The Jabra Elite 3 is the company’s latest TWS earbuds offering in the budget segment. These are the company’s most affordable earbuds to date, and we’re liking them a lot. They’re reliable, and they offer decent sound performance. Coming from the Jabra Elite 85t, these don’t feel as premium, but they still do have a personality of their own.
Jabra Elite 3 – Specifications
What’s In The Box?
- Jabra Elite 3
- Charging Case
- 3 sets of Eargels
- Warranty and Warning Leaflets
- USB Type-C Cable
Design
The Jabra Elite 3 is a step back from the higher end Elite 75t and 85t, but in a good way. It’s made entirely out of plastic, and it has a matte finish on both the charging case and the earbuds themselves. The charging case is shorter, and it’s much lighter too, which makes it more lightweight to carry around.
Wireless charging isn’t supported (definitely not at this price point), but there is the USB Type-C port on the back for charging.
The charging case does feel a little flimsy as the hinge is a bit loose. But the nice thing about it is that if you push the top lid far back enough, it locks into a certain position so it doesn’t close back down on its own.
User Experience + Comfort
Equipped with Google Fast Pair, as soon as I opened the top lid, my phone could detect the Jabra Elite 3 almost instantly. Just tapping on “Pair” from the prompt, it was ready to go. The earbuds are easy to retrieve from the charging case due to its matte finish, and the best thing about them is that they don’t protrude from my ears as much as the Elite 85t did. This lets it have a slimmer and low-profile design, which I am all for.
When it comes to comfort, the Jabra Elite 3 fit my ears really well, even with the default eartips on the earbuds. In our headbanging test, the earbuds stayed on spectacularly without moving an inch. Since there’s no stem coming out of the earbuds, they also didn’t annoy the side of my face. After prolonged use, I’ve also felt no audio fatigue whatsoever.
There is also no wear detection on the Jabra Elite 3. So if you take them off and forget to pause your music manually, goodbye battery life. These earbuds are also the first pair of earbuds from Jabra that lets you use either earbud with mono mode. This means you can use either the left or right earbud independently.
Touch Navigation
To make the Jabra Elite 3 more accessible and to hit a lower price point, the company went for button controls instead of touch. To some, this may be better because it gives the user a reassurance that they actually pressed something. Personally, I like it. There’s a nice tactile feedback to each click, and I felt reassured that I actually did press on something.
In terms of controls, you cannot customize them and are pretty much stuck with the default controls Jabra set on the earbuds. But it’s nice that Jabra added long press for volume control, something you don’t see often on TWS earbuds.
Another thing you should know about the Jabra Elite 3 is that it’s built to work with Spotify right out of the box. Double tapping the left earbuds allow you to start playing from Spotify, while double tapping again lets you discover new songs on Spotify. Also built right in is Amazon Alexa, if you’re using that instead of Google Assistant, then this would be a plus for you.
App Control
Moving on to app control, the Jabra Elite 3 does have app connectivity with the Jabra Sound+ app, but the features available on the app are quite limited. You can perform firmware updates, and choose a few preset sound profiles. On top of that, even without ANC built in, you can still enable HearThrough (Ambient) mode, which essentially lets you listen to your surroundings without pausing your music.
There is no button control customization, or setting your own equalizer sound profiles, but you can choose whether you want the earbuds to work with your phone’s virtual assistant or specifically with Spotify.
That’s about it when you connect to the Jabra Sound+ app, and nothing more. If you never installed the app, it should work just fine on its own too.
Audio Quality
For this price point, the sound performance from the Jabra Elite 3 actually sounds pretty decent with Qualcomm’s aptX codec. The highs are fairly decent as they sound a bit underwhelming, but the mids are really brought to the forefront, which makes it great for vocal songs. In terms of bass, it does sound a bit muffled and drowns into the other frequencies. But, nothing too much that it disrupts the music experience. It still offers a nice, clean thump across all music genres.
Call Quality
In terms of call quality, I’ve never received any complaints from the other participants in my Discord/Teams/Google calls. Sound pickup is good, and it’s described as “clear with good volume”. No complaints here with Jabra’s 4-mic call technology.
Battery Life
On a single charge, I could squeeze 6 hours and 20 minutes of use from the Jabra Elite 3. Paired with the charging case, I could recharge up to three times, giving me a total of 26 hours and 55 minutes of use. This is close to Jabra’s claim of 28 hours of use.
Wireless charging isn’t supported, but fast charge is indeed available on the Elite 3. The USB-C cable provided is also colour matched with the colour of the earbuds you’re getting.
Conclusion
For the price of RM389, the Jabra Elite 3 made some necessary sacrifices and kept the essentials to make it a compelling pair of TWS earbuds. It’s reliable, and just works whenever you need it to. Just because it’s cheaper than its standard offerings, doesn’t mean it’s bad. You’re still getting somewhat customizable audio, app connectivity, great audio and call quality, as well as long battery life. Not to mention it works great with Spotify, Google Assistant, as well as Amazon Alexa.
If I were to nitpick, the only problem for me would be the lack of multipoint and the somewhat flimsy charging case. Apart from that, it’s still a good pair of TWS earbuds you should consider.
