Jabra Elite 7 Active True Wireless Headphones Review

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have a similar design to other Jabra earbuds like the Jabra Elite 7 Active True Wireless and the Jabra Elite 3 True Wireless. The earbuds have a somewhat bulky, rounded shape, with angled tips and buttons on the outside surfaces. They come in three different colors: 'Βlack', 'Navy', and 'Mint'.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active are comfortable earbuds. They don't put too much pressure on your ear and come with three different tip sizes to choose from. Ηowever, they protrude from your ears a bit and create a plunger-like feeling, which can be a bit annoying.

They have great controls. The buttons are very clicky and responsive, and you can control your music, phone calls, and ANC mode. While the controls are not the most intuitive at first, you hear voice prompts or audio feedback for many commands. You can 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 is a bit annoying.

On the left bud:

• Single press: When not on a call, cycles between ANC, HearThrough mode, and both modes off. HearThrough mode is intended to let you hear your surroundings without taking out the earbuds, and in the app you can choose whether it also pauses your audio.
• Press and hold: Lowers volume when audio is playing.
• Double press: Activates 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 mic while on a call.
• Double-press: Ends or rejects a call.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active are very portable, like most truly wireless earbuds. While they're advertised to be smaller than other Jabra earbuds, they're slightly bigger than the Jabra Elite 7 Pro True Wireless. That said, they still easily fit into bags and pockets.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active come with a good case. There's a magnet to hold the earbuds in place and an LED light that displays the case's battery life when it's open. Unfortunately, the lid feels a bit too easy to open.

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

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have a stable fit, similar to other sports-oriented Jabra headphones like the Jabra Elite Active 75t Truly Wireless. While they lack stability fins, they should stay in place, even if you make exaggerated movements.

• 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. There's a touch of extra thump and punch in the bass range that makes them well-suited for genres like EDM and hip-hop, but it's well-balanced enough for a variety of content and genres. If you prefer a different sound, their companion app has a graphic EQ and presets that you can use to customize it. Unfortunately, our unit's drivers are mismatched, and some sounds are louder in the right earbud. This issue may not affect every unit, though, and you may have a different experience.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have fantastic frequency response consistency, like most in-ear headphones. Once you achieve a good fit and seal with the included tips, you should get consistent sound delivery.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have excellent bass accuracy. The whole range is slightly overemphasized, so they have a touch of extra rumble, punch, and warmth.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have excellent mid accuracy. There's a dip in the mid-mid that nudges instruments and lead vocals to the back of the mix, but the rest of the response is very neutral, and vocals and lead instruments are clear and intense.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active 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 may lack a bit of brightness.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have superb peaks and dips performance. There are a few peaks and dips, and since the L/R drivers of our unit are mismatched, some are more present in one driver. There's a dip in the low-bass reduces thump and rumble in both earbuds. In the left driver, there's a low peak from the mid-bass to low-mid that adds clutter and muddiness to audio. There's a dip in the mid-mid that affects the right driver more than the left, nudging vocals and instruments towards the back of the mix. A peak from the high-mid to mid-treble makes some sounds more piercing or harsh.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have an excellent imaging performance. The group delay falls below the audibility threshold for the entire range, which results in tight bass and transparent treble reproduction. The left and right drivers of our unit are well-matched in terms of amplitude and frequency response, which helps ensure that objects are accurately placed in the stereo image. Ηowever, the drivers' phase response is mismatched in the mid-mid range. This makes some sounds louder in the right bud and is noticeable with regular content. These results are only valid for our unit, though, so you may have a different experience.

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, sound seems to come from inside your head rather than from speakers in the room around you. They also have a closed-back design, so the soundstage seems less spacious than most open-back earbuds.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have a great weighted harmonic distortion performance. All 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 these headphones. Our results are only valid when using these settings.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have a good noise isolation performance. While they have an ANC feature, turning it on doesn't make an audible difference in how much ambient sound you hear. You may notice white noise or more pressure in your ear with noise cancelling turned on, though. Their design isolates you from mid-range 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 dummy head'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.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have a fantastic leakage performance. They don't leak very 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. Recorded speech sounds clear and undistorted but lacks brightness and body.

The mic has a mediocre noise handling performance. In moderately noisy environments, background noise is loud and audible, but your voice should still be understandable. Ηowever, louder noise like the sound of a passing train can completely drown out your voice or make it impossible to understand what's being said.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have a good battery performance. They're advertised to last for eight hours off a single charge, and we measured slightly under that. Their case also holds about 2.8 extra charges, and Jabra advertises that five minutes of charging in the case provides about an hour of playback time. Ηowever, battery performance can vary with real-life use, so your experience may vary.

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 Elite 7 Active have a great app. It offers lots of customization features including a graphic EQ and presets that you can use to customize their sound profile. There's also a 'MySound' feature, supposed to customize the sound based on a hearing test. You can adjust the HearThrough and ANC levels with sliders or personalize the ANC. 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 also remap the onboard controls and add some functions that aren't included by default: sidetone on and off, hold current call and answer an incoming call, and switch between your current call and a call on hold.

The Jabra Elite 7 Active have satisfactory Bluetooth connectivity. 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 seem to compensate differently for latency, so your experience may vary.

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, and it also supports wireless charging.