Jabra Elite 7 Active True Wireless  Headphones Review

These earbuds have a similar design to other Jabra earbuds, like the Jabra Elite 3 True Wireless and the Jabra Elite 7 Pro True Wireless. They're round and somewhat bulky, with angled tips and buttons on the outside surfaces. They also come in three colors: 'Βlack', 'Navy Blue', and 'Mint'.

They're comfortable earbuds. They don't put too much pressure on your ear and come with three different tip sizes. However, they protrude from your ears and create a plunger-like feeling when adjusted, which can get annoying.

These earbuds have great controls. While they're not the most intuitive initially, they're very clicky, and you hear voice prompts and audible feedback chimes for many commands. You can also remap most of the controls in the app. They have an 'Auto-Pause' feature that pauses your audio automatically when you take an earbud out too. Unfortunately, double or triple-pressing the buttons puts pressure on your ears, which can cause discomfort the more you do it.

On the left bud:

• Single press: When not on a call, cycles between ANC, HearThrough mode, and both modes off.
• Press and hold: Lowers the volume when audio is playing.
• Double press: Activates the voice assistant.

On the right bud:

• Single press: Plays and pauses audio.
• Press and hold: Raises volume when audio is playing.
• Double press: Skips to next track.
• Triple press: Skips to previous track or restarts the track.

On either bud:

• Single press: Answers incoming calls as well as mutes and unmutes the mic while on a call.
• Double-press: Ends or rejects a call.

Like most truly wireless earbuds, these are extremely portable. While they're slightly bigger than the Jabra Elite 7 Pro True Wireless, they still easily fit into bags and pockets.

These earbuds come with a good case. There's a magnet to hold the earbuds in place and an LED light that indicates the case's battery life when it's open. Unfortunately, the lid feels a bit too easy to open.

They have a good build quality. They're mostly made of plastic but still feel quite sturdy. They're also rated IP57 for protection against dust and immersion in water. However, like the Jabra Elite 7 Pro True Wireless, the buttons feel cheap.

These earbuds have a stable in-ear fit that's similar to other sports-oriented Jabra headphones, like the Jabra Elite Active 75t Truly Wireless. While they lack stability fins, they stay in place during moderate and intense exercise. They feature Jabra's proprietary 'ShakeGrip' technology for improved stability. However, this doesn't make them more stable than the Jabra Elite 7 Pro True Wireless. If you're looking for earbuds with an even more secure fit, the Jabra Elite 8 Active True Wireless offer better stability for intense workouts.

• Jabra Elite 7 Active headphones
• 3x ear tips
• Charging case
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• Manuals

The Jabra Elite 7 Active's default sound profile is quite neutral. They're well-suited for various content and genres, including EDM and hip-hop, thanks to a touch of extra thump and punch in the bass range. If you prefer a different sound, their companion app has a graphic EQ and presets that you can use to customize the mix.

These earbuds have fantastic frequency response consistency. Like most in-ear headphones, you'll get consistent sound delivery once you achieve a good fit and seal with the included tips.

These earbuds have excellent bass accuracy. Mixes have a bit of extra rumble, punch, and body due to their overemphasized range.

These earbuds have excellent mid accuracy. In songs like Pink by Lizzo, the chorus's vocals, synths, and horns sound clear and intense. However, a dip in the mid-mid nudges those same voices and instruments to the back of the mix.

These earbuds have amazing treble accuracy. Instruments are present, detailed, and well-articulated. The mid-treble is slightly underemphasized, though, so sibilants like S and T sounds and cymbals sound somewhat dull.

These earbuds have superb peaks and dips performance. Overall, the peaks and dips are fairly minor, so these earbuds do a good job of controlling their sound profile. However, our unit's L/R drivers are mismatched, so some peaks and dips are more present in one driver than the other. A dip in the low-bass in both earbuds reduces the amount of thump and rumble in the mix. In the left driver, a low peak from the mid-bass to low-mid adds clutter and muddiness to audio content. In the right driver, a dip in the mid-mid nudges vocals and instruments to the back of the mix. A peak from the high-mid to mid-treble makes voices and sibilants harsher and more piercing, respectively.

These earbuds have excellent imaging. Jabra generally has good quality control and ergonomics, contributing to the drivers' imaging performance. The group delay falls below the audibility threshold for the entire range, resulting in tight bass and transparent treble reproduction. While our unit's L/R drivers are well-matched in amplitude and frequency response, the phase response is mismatched in the mid-mid range. This makes vocals and instruments louder in the right bud and is noticeable with regular content. These results are only valid for our unit, though.

Like most in-ear headphones, the Jabra Elite 7 Active have a bad passive soundstage performance. Since their design doesn't interact with your outer ear, audio sounds like it's coming from inside your head rather than from all around the room.

These earbuds have a great weighted harmonic distortion performance. Frequencies fall within good limits at normal and high listening volumes, resulting in clear and pure audio reproduction.

These are the settings used to test the Jabra Elite 7 Active in-ear Bluetooth earbuds. Our results are only valid when using these settings.

These earbuds have a good noise isolation performance. Like the Jabra Elite 7 Pro True Wireless, they have an ANC feature, but turning it on doesn't make an audible difference in how much ambient sound you hear. You may also notice white noise or more pressure in your ear with noise cancelling turned on. Fortunately, their in-ear design passively isolates you from mid-range background noise like conversations, and higher-pitched sounds, like humming A/C units. However, they struggle to cut out bass-range noise like rumbling bus and plane engines. If you're looking for a pair of Jabra in-ears with better-performing ANC, consider the Jabra Elite 5 True Wireless.

Note: We performed a fit test in the app before each test to ensure that the earbuds were forming a good seal in our test rig's ears. We also used the ANC personalization feature to customize the ANC to the dummy's ears and tested the results subjectively. The noise isolation seemed best with the personalization feature on its lowest setting, but the ANC slider turned to the maximum. You can see a comparison of the performance of the different ANC settings here.

These earbuds have a fantastic leakage performance. They don't leak much sound, so you can crank up the volume without bothering people around you, even in a fairly quiet setting.

The mic has a decent recording quality. Your voice sounds clear and natural but lacks brightness and body, especially compared to the Jabra Elite 7 Pro True Wireless, which captures your voice with more detail and fullness.

The mic has a mediocre noise handling performance. Background noise bleeds into your call in moderately noisy environments, but you're still clearly understood on the other end. However, louder noise, like the sound of a passing train, can completely drown your voice out or make it impossible to understand.

These earbuds have good battery performance. The manufacturer advertises that they last for eight hours off a single charge, and we measured just under that. Their case also holds nearly three extra charges, and five minutes of charging provides an hour of playback time.

There's also an auto-off timer that you can customize in the app, and similar to the Jabra Elite 7 Pro True Wireless, you can use one earbud while the other charges.

The Jabra Sound+ app offers lots of customization features, including a graphic EQ and presets that you can use to customize their sound profile. A 'MySound' feature also adjusts the mix based on an in-app hearing test. You can change the HearThrough and ANC levels with sliders or personalize the ANC based on the shape of your ear. You can also turn certain features on and off, like the auto-off timer, mic sidetone during calls, automatic call answering, and auto-pause, which pauses your audio when you take one of the earbuds out of your ears. Like the Jabra Elite 7 Pro True Wireless, you can remap the onboard controls and add some functions that aren't included by default, like sidetone on and off, hold and answer an incoming call, and switch between your current call and a call on hold.

These earbuds have satisfactory Bluetooth connectivity, though some users have reported issues. Some users have reported that their units randomly disconnect from their phones, or a bud completely stops working. We didn't encounter these issues with our unit and had no issues charging or connecting them to our phones. Over five to six hours of use, we also didn't encounter any Bluetooth or pairing issues. Both bud batteries seem to drain equally, too. If you've encountered these issues, please tell us in the forums.

Firmware update 2.2.0 added multi-device pairing, meaning you can connect to up to two devices simultaneously. However, you'll need to pause your audio from one device to receive your second device's audio. Their latency with Android and iOS devices is also low, so they're more suitable for watching videos on your mobile device. Also, some devices compensate differently for latency.

You can't use these truly wireless headphones wired. They come with a USB-A to USB-C cable for charging the case.

These headphones are compatible with Βluetooth-enabled PCs but can't connect any other way.

These headphones come with a case that stores about 2.8 extra charges. The only input is a USB-C port for the charging cable, which also supports wireless charging.