Jabra Elite 85h Review

Welcome to the review of the Jabra Elite 85h, Jabra’s premiere active noise cancelling (ANC) headphones. This is Jabra’s premium headphones take to tackle Sony and Bose which have dominated the ANC market.

Price

These headphones are typically priced between $320 to $350 in Canada, while in the USA it’s usually priced at $250.

Considering this is Jabra’s premium ANC headphones the price might make this an appealing product to those in the market for ANC headphones, right? Well continue reading as you might have a change of heart.

Body Design

The body is rather unique. It’s not your typical looking simple smooth plastic, instead it’s covered with a fabric material. I was concerned it would attractive dust easily in a home environment but thankfully that’s not the case, it tends to remain rather clean. However, if you traverse through a dirty environment often or work in one, this could be an issue. It’s great that the fabric material is unique, but this could be annoying for some people, say for example people working at the dry cleaners where lint is constantly in the air.

The body is rather large, even for an over the ear type of design. Not only that it, weighs 298g which is little heavy in the hand to hold but you won’t notice that too much on your head. However, I believe that the slightly heavy weight compared to something like Sony WH-1000XM5 (250g) is related to the headphones being a bit bulky.

Despite the slightly large body, you can’t deny that these headphones are very attractive. There are a variety of colours available and all of them look great and unique, again thanks to that fabric material.

Another plus for the body? It feels firm. Too often “premium” headphones from various manufacturers can feel cheap and flimsy. Thankfully the Elite 85h feel rock solid, maybe the weight plays a part here? Regardless, even though the earcups can fold in, the entire body still feels solid.

This pair of headphones is wonderfully comfortable. Even when wearing them for 4 hours straight on multiple occasions my ears never got too warm, sweaty or my head uncomfortable. You shouldn’t plan to exercise in them, since they’re over the ear, you’ll sweat like crazy wearing these.

The flex on the headband is tight but doesn’t cause any discomfort. This isn’t an issue but just something I felt like mentioning.

While the headphones are resting on my neck, they’re a bit uncomfortable. This is due to the flex being a bit tight and the rather large earcups. This isn’t a big deal but something that might be interest to some people to know. While in this position I have a tough time moving my head left, right and even looking down. You’re better off placing them on top of your head (slightly above your ears) or leaving it over your ears and enabling HearThrough mode (more on that later).

The top band has rather thick cushioning which will be great for people with little to no hair.

The leatherette earcup padding has some nice thickness which is one of the main reasons these headphones are a pleasure to wear for short or long periods at a time.

The earcups can rotate forward, backward, up, and down. Of course, the headband has decent extension to accommodate people with longer head shapes.

The earcups can also be replaced as they can be easily popped off.

A neat feature of the body is that it’s rain resistant. This works great for people that live in rainy areas like the city of Seattle or all the UK. When the headphones get wet, they do retain water for a little while due to the body being covered with fabric material.

Controls

The left earcup has only one button, called Sounds Mode which allows you to cycle between ANC on, ANC off and HearThrough mode which I’ll discuss all in more detail further down. Holding the Sounds Mode button allows cycling through “Moments” which are basically sound profiles found in the Jabra Sound+ mobile app.

On the right is the mute microphone button which mutes the microphone if on a call (obviously) but it allows your voice assistant to be activated.

Supported voice assistants are Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa. With Android and Google Assistant in my testing, activating the assistant works great and uses the headphone microphones to listen for commands. Interestingly, when it’s listening for commands, the ANC turns off and HearThrough activates. I think this allows the user to hear their own voice if you’re in a noisy environment in case the assistant can’t recognize your commands due to a ton of background noise. The only weird thing I notice is that while dual connected to my computer and phone at the same time, if media plays on my computer first and I pause it, the button will never activate voice assistant. It’ll only work after disconnecting from my computer. Not a big deal but something strange I noticed in testing.

Continuing, the right side has subtly hidden controls. A top button for increasing volume and holding it goes to the next track and the lowest button to lower volume and holding it goes to the previous track. The middle button is a multi-function button which allows answers/hangs up a call, play/pause music and holding it activates Bluetooth pairing mode.

There is media auto pause feature when you take the headphones off. Placing them back on your head automatically plays and resumes your music. This of course works well for music apps on a phone but also for computer media like Spotify, VLC and even YouTube. It even pauses YouTube playback if your browser tab is minimized.

Powering the headphones on and off is different from most headphones. You need to twist the right earcup in a flat position to turn it off, twisting it to wearing position turns it on. In case you have a concern that at times you need to abruptly place it down and forget to turn the earcup to off position to save power, don’t worry as they’ll enter sleep mode after 1 hour of inactivity.

Noise Cancelling

As mentioned, there is ANC mode, and it isn’t what I was expecting at this price point. There’s not much to talk about as ANC unfortunately doesn’t do much. To be honest, most of the sound is muffled out by simply wearing them. Thankfully the passive noise cancelling from simply wearing them is great, but it must make you wonder why you’re paying this much money for disappointing ANC performance.

While ANC is a bit underwhelming, passive noise cancelling with ANC off does surprisingly better than expected. It does a great job of conserving battery but distorting most background noise whether in a café or walking down the street. Of course, anything loud like honking cars could be heard.

Battery

Jabra advertises that the battery lasts 36 hours with ANC on and I averaged 38 hours which is impressive. With ANC off I was able to get a whopping 42 hours and with HearThrough mode I was able to clock 38 hours again.

For recharge time, Jabra documentation states 150 minutes but after numerous battery draining and recharging tests, I averaged only 113 minutes. This means you’re getting solid battery performance for short recharge cycles.

The charging port is located at the bottom of the right ear cup and is thankfully a USB-C port. While charging, you can listen to audio just fine.

Microphone Quality

Jabra has 8 microphones on these headphones and 6 of them are designed to listen to your surroundings and cancel background noise so your voice sounds clears on calls while in a noisy environment. Now, Jabra is well known for making some pretty well designed headsets (check out the reviews I’ve completed) and it isn’t a surprise that the Elite 85h’s call quality is pretty darn good. The microphone clarity is surprisingly good despite not having a boom mic. Even better is that it does an excellent job of cancelling out background noise. In my testing while mimicking a loud and noisy café environment, it did a great job of cancelling out a lot of background noise.

Audio Quality

Sound quality is good but not great. I found that mids were solid and highs performed well. In fact, highs perform incredibly well. If you increase highs enough using the equaliser in the mobile Sound+ app (more on that below), it can be too much even for me. However, this is a good thing because you can lower the highs if needed.

At neutral bass is lacking a bit. Of course, after increasing it with the equaliser it performs much better, but it still might be lacking for bass enthusiasts at this price point. In fact, the Jabra Elite 45h which is a third of the cost of the 85h (sometimes even a quarter the cost if it’s on sale) performs much better in regards to bass output. Overall, at this price point, bass is rather lacking on the 85h.

When it comes to action media through movies and video games, at neutral level it’s a bit lacking. Especially when it comes to gun shots or explosions. However, the performance was much better after increasing the bass in the Sound+ app. With action sequences, there’s a lot more punch with the bass increased and works pretty well.

Software

Jabra has software for computers called Jabra Direct. Unfortunately and surprisingly, it doesn’t support the these headphones despite it being Jabra’s premium product.

For mobile devices there’s the Jabra Sound+ mobile app and yes it works with the Elite 85h. The app is incredibly easy to use. It has sound profiles called “Moments” in which these presets will adjust the ANC mode for you, or you can create your own profile.

It has an equaliser in the app too, adjusting it carries over to performance for other devices. For example, if you adjust the equaliser in Sound+, it’ll effect sound performance if you have it dual paired to a computer and are listening to computer audio on the 85h.

You can adjust hearing modes like ANC on, ANC off and HearThrough.

There’s also SmartSound. This feature will listen to your surroundings and try to apply the correct hearing mode. For example, if you’re in a noisy environment, it’ll automatically turn on ANC, if you’re in a quiet environment it’ll activate HearThrough mode. This sounds neat but it doesn’t work properly. While in my noisy home with my kids playing with their toys, watching TV and my wife washing dishes it turned on ANC but Sound+ said I was in a “private” and quiet area (despite ANC being on), but this isn’t a big deal. Interestingly if I press sound mode on the headphones to change to something else, with SmartSound it reverts to ANC on. However, in my testing SmartSound will randomly change sound modes. When a suddeny loud noise occurred from one of my kids throwing a toy, it randomly turned on HearThrough which caught me off guard. Basically, SmartSound is rather useless and you’re better off adjusting sound modes on your own.

Continuing with the app there are preset modes for the equaliser, firmware updates, support manuals and more.

Conclusion

There are some neat features like Bluetooth dual connectivity, rain resistance, auxiliary connection and more. However, at this price point it’s disappointing that ANC performance is lack luster. While passive noise cancelling works well, this is advertised as ANC headphones, and it just doesn’t deliver well in that area.

Another lacking area is bass. It’s odd that the cheaper Elite 45h has noticeably better bass performance. Even though the Elite 85h isn’t advertised as being bass emphasized headphones, having the cheaper Jabra model at a third of the price but much better bass output is strange.

Despite its short comings, for some the lower price compared to Sony and Bose competitor premium headphones might make this appealing, including the rain resistant feature.