Jabra Elite 85h: Surprise Contender For One Of The Best Headphones

We already know of Bose and the Sony being the top stars of the noise-canceling headphones world. The QC35 II and the WH-1000XM3s are the go-to cans for great sounding ANCs. However, there are plenty of companies looking to become a new competitor seeking to get into the mix.

Enter the Jabra Elite 85h headphones. These are their ANC headphones armed w/ smart sensors, quick charging, water-resistance, long battery life, and the signature Jabra sound. Announced earlier this year at CES and officially launched a few months back. We spent a few weeks w/ them to see how it all comes together as an experience.

Jabra retains most of its design language for these new premium Elites. But you have a plastic band covered by a comfy mesh fabric w/ faux leather cups. The same fabric covers outside of the cups & the controls as well. The fabric is covered by a nano-coating that makes these guys water-resistant. The combination of all of these things does make the Elite 85Hs a bit on the heavier side. More so than the competition but not breaking your neck heavy though. However, they’re still comfy enough to wear all-day like 10-12 hours at a time.

You got only a few buttons present on these. You got no on/off button as its smart sensors can detect when it’s on your head to power on and pair. There’s even on-ear detection that will automatically play/pause media when it’s off your ear or head. Of course, you can turn this feature off if you don’t like it. You do have buttons to access virtual assistant (Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri) and adjust ANC. On the right ear cup you have touch areas for Play/Pause, Skip Track/Volume Up, Previous Track/Volume Down as well. Outside of that, you can pair up to 8 devices as well as pair it w/ 2 devices at the same time thanks to Bluetooth 5.0.

Amazing clarity & bass output.

Jabra put in some in what appears to be the standard w/ their custom-crafted 40mm drivers to pump out audio in these cans. These Elite 85Hs sound super crisp w/ tons of clarity in the output. It offers pretty good bass levels too – almost close to what Sony offers but better than Bose. The only gripe I have on the sound quality is really small & minor. The Elite 85hs does lack high-quality codecs like aptX, LDAC, or AAC which offers better sound quality. But not enough to dismiss these as an option.

SmartSound is their 3-level ANC system comprised of 8-mics that are used in different situations. You have the options of off, HearThrough, & Full ANC. The HearThrough allows you to hear your surroundings w/o stopping your music/media. With Full ANC on, it’s great but not to levels of Bose or Sony – it’s close though. For hybrid digital ANC it uses 4 out of the 8 and on phone calls, it uses 6 out of the 8 mics. Making these a lot more ideal to talk on the phone with over other headphones. All of this is controlled via their Sound+ app as well as controlling the EQ, Sleep Mode, on-ear detection, and more.

The battery life is longer than the competition's.

Jabra claims 36 hours w/ ANC on and 41 hours of battery life w/ ANC off. I got around the time the suggested using it 4 days at work for about 9 hours or so most of the days. This is w/ ANC on the whole time as well. It does take around 2 and a half hours to charge fully from being completely dead. Since it uses USB-C to charge, you can get 5 hours of juice within a 15-minute charge BTW. So Jabra made sure to make the Elite 85Hs on par w/ the top ANC premium headphones like the Sony 1000XM3s – if not slightly better.

These are my new favorite headphones.

So do I think Jabra has done a good enough job to be considered amongst the top? Most definitely. Not besting them in the ANC areas but going toe-to-toe in every other section though. You got great sound quality, longer battery life than the competition, quick charging, smart sensors on board for ease of use, and pretty good ANC. The only negative for me was the lack of high-quality codecs for better audio quality.

Not bad for $300 which is $50 less than its competitors at retail. If you’re thinking about grabbing a new pair of ANC cans. I would put these above the Bose QCs but a little difficult to choose between these and the Sonys.