Plantronics BackBeat Pro 5100: My New Favorite Earbuds

Believe it or not, it been almost a whole year since we reviewed a Plantronics product. The last piece we covered was for their budget ANC headphones: the BackBeat Go 810s. Fast forward to now and we got something new from their BackBeat Pro line of products. Specifically, the BackBeat Pro 5100s which are Plantronics 1st foray into truly wireless earbud territory. After a few weeks w/ them, let’s talk about if they should be considered in the conversation of earbuds to buy.

Plantronics gave their earbuds a familiar look to them. Some parts of it remind me of the Jabra Elite earbuds and other parts remind me of parts from previous Plantronics devices. The cool thing about these is that almost every part of it serves a purpose.

For starters, the entire exterior has an IPX4 rating for being dust/sweat/water-resistant. There is also a button on each bud that does different things when you press/tap it. Initially, you can tap on the left bud for volume up/down. Tap on the right bud for play/pause, tap 2x to skip a song and once when you want to take an incoming phone call. These can be programmed to do different things via the BackBeat app like access your desired virtual assistant (Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa), Spotify playlists, battery life, timer, and more.

Small. All-day comfort. Nice seal in your ears.

All of this while still being small enough not to protrude out of ear much. Not bulky at all but not ridiculously small either. Kind of just the right size. As well as providing a nice seal in your ear but still being comfortable enough to wear it until the battery drains on you. More on the battery situation shortly.

If you’ve read/watched previous reviews here then you know we’re fans of the Plantronics sound. And it’s no different this time around as well. These are powered by 5.8mm drivers that create a nice balance of richness, clarity, & just the right amount of bass for its audio output w/ little-to-zero latency. They sounded great while watching Titans on DC Universe, my Spotify playlists, podcasts, & various YouTube content.

They squeezed their signature Plantronics sound in this smaller form factor.

One of the cooler things about them is that they can be used independently. Meaning, you can take one earbud out and use the other one to take calls while driving. Another thing is that Plantronics utilized their great smart sensors that play/pause content when you take the earbuds out of your ear. The tight seal gives you slight noise-isolation but when making calls, you got 4 noise-canceling mics w/ their new WindSmart technology to pick up your voice and block out everything else. Phone calls made using these came out pretty good in regards to the other person hearing me clearly w/o having to raise my voice to be heard.

Now that we’ve covered the sound, but what about the battery life? The 5100s offer up a good amount of juice, close to it but not the best. You can get up to 6.5 hours listen time & up to 4 hours talk time. The charging case gives you up to 3 full charges and gets up to 19.5 hours. You can give it an hour of juice in a 10-minute charge while you can give it a full charge w/ the case in 3 hours. And while we’re talking about the case, the one thing I wish it had was a USB-C port for charging instead of the now pesky micro-USB. For those of you expecting the charging case to have wireless charging support, it does not.

The 5100s pack a great balance of features, battery, & audio quality in these earbuds.

Now a year ago this would be a no-brainer for you to buy. But now in 2019, there are tons of really good earbuds out in the market. So the competition is pretty tough as everyone has gotten better to better compete against the AirPods. Now these don’t have the best audio or the best battery life. However, I think these guys offer the best balance of what some or most of what the people will want. In regards to the sound, battery, & comfort in one package. So until we test out something better, these are currently my favorite earbuds.