Jabra Elite Active 45e Wireless  Headphones Review

The Jabra Elite Active 45e are sporty-looking headphones, thanks to their ear-hook design. They have an uncommon tip design that looks fairly similar to the Plantronics BackBeat Fit Wireless, but their cable is thinner and more portable. They also have stability fins to help them secure a good fit once in the ears. They come in three different monochromatic color schemes: navy blue, black, and mint green.

These headphones have uncommon tips that you can’t change. They have an odd fit that resembles the Plantronics BackBeat Fit Wireless. They don’t enter the ear canal like typical in-ears and have kind of an earbud fit. They sit poorly in your ears, which may cause ear fatigue after a while. Unfortunately, they don’t come with different tips, so their one-size-fits-all design might not be for everyone.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e have an okay control scheme that offers plenty of controls over your music and calls, but their buttons are a bit hard to use efficiently due to their small size and rubber coating. On the right bud, you can play/pause or answer/end calls, and you have volume controls on the bottom part of the bud. You also use the volume controls for track skipping. On the left bud, you can trigger your device’s voice assistant (they can also trigger Alexa on some devices), and when on a call, you use that same button for muting your microphone.

These headphones don't trap a lot of heat inside the ears and are very breathable. You shouldn’t notice a big temperature difference and shouldn’t sweat more than usual when using them during your workouts.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e can easily fit inside pockets or a bag, thanks to their design. Even if they're a bit bulkier than regular in-ears, you can fold them in a more compact format to carry them around. Unfortunately, they don’t come with a case or pouch.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e don’t come with a case or pouch to carry them around.

These headphones are well-built and feel durable for most sports activities. The buds are dense enough to survive physical damage from falls. They're also rated IP67 for dust and water resistance, which is certified to protect them from immersion in water. The cable is thinner than the rest of the build and starts from the ending of the ear-hooks, which seems to be the weak point of their design. You should still be able to wear these for most sports and activities without being scared of breaking them.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e are very stable due to their ear-hook design. Even if they fit loosely inside the ears without creating an air-tight seal, they don’t move around much during physical activity. Their wireless design means there’s no cable in your way that could get hooked on something and yank the headphones out of your ears.

• Jabra Elite Active 45e headphones
• Micro-USB to USB charging cable
• Manuals

The Jabra Elite Active 45e have surprisingly excellent frequency response consistency. Even if they're semi-open backs, they deliver bass consistently. They show little amount of deviation in the treble range under 10kHz. Overall, most people should get consistent bass and treble delivery every time they use the headphones.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e's bass is very bad. Their low-frequency extension (LFE) is at 100Hz, meaning they can't produce the low-end thump and rumbles common to bass-heavy music. Accordingly, they lack low-bass by about 24dB, which is poor. They have an underemphasized mid-bass, which is responsible for the body of bass guitars and the punch of kick drums. Also, their high-bass is overemphasized by about 3dB, which adds a bit of boominess and muddiness to their bass.

The mid-range performance is good. The response throughout the range is fairly well-balanced and even. However, the low-mid is overemphasized by more than 3dB and is the continuation of the bump in high-bass. This will make vocals and lead instruments thick and cluttered. On the upside, mid-mid follows our target curve well and is within about 1dB. There’s a dip in high-mid, which will negatively affect the projection and intensity of vocals and leads.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e's treble is decent. The response throughout the range is mostly over our target curve, and it's fairly uneven. This will make vocals, leads, and most sibilants sharp and piercing, especially on already bright tracks. There’s also a noticeable mismatch with our unit in the treble range, which is taken into consideration in our imaging test.

The imaging performance is poor. Weighted group delay is at 0.3, which is very good. The GD graph also shows that the entire group delay is within the audibility threshold. The large spikes in group delay below 20Hz aren't in the audible range, so they shouldn't have a noticeable negative effect on the sound. However, our unit showed a significant mismatch between the L/R drivers in amplitude, frequency, and phase. This can result in a loose bass and treble delivery and skew over the stereo image to one side. Note that these results are only valid for our unit, and yours may perform differently.

Like most other earbuds and in-ears, they have a poor soundstage. Due to their design, they bypass the pinna and don't interact with it. Pinna interaction is one of the big factors in giving the sense of a large and out-of-head soundstage; therefore, the Jabra Elite Active 45e's soundstage will be perceived to be small and located inside the listener's head as opposed to in front. However, because of their semi-open design, they sound slightly more open and spacious than closed in-ears.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e have terrible isolation performance, which is due to their semi-open design. In the bass range, where the rumble of bus and airplane engines sits, they achieve no isolation, which means they won’t be a good option for commuting. In the mid-range, important for blocking speech, they isolate by 2dB, which is negligible. In the treble range, occupied by sharp S and T sounds and fan noises like A/C systems, they isolate by about 10dB, which is very poor.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e's leakage performance is very good. These headphones don't leak in the bass and mid-ranges. A significant portion of their leakage is in the treble range between 5kHz and 20kHz. This means their leakage will mostly consist of sharp noises like cymbals and sibilants. The overall level of the leakage is not loud either. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at one foot away averages at 35dB SPL but peaks at 60dB SPL, which is louder than the noise floor of an average office.

The integrated microphone's recording quality is mediocre. LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 349Hz, which means transmitted/recorded speech with this mic will sound slightly thin. The HFE (high-frequency extension) of 3.3kHz indicates speech that lacks detail and is noticeably muffled. This will hurt the understandability of speech, but it should still be understandable in quiet environments.

The integrated mic is mediocre at noise handling. In our SpNR test, it achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of 11dB, indicating the mic is best suited for quiet environments and will struggle to separate speech from ambient noise in moderate and loud situations.

We measured about six hours of battery life, which is disappointing considering they were advertised to give nine hours of continuous playback. They also take more than two hours to charge fully, which is a lot considering the poor listening time you get out of it. On the upside, they automatically turn off after being idle for 60 minutes or 15 minutes when they're disconnected from a source. Unfortunately, you can’t set these timers inside their app.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e are compatible with the Jabra Sound+ mobile app. You have a small amount of customization options, thanks to a good 5-band graphic EQ and some music presets. You already have two presets for commuting, and a 'Focus' one defaulted to ocean wave sounds. You can also EQ each preset and create your own. While the app is easy to use and allows customization options, it still lacks some features like a playback control or room effects. If you want a similar pair of headphones that include a unique personalized custom EQ option within their app, check out the Nura NuraLoop Wireless.

These headphones support Bluetooth 5.0 and can also be connected to two devices simultaneously, which is convenient if you often switch between your work computer and phone. However, they don’t support NFC for a quicker and easier pairing procedure.

The Jabra Elite Active 45e have high latency on PCs, which might be slightly too high for some people, and you could notice a delay between the audio and video content. On the upside, their latency on iOS and Android is much lower. However, some devices and apps offer some compensation, so it might not be as noticeable for everyone.

You can't use these Bluetooth-only headphones wired in any way, and they don’t have an included audio cable.

These headphones don’t have a dock.