Over the next few weeks we will be reviewing different earphones that work with Microsoft Teams and will work best for you! Today we are reviewing the Jabra Evolve 65T Earbuds, a Microsoft Teams certified UC set of Earbuds. We’ve been using them for the last month so let’s tell you how it went.
What’s In The Box
OK so here’s where you can tell that you’re working with a business version of the device, it’s brown cardboard box and simple packaging – I’m not getting that “premium unboxing” therapy from this one.
Inside we have a nice carry case, some different sized ear cushions and a getting started guide in 19 languages.
Popping open the carry case, we have the Charging case, a Jabra 370 USB A Bluetooth Dongle and a micro USB charging cable. No wall socket adapter, but that’s pretty standard these days.
And finally Inside the charging case are the headphones themselves.
Form Factor
The 65t are quite a unique shape, quite different to what we expect from typical earbuds. They are designed this way to block out as much sound as possible when they’re in your ear. They have a great matte finish in this silver grey colour so they don’t look outlandish sticking out of your ears.
Controls
On the right bud a single press for play/pause or to answer/end or reject a call. You can press and hold to active your phone’s voice assistant. To enable Hear through you double-tap which uses the external microphone to allow you to hear more of what’s going on around you.
On the left earbud we have a + and – toggle for volume.
The controls are actual physical buttons so you get a very definite feeling that you’ve pressed something which is nice.
Comfort
The way that these things fit, is that they twist and turn to lock in place, which is a bit strange at first but you quickly get used to it. The extended piece on the back of the earbud really goes into your ear a bit further than most other earbuds. The rubber endpoints then really seal up within your ears to help with noise cancellation. There are different sized rubbery endpoints in the pack so if these ones aren’t quite the right size, you do have options. For me, they just worked straight out of the box.
Once they’re in your ear, they sit quite flush to the side of your head. I don’t feel self conscious about wearing them on video calls, as they just seem to blend in really nicely.
Over the last month I’ve worn these for several hours at a time and I can honestly say that they are easy to wear for extended periods. You do still feel some relief when you take them out but overall they’re easy to wear all day. They are lightweight so you don’t really get any fatigue of them weighing your head down.
Battery Life
The devices themselves have a 5 hours battery life. Now bear in mind that would be 5 hours of continuous use so if you’re using them for work they will go to sleep in-between calls.
The charging Case provides a further 2 full recharges, that’s 10 more hours, providing you with 15 hours in total.
What I would say is that having the devices run out in the middle of an important call was a rare event. It was never a burden to constantly have to think about recharging these.
Ease of Setup
Jabra have made it very simple to set up each of their devices. Out of the box, you have a bluetooth dongle that you plug into you Windows or Mac OS Device, and you can then install the Jabra Direct Software.
When it comes to pairing it with your IOS or android smartphone, it is quite straight forward but not immediately obvious. You have to press and hold the on/off power button on the earbuds and it puts the device into pairing mode, and it is straight forward from there. Once it is then paired, I got a notification on my iPhone prompting me to download the Jabra Sound+ Application. This is definitely recommended to download as you get some additional features.
One of the nice features of wearing both earbuds at the same time is, when you remove one of them it will automatically pause the music and it will resume when you put it back in.
On the desktop apps you will receive regular prompts to update firmware and software as they come out, therefore your earbuds will always be maintained.
Working with Teams
Working with Teams is absolutely fantastic, they devices are comfortable for long calls, look great on video and the sound quality is superb. Whether that’s on the laptop or on my mobile, it’s a really good experience!
The devices are certified for Teams which is always a good sign that the vendor has been through the right steps to make it as easy as possible to connect with Teams.
When working with the desktop version of Teams or Google Hangouts, we didn’t benefit from the Teams Noise Suppression feature. That is to say that my microphone is picking up other people speaking who are at the other side of the office and they can clearly be heard during my calls. When I’m speaking, it’s not an issue but when I stop speaking any background chatter in the office is sent over the call.
Now we’re fairly confident that this is a limited problem with our setup because everything we’re reading tells us that the noise suppression with teams should work great, but that hasn’t been our experience with the latest software and firmware updates applied.
Working with Mobile / iPhone
When you have your headphones paired to multiple devices, it can often be painful when you’re using them to do one thing and a call comes in on the other device and just takes over the Audio. And often times it’s unpredictable which device gets priority, is it my phone or my laptop?
The Jabra Direct software has a couple of great options here to help you control which device gets priority. If I’m on a Teams call on my laptop and my mobile rings, I can decide how I want that to work.
Audio Quality
The audio quality is fantastic for meeting and calling. The software also allows you to adjust the amount of ‘Side Tone’, in other words the amount of your own voice that you can hear. The 65t are great for listening to music and podcasts. I’m no audiophile but the sound from these earbuds is deep and very rich, I can hear a lot of subtle things in music that I just hadn’t noticed with other earbuds.
Both the desktop Jabra Direct App and the mobile Jabra Sound+ App enable you to adjust the equaliser. It’s a little easier on the mobile app as they have some nice preset which give you Bass Boost, Treble Boost and it’s very quick to flip between those profiles. On the desktop app, you can manually adjust the sliders but there ate no profiles there. On the desktop app, you can manually adjust the sliders but there are no profiles there.
Noise Cancelling
The 65t don’t have Active Noice Cancellation, but the fit is really solid for blocking out any external sound. So much so that I had to check that there wasn’t any Active Noise Cancelling going on. It’s REALLY good. That is 100% down to the shape and design of these earbuds.
Again, we do have the Hear-Through feature that lets you hear more of what’s going on around you by using the external microphone and passing that sound into your ear.
Microphone Quality
Other than the Teams Noise Supression glitch that we mentioned earlier, the quality of the audio is superb. I’ve had people comment how it has noticeably improved over other devices that we’ve been trialling.
Find My Jabra
On mobile, there’s a really nice feature included which enables you to find your headphones. Which is great if you’ve left them lying around the house, or in the office.
There’s a really clear message here that Jabra will be storing your location each time you remove the headphones so they are making sure you understand the privacy implications. Once you’ve allowed access to your location, the devices will show up on a map. So now we can find out at least are they at home or in the office. For finer location tracking, we can also get the earbuds to play a loud noise so that we can hunt them down!
Challenges
Firstly, I’m VERY conscious of how clean my ears are (or ARE NOT). Whenever I take these out I always get a good view of some lovely ear wax. Maybe I have freakishly waxy ears, who knows but I do feel the need to hide them if I’m in company 😀
When you do receive a call you have this very jarring Robotic Audio prompt “CALL FROM PC” which feels really cheap but I’m sure you can disable those. It wasn’t annoying enough that I needed to find a solution.
But that’s pretty much it, these are fantastic piece of kit!
Cost
Normally £139 / $192USD
On offer
£69.99 / $97USD
Jabra Evolve 65t Earbuds: CLICK HERE
Check out the YouTube video above to watch how it works!
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