With the True Wireless Stereo (TWS) market exploding in India like never before, every brand – big or small – wants to cash in on this opportunity. From a global player to a homegrown electronics venture, worth its salt, has an offering or two. Danish brand Jabra, a formidable player in the personal audio segment which is mostly known for making expensive hearables, recently introduced some affordable wireless earbuds, including Elite 3 priced at Rs 6,999 in India. Packing in a host of features, the Jabra Elite 3 comes in four colour variants- Dark Grey, Light Beige, Lilac and Navy. Let’s find out how good it is in a competitive market like India in this review.
Build and Design
The Jabra Elite 3 is a bit different from its predecessors. Although it looks a bit bulky, it’s quite compact and has a new shape that offers an in-canal fit with the earbuds a bit more angular to provide some isolation. The in-canal fit gives decent passive noise isolation, since it doesn’t support active noise cancellation.
The earbuds offer a nozzle-type design and their control buttons are also triangular in shape, having the company’s branding and LED indicator on the top. The buttons are easy to press and make the control easy. We had the Dark Grey variant for review and the earbuds are quite lightweight and comfortable for long hours of usage. You get three sizes of silicone ear tips to fit the buds to your ear, as they offer a secure and snug fit design.
The charging case is made up of plastic and feels a little more fragile than the earpieces but it looks good and compact and is easy to carry, as it easily slips into your pants pocket. There is a Jabra branding and a charging indicator on the front and a USB Type-C port on the back to charge the case. The Jabra Elite 3 is IP55 rated, making it water and dust resistant.
Taken as a whole, the earbuds offer a comfortable fit in your ears and you’ll not experience any sort of fatigue even after using it for long hours. The Jabra Elite 3 is not as sturdy as its predecessors, considering its flimsy body. Besides, the physical buttons look outdated in the age of touch panels.
Functionalities
The earbuds easily get connected to your smartphone via Bluetooth. Tap the right button once to play/pause the song, a double press skips the track forward, while a triple press rewinds. To increase the volume, you’ll have to press and hold the right button. Likewise, you can turn ambient sound on/off with a single press on the left side, whereas the voice assistant can be activated by a double press. To reduce the volume, you need to press and hold the left button. These are handy features that will make using the buds much more efficient. Like any other TWS earbuds, these buttons are also of great help in picking up and cancelling a call. You can also use earbuds independently in the mono mode which is a welcome feature but not new.
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Performance
Jabra has always been a name to reckon with when it comes to sound quality. The audio output is very much close to what you get in premium devices. The earbuds are well-tuned and you’ll not feel audio being compressed or broken. The Jabra Elite 3 sounds very clean and clear with balanced mids and lows, with rich bass. You can play any genre of music using these earbuds and will enjoy the sound. Listening to Hindi music is a pleasant experience with these earbuds.
On the flip side, there’s no active noise cancellation feature, which goes against this TWS. You will have to manage it with the passive one which is decent both indoors and outdoors. Also, there’s no auto-pause, so it doesn’t pause the music when you remove the earbuds.
Amazingly, Jabra has given four microphones in the earbuds which ensure satisfactory call quality.
Battery
Standing tall to its claim, the all-new Jabra Elite 3 earbuds offer a tremendous battery life of up to 7 hours in regular use. In addition to this, the earbuds can be charged nearly 4 times using the charging case, so you get more than 25 hours of battery time easily. Besides, there is fast charging support that will give you an hour of usage with just 10 minutes of charging. It goes without saying that Jabra is a leader in offering powerful battery in its TWS devices.
Conclusion
The Jabra Elite 3 looks simple and sober, offers a comfortable fit and has a stupendous battery life, besides carrying its legacy of offering a premium sound quality. Even the call quality is superb. Although it’s not feature-rich, the Elite 3 offers you some really interesting features, such as the quick access to Spotify or Amazon Alexa. Having no ANC is definitely a downside, especially at a time when a number of brands are offering this feature at affordable prices. Taken as a whole, the Jabra Elite 3 is pretty reliable and a ‘value for money’ deal that you would love to have at the given price.