These are still some of the best wireless earbuds you can buy. Your choice might depend on what you’re using them for.
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- The AirPods Pro are excellent wireless earbuds with effective noise canceling that’s almost as good as a pair of over-ear headphones (like, say, the AirPods Max). They also work seamlessly with the iPhone and other Apple devices. But other options cost less than the AirPods’ asking price, such as the Galaxy Buds Live, Amazon Echo Buds and Jabra Elite 75t. I used both the AirPods Pro and Elite 75t for several months to fully compare them on sound quality, battery life, comfort and connectivity. Here’s what I found.
- The AirPods Pro are the jack-of-all-trades when it comes to wireless earbuds: great active noise canceling, excellent call quality and good sound. They don’t have as much bass as some other bluetooth buds, but they offer advantages like transparency mode, which lets you hear the outside world while you’re wearing them and voice-activated Siri that also can read messages aloud in your ears.
- Jabra’s wireless earbuds have great audio out of the box and they come with an app that lets you tweak the sound even more. The battery will easily deliver about seven hours of listening time. The buds sit tightly in the ear and block out a lot of external noise and have recently received an update to give them active noise canceling.
- Both of these earbuds have admirable sound quality. When listening to music, songs across a variety of genres sound more exciting and dynamic and have a much punchier bass response on the Elite 75t than the AirPods Pro when left on default settings. Jabra also has an app (iOS and Android) that offers a quick hearing test, called MySound, to fully personalize the sound profile to your hearing. There are also equalizer presets and a full EQ if you want more control.
- The AirPods Pro have an adaptive EQ that’s constantly working behind-the-scenes to tweak the sound according to the shape of your ears, but there’s no dedicated app or consolidated interface to adjust the sound to your liking. You can use an equalizer from apps such as Spotify or Apple Music if you choose. Apple has given the AirPods Pro spatial audio support in iOS 14 so the earbuds deliver a virtual surround sound experience which is very effective for movies or TV shows with 5.1-channel, 7.1-channel or Dolby Atmos audio.
- The AirPods Pro have the edge on call quality for both the caller and the receiver. When you’re making calls, having active noise canceling turned on makes it feel like you’re having a quiet conversation even if there’s a hubbub around you. The microphone’s position also helps clearly isolate your voice for the other person. That said, callers remarked that the sound of my voice from the Jabras was a little louder than when I made the same call with the AirPods Pro, although they could hear more background noise. Jabra also has a sidetone feature that lets you hear more of your voice when making calls. (So you can avoid shouting!)Listen to a microphone sample from each in the video above.
Transparency mode on the AirPods Pro (called Hearthrough on the Elite 75t) pipes in some outside sound so you can be more aware of your surroundings. In my experience, Apple’s transparency mode sounds more natural and I’m able to use it for a longer stretch of time than the version on the Jabras, which sounds a little too tinny.
Noise canceling on AirPods Pro is better
The ANC technology on the AirPods Pro does an excellent job of suppressing background sound, making the music and podcast-listening experience incredibly satisfying. At launch, the Jabra Elite 75t didn’t have ANC, but thanks to a firmware update you can now get ANC on these buds as well. It’s not as effective as the ANC on the AirPods Pro, but the design of the Jabra does block out a significant amount of external noise anyway (even without ANC) thanks to the in-ear design and snug fit of the interchangeable tips.
Note that the Elite 75t’s ANC is not as effective as the newer Elite 85t, which has a dedicated ANC chip.
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