The Jabra Elite 65e is an over the neck, Bluetooth earphone with 8 hours battery life, and IP54 rating which covers protection from dust ingress and water splash.
Advantage of Over-The-Neck Earphones[tie_index]Advantage of Over-The-Neck Earphones[/tie_index]
The Jabra Elite Active 65e was one of our favourite over-the-neck sports earphones which has the following benefits:
- It has the potential to have a longer battery life than wireless earbuds due to a larger battery.
- The earphones will not drop and get lost easily.
- When not in use, you can simply remove the earphones and let them hang around your neck. The earphones will be held by magnets and stick together like a pendant.
The Jabra Elite Active 65e fit snugly on the ears, with the ear wings helping to further secure the earphones from falling off. The sound quality of the Jabra Active 65e is good for both music and calls, the buttons work fine and battery life is 8 hours. It is certified IP54 which means protected from limited dust ingress and water spray from any direction, however, it should not be soaked in water.
Overall, we would recommend the Jabra Active 65e for active sports than True Wireless earbuds as it is more secured and has much longer battery life.
Read also: Difference between headphones, earphones and earbuds
After using it for more than a year, the Active 65e suddenly stopped charging. As the model was out of stock, Jabra provided the Active 75t earbuds as a replacement at no additional cost. We have a review of this earbud further below.
At this time of writing, the Elite 65e appears to be replaced by the Elite Evolve 65e (released 26 Mar 2019) and a higher version Evolve 75e (released 2 May 2017), and both has up to 13 hours of battery life and comes in MS and UC model. However, the earphones under the Jabra Evolve series are not a “sports” model as they do not have any IP Rating. They are also classified as “office headsets”.
We will review these two newer models in another article as they deserve their own space. Surprisingly, all the models in the “Evolve” series also do not appear under their “Sports Wireless Section” except for the Evolve 45e.
Why not True Wireless Earbuds?[tie_index]Why not True Wireless Earbuds?[/tie_index]
True wireless earbuds differ from wireless earphones or earbuds in that they do have any wires at all, even between the two earbuds.
Even though everyone seems to be leaning towards wireless earbuds, it is likely that they may experience one or more of the following issues with them:
- It is easily dropped, which could get lost or damaged.
- Poor battery life.
- Poor sound quality.
- Poor connection.
- Expensive, considering the above.
When working on this review, we compared the Jabra Elite 65e to Jabra Elite Active 65t, and found that the 65e more suitable for outdoor sports activities as it is more secured with the over the neck design. After losing one earbud during training, I had decided to retire my “Active” 65t and use it only for phone calls, or listening to music while sitting down at work or inside a car.
[tie_index]Pros and Cons[/tie_index]
Pros and Cons[tie_index]Pros and Cons[/tie_index]
Our experience with the Jabra Elite 65e has been very positive. The advantages are:
- Good single-use battery life of 8 hours
- IP54 for sports
- Secure ear fitting
- No risk of dropping
- Good sound quality with strong bass
- Bluetooth connection
- Include a nice storage pouch
There are three issues that are not so great.
- Micro-USB connection for charging, but we expect future models to be getting USB Type C ports.
- Rubber sheath cables tend to get harden, and sometimes it bends into a weird shape when we put on the earphones.
- The wiring can be shortened by moving the wiring further up the neckband, like the Sennheiser HD-1 (right photo below). If you compare the design below, the Jabra Elite 65e has a longer cable which does not serve any purpose but may cause unnecessary entanglement.
The above pros and cons are based on using this earphone for a year, after hundreds of kilometres of jogging. We are not too concerned with the sound quality due to other noises during working out, however, our feedback is that the sound quality and bass is much better than the Jabra Elite Active 65t earbuds. If you prefer to see a very detailed review of the sound quality and noise cancellation, please check this out.
As I only use it for running, I find the noise cancellation good enough as there are (running) noises that cannot be cancelled. If you run with earphones, you should know what I mean.
Suggestions for Improvements[tie_index]Suggestions for Improvements[/tie_index]
The following are the few things that we look forward to in the next version:
1) Change to USB-C for charging.
2) Change the rubber cable sheath to the braided fabric and an inner waterproof sheath.
3) Considering it is an over-the-neck earphone, we are expecting the room to increase the battery life further
4) Consider changing the earphone wiring method similar to Sennheiser HD-1(right photo) where the wire is connected further up the neckband.
