Jabra Elite 4 Active In-Ear Bluetooth Earbuds
The Jabra Elite 4 Active In-Ear Bluetooth Earbuds are engineered for every type of active lifestyle. With a secure active fit and compact design, they’re a perfect choice whether you’re working out or relaxing. And with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), you can stay immersed in your music all day.
The Jabra set is very small and discreet. The earbuds won’t stick out from my ear when I wear them, so there’s very little rubbing on my running cap when I wear it with a cap. Also, thanks to the low profile, they don’t tend to catch wind noise as much as the big and bulky Sony when I run outside. That’s a very unexpected plus that I did not think of beforehand. And one more plus is that I can comfortably wear this pair inside my motorcycle helmet. No need to spend extra on a Bluetooth headset!
Jabra Elite 4 Active In-Ear Bluetooth Earbuds Review
The earbud’s functions and features are quite standard, but with the press buttons instead of touch – I suppose this is geared towards physical activity usage when you sometimes wear gloves or use under wet conditions (e.g. rain, sweat). You have the ability to control play/pause (press on the right side), turn on and off ANC (press on the left side), and more importantly adjust volume (press and hold the left to decrease, and do the same for the right to increase). The volume function is omitted in many other brands (Sony included it until they updated their software recently!) so that’s a very pleasant surprise to find out Jabra included this – and they don’t even mention it in their instruction! I do find the buttons require a little too much force to press and hope they would revise it in the next model with a lighter press.
One more time, the set is designed to be used during physical activities so convenient features like stopping music when taken off aren’t available. I think this has to do with the removal of infrared sensors on the earbuds themselves – these sensors don’t work very well in wet conditions anyway, so removing them to use for physical activities makes sense to me.
With regard to the mic quality, I can confirm that these work very well. I haven’t had any occasion when the caller complains about not being able to hear me, and I have made calls during running with a running cap on, or even whilst wearing a motorcycle helmet. Be careful when wearing this and talking in public though, because this set is too small, and sometimes people will mistake you for talking to them (which happened to me a few times!).
Jabra Elite 4 Active In-Ear Bluetooth Earbuds Review
Battery life lasts forever and I forget that these need charging sometimes. The case does not support wireless charging, but a USB C charger is widely available these days and I just charge it whenever I remember. The case has a light in front which lights up when you open the lid, and the light changes colour based on its battery level (green – for full, yellowish – 40-60%, I think, and red for low). Very intuitive!
Last and not least, regarding ANC quality, I must say it depends on the environment. Here I am comparing directly to the Sony WF1000XM3, which is called ‘the king’. The Sony has better ANC when it’s not windy. However, once the wind picks up, the Sony will produce a lot of wind noise whilst the Jabra won’t, so in that case, the Jabra wins.
All in all, I find the Jabra Elite 4 Active In-Ear Bluetooth Earbuds an excellent pair of Bluetooth earbuds. It may not have the best ANC quality on the market, but it does everything else perfectly. And for my own need, I find that I reach out to the Jabra more often than the Sony just because it’s smaller and easier to use.
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