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The Jabra Elite 4 Lively is an total dependable set of earbuds geared in the direction of health customers and informal customers. Accessible in Mint, Navy, and black, they provide all the regular options of high-end earbuds, together with being wi-fi in design and ANC.

Design and high quality

Jabra’s newest fitness-focused buds sport a well-known design borrowed from its prior fashions. They’re conventional earbuds with swappable silicone ear suggestions that supply passive noise cancellation when in your ears.

The bulbous physique nestles in your ear and stayed put effectively throughout our strenuous testing. This can all the time be subjective, and everybody’s ears are totally different.

Our ears have struggled with most earbuds, they usually don’t remain in for lengthy. We often depend on some kind of match wings to make sure they do not fall out.

Earbuds destined for the fitness center want to remain in additional than most different earbuds. Throughout a exercise, you could possibly be laid down on a bench, operating on a treadmill, facedown whereas doing push-ups, and every thing in between.

All through all our testing, they dislodged from our ears solely as soon as.

The Elite 4 Lively are additionally very sturdy, with its IP57 resistance which means they are often submerged in a meter of water for half-hour with out situation. Additionally they can maintain any mud or particles from making ingress.

That is far past the IPX4 resistance discovered on AirPods and AirPods Professional.

Jabra additionally retained an identical case design for the Elite 4 Lively that it has used on lots of its current earbuds. It is a vertical clamshell-style case, most akin to AirPods Professional. Not like AirPods Professional, nonetheless, it might get up.

We favor having the case that may get up, which makes it a lot simpler to slide the buds again into the case when executed. The draw back is the shortage of wi-fi charging, so you may must depend on USB-C for recharging the case.

With out wi-fi charging, USB-C is one of the best we will ask for, however if you happen to’re entrenched within the Apple ecosystem, it’s possible you’ll not have a plethora of USB-C cables fairly but. One is bundled within the field, so it might both begin your assortment or develop it.

Jabra has some glorious battery life right here, with the earbuds lasting as much as 7 hours on a single cost. That is an hour greater than what the third-generation AirPods are able to — and that is with out noise cancellation.

In the event you flip off noise cancellation, your battery life ought to exceed these numbers.

In the event you mix the earbuds battery with the battery contained within the case, the full jumps to twenty-eight hours. That is simply shy of AirPods 30-hour whole.

There are 4 MEMS microphones onboard the Elite 4 Lively, used for calls and noise cancellation. MEMS stands for a micro-electro-mechanical system, however the one half you should care about is the standard of mentioned mics.

We made a number of cellphone calls in windy out of doors conditions and indoors, and our voice was usually clear on the opposite finish. There have been occasions the wind was simply an excessive amount of, however they had been few and much between.

You possibly can see the small grille positioned atop every microphone to assist stop wind distortion.

Noise cancellation

What units the Jabra Elite 4 Lively aside is its stability of options. We’re speaking about good battery life, high quality ANC, and whereas a lot extra inexpensive than AirPods or AirPods Professional.

We could not check the energetic noise cancellation out on a flight — one of the vital frequent environments to check ANC — however we did attempt in a number of others. Whereas within the automotive, at dwelling with the furnace operating, and with simulated airplane noise, the Elite 4 Lively did a strong job.

It wasn’t one of the best ANC we have tried, but it surely was probably the greatest on the sub-$200 value level.

In addition to noise cancellation, the Jabra Elite 4 Lively additionally has a passthrough audio mode referred to as HearThrough. That is Jabra’s model of Apple’s Transparency mode that means that you can hear what is going on on round you.

ANC is nice, however generally you should be extra conscious. Say, jogging down the street.

After getting used to Apple’s Transparency mode, we felt let down by the Elite 4 Lively. HearThrough wasn’t as dependable as we needed it to be. We might hear somebody speaking and listen to a automotive horn, however low noises had been nonetheless someway missed, like loud footsteps.

Nonetheless, it was sufficient to maintain us secure and cozy throughout out of doors exercises and bike rides.

Sound high quality

We have all the time had nice experiences listening to Jabra’s earbuds, and the Elite 4 Lively are not any exception. They’re pleasing, clear, however do not blow us away.

Vocals are often crisp and clear and stand out from the combo. We did discover a bit of harshness on the highs if we had the quantity up, however the bass by no means blew out.

We primarily examined the “traditional rock” and “rock-pop” genres, which align with our style. Queen’s guitar-rich tracks resonated in our ears whereas Freddy Mercury’s voice shined.

However these rock tracks additionally highlighted the shortcomings within the soundstage, because it comes out too slim, as if coming from a tiny supply.

With the traditional rock songs, you need that broad soundstage the place it has room to breathe. We hear this on higher-end earbuds just like the MW08 Sport from Grasp & Dynamic or the Bose Quiet Consolation earbuds.

They’re touting customized 6mm drivers that ship some good base, simply nothing out of this world. Bass is essential to encourage you throughout a exercise, so it is good that they’ve some grunt in them.

That is very true whenever you tune the audio to replicate that. Like all of Jabra’s buds, you’ll be able to go into the companion app and modify it as you want.

Jabra has a number of presets so that you can select from, equivalent to Bass Enhance and Energize, however you’ll be able to modify it your self too.

Must you purchase the Jabra Elite 4 Lively earbuds?

One other neat function of the Jabra Elite 4 Lively is the finding skills inside the accompanying app. It is not as sturdy as Apple’s Discover My, but it surely at the very least pins the final recognized location the earbuds had been seen.

This may be simply sufficient to know you left them on the fitness center versus someplace in your house.

Jabra has a number of Android-specific options for the Elite 4 Lively that do not work on iPhone. They work with Amazon Alexa built-in as a digital assistant, help Google Quick Pair, and help Spotify Faucet playback.

These aren’t game-changing options, and we nonetheless had been fortunately utilizing them on iOS.

Ultimately, Jabra has quite a bit to supply right here. For a value level simply above 100 {dollars}, the ANC is nice, the audio is sweet, battery life is great, they usually produce other distinctive options.

In the event you’re on the lookout for sturdy earbuds however do not wish to shell out for AirPods Professional, we’ve got no downside recommending the Jabra Elite 4 Lively.

Execs

• Good high quality sound
• Stable energetic noise cancellation
• Good battery life
• Hear Via audio mode
• Adjustable EQ in companion app
• Nice sweat and dirt resistance
• Snug put on

Cons

• Slim sound stand
• Will not auto pause when faraway from ear
• No Qi charging

Ranking: 4 out of 5

The place to purchase

If you wish to choose up a set of the Jabra Elite 4 Lively wi-fi earbuds, you will discover them for $119 at Amazon in addition to Finest Purchase.