Small is partially beautiful
In-ear headphones | £149 | whf.cm/JabraElite5
The Jabra Elite 5 are the latest in a seemingly inexhaustible supply of true-wireless earbuds from the Danish audio specialist. This time out, Jabra is banking on a remarkably small and light form factor to help its latest model stand out in an already crowded area of the market.
Unless you have been living somewhere very remote, you will know you have almost too much choice when it comes to true wireless earbuds at this sort of money. Sennheiser, Shure and Sony all have rivals to sell you for this sort of price – and that’s just the ‘S’ brands – so these earbuds are going to need to be pretty special.
At just 5g per bud and sized at 21 x 20 x 27mm, the Jabra are small and light enough to be no burden – though if your ears are on the larger side, they might conceivably be too small, even with the largest of the provided eartips. But once in place, they will stay comfortable for the long haul.
The charging case is also compact, small enough to slip easily into a pocket and, at just 40g, it’s a fair bit lighter than many price-comparable alternatives, too.
Just because a product is small, that doesn’t mean it can’t be extensively specified, and the Jabra Elite 5 prove it. Wireless connectivity is via Bluetooth 5.2 and there’s support for SBC, AAC and aptX codecs. Multipoint connectivity means it is possible to connect the Elite 5 to two sources at once, and once the sounds are streaming they are delivered to your ears by a pair of 6mm full-range drivers.
Battery life is a perfectly respectable seven hours from the earbuds with active noise-cancellation switched on, rising to nine hours if you keep ANC switched off. The case is good for another three full charges, for anything between 28 and 36 hours. In comparison, the Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds give you eight hours in the buds (with ANC on), with 24 hours in total with the charging case – so the Jabras certainly keep going for longer.
Control is via pressing on each earbud, although ‘volume up/down’ is not among the options. It is available via Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri voice control, though – each Elite 5 earbud is fitted with three mics, which take care of voice-assistant interaction, active noise-cancellation and telephony.
There is also the Jabra ‘Sound+’ control app, which is one of the more stable, logical and extensive examples of its type. Here you can customise the response of the touch controls, alter sound quality via the five-band EQ or activate ‘MySound’, that seeks to deliver audio that is balanced to your sp
