chops and extra functionality to justify their presence on the top tier — particularly if you’re a frequent traveler.
