Jabra Stereo Sport Review

• Brand: Jabra
• Model: Sport Stereo Headphones
• Website:  Jabra
•  RRP: £71 (At time of the review)

Jabra is a global producer of innovative headsets and speaker phone solutions and today we are looking at the Jabra Wireless Stero Headphones.  Designed for people who actively enjoy exercising and going to the gym.  These headphones allow you to listen to music as well as make calls without the clutter of wires and cables.  There is nothing worse than going to put on your headphones and firstly having to untangle the cable before you can start listening to your music and with these headphones that is completely eliminated. The question is are Jabra onto a winner or do they fall short of the mark? Lets take a look at the specifications.

• Connectivity

  • Wireless Technology: Bluetooth
    Supports Bluetooth™ for wireless connectivity
  • Bluetooth version: 3.0
    Supports Bluetooth® version 3.0
  • AVRCP: Yes
    You can control your music from this device when it’s streaming from another device, such as your mobile phone
  • Auto Pairing: Yes
    With Auto Pairing, a device pairs automatically with Bluetooth® devices supporting this feature
  • Music Streaming: Yes
    Device can stream music from a source, such as a Smartphone, Bluetooth enabled laptop, tablet, or MP3 player

• Speakers

  • Frequency Response: Hifi
    Speakers with a hifi frequency sound produce a sound range well suited for realistic sound reproduction, e.g. Music
  • Digital Signal Processing: Yes
    Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is a technology that digitally optimizes your voice and music and suppresses echoes

• Microphone

  • Microphone Type: Omni Directional/noise filter
    Enhances call clarity by eliminating background noise from the office.
  • Microphone Sensitivity: Standard (E-STD)
    Standard (STD) variation microphone sensitivity is comparable to a normal telephone receiver and is used in most telephone devices.
  • Mute function: No
    There is no option to “mute/unmute” a conversation directly from the device

• Battery & Power

  • Talk Time: Up to 4.5 hours
    Talk Time is the maximum time you can talk before a device runs out of power
  • Standby Time: Up to 96 hour(s)
    Standby Time is the maximum time a device can remain powered on
  • Music streaming time: 3 hours
    Music Streaming Time is the maximum time you can stream music before a device runs out of power
  • USB Charging: Yes
    USB Charging enables a device to be charged via a USB cable
  • Battery Status Indicator: Indicator
    A battery status indicator reveals the remaining battery time

• Design

  • Wearing Style:

    • Ear loop
    • Behind-the-neck
  • Weight: 26 grams
    How much the product weighs (in grams)
  • Length: 64mm
    The length of the product in millimeters
  • Width: 12mm
    The width of the product in millimeters
  • Depth: 43mm
    The depth of the product in millimeters

  • Ear Cushion Type:

    • Small (S) sized ear gels
    • Medium (M) sized ear gels

• Remote Call Control

  • Digital Signal Processing: Yes
    Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is a technology that digitally optimizes your voice and music and suppresses echoes

• Control

  • Vibrator: No
    There is no vibration function on this device

Before we put the headphones to the test, let’s take a closer look.

The focus of the Jabra Stereo Headphones is demonstrated throughout the packaging which uses vibrant colours to catch the buyers eye.  The outer packaging demonstrates a good use of marketing design and accurate information “Exercise with wireless music & calls”. The curved packaging keeps the imagery and design flowing.

The back of the packaging has more clear information regarding the headphones.

From the packaging we can see that the headphones are Bluetooth and are designed to connect to almost every Bluetooth enabled device. They are iOS compatible which is something that isn’t always the case.

Inside the packaging we have instructions and warranty information, the charger for the headphones and an arm band for easy usage whilst running out doors or even whilst in the gym. There are two sets of ear buds allowing the user to use the earphones more comfortably.

As we can see the packaging’s yellow theme is not by coincidence.  The headphones themselves have the same shade of yellow in their design.

On the right ear-piece we have volume control and a menu button.

The right ear-piece also has the play and pause button as well as the microphone.

Charging of the headphones was simple enough, though due to the charger being a two pin plug I was unable to use the charger supplied. This was quite disappointing to be quite honest, a product designed for the British consumer market should have been supplied with a plug designed to fit house hold sockets, although this is most likely down to the Jabra’s PR firm’s samples. Since the charging port is a micro USB I was able to use my own mobile phone charger  as many devices use this same connection, charging the device should not be a problem. Charging the headphones to full took around two hours.  Once the device was charged it was a simple task of turning the headphones on via the Play/Pause Button and setting my mobile phone to search for Bluetooth devices. Pairing the headphones to my Galaxy SII was a simple task and only took a few minutes.  Whilst being able to listen to music is the key feature of these headphones one of the first things I tested was the call quality.  Doing this I rang one of my Play3r Colleagues and had a brief conversation.  During the conversation I asked if I was coming through clearly and I can safely say that the microphone works really well.  It was capable of eliminated some background noise during the call and I was also able to hear my colleague clearly through the headphones. The next test was the quality of the audio playback.  I can say that the headphones did this really well also.  I listen to a variety of music and being able to hear all the different tones from the instruments as well as the vocals is a necessity.  I found that these headphones did the job really well.  I was able to hear the high, mids and lows within the music I was listening to.  Whilst these cannot compare to a more audiophile set of headphones, they do the job really well.

In conclusion I would highly recommend these headphones if you are an active gym users or enjoy jogging out doors.  The audio quality was extremely good, and the comfort was also out standing.  The headphones worked really well and not having the tangle of wires whilst wearing them is a big plus in my opinion.  The audio quality will never be as high as a wired set of headphones but the fidelity in the sounds I was able to hear from the audio playback were excellent. I made several calls whilst I tested the headphones and I can say the call quality was also superb.  The people I spoke to could hear me clearly and the microphone did a great job of cancelling out background sounds whilst picking up my voice.  Overall I was really pleased with the headphones design and build quality as well as the audio quality I would highly recommended purchasing them.  For that I am giving them both the design award alongside performance.