Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsBest Truly Wireless Earbuds for Athletes
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2017
Pros: Battery life is excellent and case charges the earbuds; sound quality is great as long as the right fit is tested and determined; a massive number of features, more than I need and can use; heartrate monitor works very well; Jabra Sport Life app is feature rich and has exportable, shareable data.
Cons: Pricey; finding the right fit takes time and experimentation; there are a lot of features so the learning curve is a little steep; the Jabra Sport Life app doesn't sync with S-Health or to a cloud account so if you factory reset your phone, you lose everything; no onboard storage for music.
These are incredible. I chose them over the other brands because Jabra is known for sport and wireless audio, and these are a crowning achievement.
First, the battery life for me, a gym goer, is excellent. I was really thinking about the Gear Icon X because I enjoy Samsung innovations, but the reported "streaming" battery life for the Gear was way too short. I'm at the gym at least an hour, almost daily, and so I need something with good, strong battery life. Also a factor is the time it takes to charge ... If I forget to charge my audio device, I need to be able to get it up and going in a reasonably short period of time.
The case for these earbuds charges them quickly and efficiently. It holds a reasonable charge itself and after several months, I get about three full charges for each full charge of the case. So, if for some reason I forget to charge the case on day two, my earbuds are ready to go when I am. It's excellent.
The earbuds report three hours of *streaming* time. That means three hours of streaming Google Play Music for me, at the gym. I have only had them run down on my once but that was because I didn't check to make sure they were charging when I put them back in the case.
(Tip: when they are put into the case, the case has two indicators that light up to show the current battery life of each earbud, and it also indicates that they are charging if it lights up. Make sure each indicator lights up when you put them back in or they won't charge. This isn't a problem, just something to keep an eye out for.)
As I know the Jabra doesn't store music onboard, itself, like the Gear Icon X does. That's not a feature that I use because I rely on streaming services for all of my music, so if you want something you can use without your phone or or a smartwatch that can independently store and stream music, you might want to check out other options.
The fit took some getting used to and Jabra provides more wings and ear fittings than you can think of. Definitely try them all. After long workouts, they do suction a little to my ears and that gets odd but they are adjustable and the problem is fixable. They aren't the smallest earbuds. That said, they will not fall out, no matter how much thrashing or burpees or running you can throw at them ... Provided you made sure to try out and find the right fit.
The functions and controls are a little bit complicated. I haven't mastered any of them other than volume up and down, and power on and off. But there are other things like a heartbeat diagnostic, workout level diagnostic, and other readouts you can get to be read out on demand.
Also the Hearthrough feature can be activated using one of the button on one of the earbuds but I can't get it to work reliably, partly because of my lack of studying the manual, and partly because ... Well mainly because I didn't read the manual deeply enough. I'll get to it someday, it's just that I don't need the feature because they work so well otherwise.
The app (I use it with Android and don't know anything about the iPhone experience, sorry) that these work with is available on the Google Play Store and it is very nice. My biggest gripe, however, is that it doesn't sync up with S-Health, which I use on my Samsung Galaxy Note phone. It also doesn't sync with MyFitnessPal ... Which is a bummer because the heartrate monitor and stats would be so useful. Having to use separate apps for all of my tracking is a bit tedious, but Jabra has a strong Twitter presence and their team is very responsive, and open to suggestions.
At the end of workouts, you get a bunch of charts and stuff that you can share, as well as the option to export data to CSV. Which is good and shows promise for anyone needing to stuff that info into a database. I'd like to see some way to sync that data across devices, but again that's an S-Health (or even Google healthkit issue).
Bottom line, for someone who works out a lot and wants to track their heartrate and workout stats, while having plenty of battery life and excellent sound, these are the way to go.