After a lengthy number of months with the Jabra Evolve 65 headset, it’s time for a review! This headset was thoroughly tested and was my daily driver for 3 months, so let’s dive in.
Price
It’s priced at $230 (CAD) or $230 (USD). I found the pricing to be strange since the Canadian dollar isn’t as strong as the American dollar.
Remember this pricing as I find it a little difficult to justify this price point. I’ll mention this again later in the review.
Connectivity
This headset offers dual connectivity. You can use the USB receiver or Bluetooth. Unfortunately, the USB receiver only comes in a USB-A fitting and not USB-C.
The USB receiver is rather small so there’s no fear of it getting damaged as you place your laptop down (as you place it down at an angle and not straight down). There should also be little concern if you leave it plugged in while placing it in a bag.
Bluetooth is rather straightforward to setup and allows pairing with devices such as a cellphone. This means you can pair with a computer and a mobile device at the same time, but audio will only work on one device at a time.
There is an odd issue that connectivity on the microphone will cut out roughly once every hour for about 5-10 seconds and automatically fix itself. I can always hear others, but people will complain that for that short period of time, there’s a lot of static. It seems to happen no matter what connectivity method I use or device and this still happens even after several firmware updates.
Jabra claims a 100-foot range, but I can only max at 15 feet, even with the USB receiver. If I try to get a glass of water from the kitchen while on a call, leaving my computer is a challenge and this is rather disappointing. At 15 feet, incoming audio and outgoing audio from the mic starts to disconnect and get choppy.
Accessories
There is a traveller’s pouch included in the box but its soft. It’ll provide next to no protection at all. Its only real purpose is to keep the headset, USB adapter and charging cable in a single spot but that’s kind of pointless. There’s a strong chance that if you need the pouch just to carry all the items, you’re going to have a bag with you by which you can just place everything in there instead.
The next accessory is the charging cable that comes with the headset and lastly is the USB receiver. However, there’s no power adapter as you’re expected use your own or plug it in directly into your computer.
There’s also a sold separately charging dock.
Body design
The body is kind of average to look at, although it has some flashy silver and red on some of the edges which makes it look rather unique.
The body does feel rather weak and a bit cheap despite the price tag. It mainly feels cheap because it’s too light, especially the headband. It feels like the headband doesn’t have enough material in it. I’m not concerned it’ll fall apart but just something to point out if you’re going to travel with it and I was expecting a slightly sturdier frame at this price tag.
It’s rather comfortable to wear even for lengthy periods of time such as 5 hours straight. However, they have this weird issue that after wearing them for 1 to 2 hours straight, they slowly start to sag forward on my ears. I’ve never had this happen with any headset before, it’s rather odd. If I’m looking down at my phone for a minute or two, it starts to fall even more rapidly. In the video above I show an example of it, while it’s hard to notice the roughly 1-2cm of movement, that can make a huge difference when it comes to placement on your ears (due to comfort).
The flex on the top band is perfect. It fits nicely on my ears and isn’t too tight. Thanks to the gentle flex and earcup padding, my ears never get irritated or too hot while wearing them.
While they’re resting on my neck, I sometimes forget they’re resting on me. That’s because how light it is and the earcups being a bit small. I’m able to turn my head left, right and look down easily.
For people with no hair, I’m not sure if you might find this headset irritating after a while. The top headband has no padding at all. This is bizarre as headsets and headphones even closer to the $100 price tag have padding. I have a feeling that people with no hair that wear this headset for a few hours straight could even sweat around the band area and feel a bit uncomfortable.
The earcups have a nice soft leatherette and decent amount of cushioning. This is another key item that makes the headset comfortable on the ears.
The earcups can rotate forward, backward, up and down. Coupling that with their decent extension out of the headband, this headset ensures the earcups will fit nicely on any ear type.
While on a call, there’s a red LED ring on the outside of the right earcup that lights up to indicate to others you’re busy on a call. This feature is only half good because there’s no busy LED indicator on the left earcup. I’m not sure why they even put a light at all then, they could have no used the parts to put the right ring light and make this headset cheaper.
The microphone is located on the right earcup and can rotate forward or back, meaning that you can use the microphone on your left ear.
There’s a magnetic bar on the headband so the microphone can snap against the band. This would make the headset look more subtle if you plan to walk around and use it like regular headphones, except the magnet isn’t strong enough to keep the microphone in place, thus making it useless.
MS and UC Version
There are two versions to purchase of this headset which makes it really confusing but I’ll help break it down. There’s the MS version or the UC version.
The MS version means it’s designed to seamlessly work with Microsoft tools such as Teams. For example, the headset will become the default microphone and speaker for your Teams app.
The UC version which stands for Unified Communication is for everything else such as Cisco Jabber, Zoom, Go-To Meeting, Webex, and even Microsoft Teams.
Long story short, there’s no real reason for the MS Teams version. It’s nothing special, you can do just fine with the UC version. In fact, connecting the UC version to your computer makes Teams default it to the main microphone and speaker anyway.
The MS version is just confusing marketing from Jabra, the UC version is just fine.
Noise Cancelling
There is no active noise cancelling (ANC) in this headset and at this price tag we can let that slide.
However, Jabra advertises this headset as having passive noise cancelling which means simply putting them on will reduce noise. This makes sense since this is an on the ear headset, except it doesn’t work well. Putting these on hardly reduce any noise at all. If you plan to use this in a busy office with an open concept environment, a noisy cafe or maybe at home with dogs barking in the background or your kids… barking in the background, this might not be the headset for you.
Controls
The left earcup has no controls at all, everything is on the right.
On the right earcup at the back has light indicators for battery for charging status and a light for connection status. Just below are controls for power off, power on and holding on Bluetooth allows for Bluetooth pairing. Lastly, just below that is the port for power which is unfortunately a micro-USB port and not USB-C.
On the side of the right earcup are controls for volume up and down. On Windows, adjusting the volume has strange behavior as the volume will spike up or down by 10-15%. This means that while on calls, adjusting volume can make things too loud or too quiet. There is a central multi-function button also on the right side, but it doesn’t do anything for me. It doesn’t answer or hang up Zoom meetings, it doesn’t play or pause Spotify so I’m not sure what the buttons’ purpose is. There are no controls for muting the mic.
Battery
Jabra advertises that the battery will last up to 12 hours. In my testing it lasts just under 10 hours which isn’t the best performing battery considering the price.
When it comes to charging time, Jabra advertises 2 hours to fully charge it, but in my testing, it takes almost 3 hours.
Audio Quality
The microphone is okay for cancelling background noise. If it was being used in a setting like a café, it’ll do a decent job or reducing background murmurs from people chatting. Anything loud like my wife yelling at me can get caught. The microphone quality itself for outputting voice is rather clear, people’s voices sound pretty good.
Incoming audio quality from calls sounds great and crystal clear. Whether the call was from Teams, Zoom or Bluetooth on my phone, if the person on the other end had a good mic, then it sounded quite clear.
Music output is subpar. Mids and highs sound swell but bass is lacking. While this is a headset primarily for calls, at this price point I was expecting a bit better performance for bass.
That music audio performance carries over to other media performance. Watching YouTube videos with commentary like from my channel, TV shows and movies is fine, but action movies and video games are mediocre. That’s mainly attributed to the lacking bass when there’s large action sequences with explosions.
Software
Jabra has software for computers called Jabra Direct. Using this software you can install firmware updates, turn off voice guidance, turn off the busy red light, turning off button sounds, enabling sleep mode to conserve battery and more. However, there is no equalizer mode available even though some other Jabra headsets have that option through the Direct software.
Oddly enough, the Jabra Sound+ mobile app doesn’t support it. In fact, it’s not even listed in the “unsupported devices” section of the app.
Score:
6/10
Pros:
-Small USB receiver
-USB and Bluetooth connection
-Somewhat attractive design
-Comfortable on ears
-Comfortable while resting on neck
-Mic rotates for left ear use
-Mic clarity
-Computer app
-Okay mic background noise cancellation
-Okay for media playback
-Optional charging dock
Cons:
-Price
-USB-A fitting receiver
-Mic issue once every hour
-Range
-Soft traveller’s pouch
-Body feels weak
-Moves forward on ears
-Headband has no padding
-Busy ring light only on right ear
-Magnetic bar doesn’t work
-MS and UC version confusing and almost pointless
-Passive background noise cancelling does nothing
-Charging port not USB-C
-Volume spike on Windows
-Multi-function button useless
-Battery performance
