Jabra might have departed the world of consumer audio a couple of years ago, leaving its gear to the world of corporate tech and the working world, but that doesn’t mean headphones need to be ugly.
While the headphones with obvious boom arm microphones are largely the sort of thing you expect to see for work headphones, that’s been changing in recent years.
Earphones with tiny bone conduction mics built into little arms were the start, and we’ve even seen headphones designed to look better with a boom microphone you can tuck behind the pads, too. There are definitely solutions when it comes to improve the normal ho-hum microphone sound of headphones where non-stop talk matters, and while design plays a part, much of the focus is on the technology.
These days, the technological argument for improving sound typically falls at the feet of AI.
Yes, that topic that always finds something to talk about, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural algorithms give sound companies the ability to push their hardware a little more by learning from patterns. And in Jabra’s latest, that appears to be what the company has done.
With the Evolve3 headphones, Jabra is essentially looking at a premium approach for its work cans with a boom-less mic design. That means there’s no boom microphone, but there is a bunch of technology designed to make the microphone more like a boom arm even without the hardware.
The technology uses a combination of algorithms and neural networking technology to focus on specific sounds, emulating the way our brains filter out noise to listen to certain things. It’s an approach driven by AI that aims to block background noise while in a call.
Outside of the microphone, there’s also active noise cancellation with adaptive technology designed to deal with both the environment and how the headset fits to your head, the latter an approach we’ve seen Sony use since the introduction of its MDR-1000X headphones.
Design-wise, we’re reminded of Jabra’s 85h headphones from back in 2019, with these looking like a slightly modern take on the idea.
In a bit of a twist, they’ll also come with replaceable batteries, something that never exists in noise cancelling headphones anymore, with their own batteries able to last up to 120 hours of listening or up to 25 hours of talk time.
Two variations will be made, with the over-ear Evolve3 85 and the on-ear Evolve3 75, depending on what your ears are used to. Neither is particularly inexpensive, however, with the Evolve3 75 available from $719 and the Evolve3 85 from $979 in Australia.
It’s worth noting that while the Jabra Evolve models are priced like premium noise cancelling headphones in the same price range as the Apple AirPods Max and Sennheiser HDB 630, they’re not quite the same.
Work-focused headphones tend to carry a higher price due to their microphones and support for work-based software, so while these are expensive, they’re may not necessarily be in the same ballpark as premium music headphones. We’ll certainly know closer to release, with Australia targeted for March 1 with these headphones.
