Jabra Elite 7 Pro earphone review

The new Jabra Elite 7 Pro noise-cancelling Bluetooth earphones are small and pack a punch when it comes to audio quality and customisation, writes DAVE BULLARD

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We recently reviewed the Jabra Elite 85t earphones and loved them. Now, just a few short months later, the Danish company has delivered the Elite 7 Pros, which are even better and cost the same – $299.

The Jabra Elite 7 Pro earphones are wireless buds that have adjustable active noise cancellation (ANC), four microphones in each earpiece for high-quality conversations, long battery life and a comfortable fit.

The left and right buds can be used independently if you only want to have one in, and they have the ability to connect to more than one source – so you can use them for Zoom meetings on your laptop then go for a walk and listen to music through your phone without having to disconnect and re-pair.

For all the tech packed into them, these earphones have very compact bodies. This means they feel more comfortable in any sized ears and are well suited to smaller people, who often find higher-end earphones too bulky for their ears. An added, and important, bonus is that you can use them while lying down on your side.

Jabra has also shrunk the size of the charging carry case, which measures a small and very portable 6.7 x 3.8 x 2.5cm.

The case may be small, but it still packs a punch when it comes to charging. Jabra specifies an eight-hour battery life when listening to music (or up to six hours’ talk time) for the Elite 7 Pro earbuds, and this is pushed out by another 22 hours by the charge stored in the case. This is an overall improvement of about 5 hours over the 85ts.

Getting started

The first step is to download the Jabra Sound+ app, which acts as the gateway between the earphones and your smartphone.

The app will take you though a step-by-step setup, including very easy Bluetooth pairing and a few customised audio settings.

The MyFit setting checks that you have attached the right earpieces for your ears by playing a modulated tone and analysing the results. Getting the fit right improves the overall audio quality and active noise cancellation, and also gives you a deeper bass. It was interesting that, in my case, the app said I needed different-sized earpieces for each ear – not something I’d realised before.

The app will also tailor the audio to your hearing and create a hearing profile so you get the best sound possible. It does this by running a hearing test in which you tap the screen when you hear a tone. This is especially great for those who have some hearing loss, or who are just getting older – it seems that, without a hearing impediment, we should generally all be able to hear sounds at 8000Hz, but over-50s generally can’t hear over 12,000Hz, over-40s over 15,000Hz and over-30s over 16,000Hz.

On the road

As I said above, I found these earphones to be incredibly comfortable and not bulky at all. In my review of the 85ts I said that my wife, who is a fair bit smaller than me, found them too bulky to wear. No such problems with the Elite 7 Pros, which fit both of our ears extremely well.

Jabra says it created a perfectly shaped bud by using data from 62,000 ear scans and drawing on six generations of miniaturised tech, so it’s really no wonder that these feel so good.

Audio quality is very good – clear, crisp and highly customisable through the equaliser and presets in the Jabra Sound+ app. I found the earphones to be particularly good when watching action movies; the big effects and music seemed to resonate through my head.

My daughter Tori tried them out as well, and says she found the audio quality to be really clear. She could hear more instruments in the background than she has been able to with any other earphones. She also says the equaliser on the app is really easy to use and allows you to set your own presets, as well using the supplied set.

We both found the microphone and call quality was good, better than if you were speaking to someone through the phone microphone. Another cool bit of tech when it comes to voice quality is the Voice Pick Up (VPU) sensor in each bud, which kicks in when it’s windy to transmit your voice via vibrations in your jawbone.

The hear-through function is great when you want to quickly pick up ambient sounds or conversations without having to turn off the music or take off the earbuds. It uses the built-in microphones to pick up the sounds around you and play them. There are five levels that can be set in the Sound+ app.

There are a heap of features built into the Jabra Elite 7 Pro headphones, so we can’t cover them all here. But another two which we really like are being able to customise what the earpiece buttons do (through the app) and the ability to use either earbud independently and keep the other ear free by using mono mode. The one you’re not using can be charged on its own, which is pretty nifty.

The bottom line

The Jabra Elite 7 Pro is another great earphone model from the Danish brand. We had a couple of problems with the pairing dropping out, but this was rectified by a firmware update and factory reset. That said, they deliver very high quality across the board and we can highly recommend them.

Jabra Elite 7 Pro price

RRP $299
www.jabra.com.au