Jabra Evolve3 85 review: Work and play, in that order

Workplace-oriented headsets and consumer headphones have a few different priorities, so you generally need two different products to satisfy work and play. For a professional headset, you want something portable, lightweight for long periods of wear, that has a reliable mic, long range, good battery with easy charging, and which can reduce the ambient noise of a workplace.

For personal use, people tend to look more at aesthetics, audio quality, and strong active noise cancellation (ANC). Other factors like comfort, battery, and ease of use are also important, but tend to be outweighed by the first three.

The Evolve3 85 is Jabra’s latest high-end attempt to cram all this into a single product – because why not? The company has managed something impressive on the workplace headset front, but there seems to have been less focus placed on using these as a pair of standard headphones.

Good stuff first

Looks-wise, the Evolve3 85 echo that pleasant, ovular, minimalist style you're doubtless familiar with, even if you don't realise it. As such, they won’t turn many heads – which might be the point. Sure, they follow the same design beats as the rest of the consumer headphone market, but you're also not going to look like you walked straight out of a call centre. We'll call that a win.

Despite its consumer aesthetic, its weight and materials are very much from the headset world. The light weight and plastic construction feels cheap on first picking them up, but also makes them portable and easy to wear for long periods. Combined with deep, breathable ear pads, the Evolve3 85 are one of the most comfortable pairs of headphones I’ve used when it comes to long stints.

That lightweight plastic scratches almost on a whim, so you’ll want to use the included carry case. It’s smaller and lighter than you might expect, sacrificing a bit of protection for portability – a net positive in my opinion – but there’s sadly nowhere to easily stow cables or the optional wireless charger.

Jabra’s made an impressive showing with its inbuilt mic. Voice comes through clear and fairly crisp, while the HearThrough setting lets you hear your own voice a bit better, meaning you’re less likely to become your workplace’s loud-talker.

The mic’s noise cancellation borders on magic. I powered on an electric whipper snipper during a call and, as long as I turned my head away, there was no noise on the other end. Facing the noise meant my voice became choppy, but the snipper was still filtered out completely. Less ridiculous examples, like construction noise, didn’t require head turning.

It's not perfect, but I can't stress this enough: this is the best internal mic I've used on any device, ever – including laptops and dedicated webcams. There’s no real competing with a with a good external mic, but I'd wager there aren't many people the Evolve3 85's audio input wouldn't satisfy.

Range is good: about 40 to 50m for the mic and 50 to 60m for received audio. There are professional headsets with better range, but this is beyond many consumer headphones.

Battery is impressive. Jabra claims 120 hours of muster or 25 hours on calls. I admittedly didn’t set up a 120-hour test, but in the two-ish weeks I used them as my work headphones and for occasional public tunes, they dropped to 39% without a single top-up. There’s also wireless charging, though the charging pad is $100 extra at point of sale.

What needs improving

The headline dealbreaker for many people will be audio quality. Having positioned the Evolve3 85 as a premium headset for work and play, I’d expect top-notch audio for a $959, even for a hybrid product. But that’s not the case. It’s not even on par with some much cheaper headphones, like the (admittedly awesome value) Nothing Headphone A for $329.

To illustrate the core problem, we could get into definitions of sibilance ("s" sounds), fricatives, plosives, and the like. But we'd be here a long time because, ultimately, the Evolve3 85's audio issues can apply to most consonants, depending on how they’re pronounced or recorded. This can also make some other sounds, like snare drums or cymbals, come across tinny and cheap. 

The imperfections aren't ear-piercing or even hair-raising – undiscerning ears might not even consciously pick up on them. But keep in mind these cans are a couple of four packs south of a cool $1k. Basic audio issues like this just shouldn't be present.

Without the minor lapses in elementary sound design, audio would probably be good, maybe better than good. Sub bass is forceful and bass is strong, though the latter lacks a little punch. Mids are a tad under-tuned, but that’s par for the course with wireless headphones. And higher pitches… well, it’s hard to tell because they’re so impacted by the aforementioned flaws.

Switching gears to a different, but stranger failing, let's talk about active noise cancellation (ANC). While the microphone has borderline supernatural noise filtering, you, as the listener, don’t get the same treatment. The ANC feels like popping on a fan in 40 degree heat – it does something, but you’ll be yearning for proper climate control the whole time. This is a feature that's important to both the work and the play crowds, so to see it handled so underwhelmingly in a premium product is a head scratcher.

(I’m no sound engineer, but couldn’t you take the mic noise filtering and just… turn it around? Probably not, but I had to ask.)

Speaking of the mic and its generally great performance, it can admittedly struggle with low-volume conversations. If you’re one for murmured discourse, expect those consonant qualms to double in intensity or more.

Last, the overall Jabra Plus app experience is not amazing. It lacks some basic features, is slow to load, and isn’t available on workplace devices like Macs and Windows PCs. This last point is fine for consumer-grade headphones, which are often only paired with a single phone, but professional headsets are regularly used with a Mac or PC. Jabra is reportedly working on a Jabra Plus desktop app, but it feels a smidge late three generations deep into the Evolve line.

If you do use a phone, the app often takes upwards of 30 seconds to locate your headphones, if it can find them at all. This is only a problem if you're paired with two devices, but that's kind of the point of hybrid headphones. The app has some nifty features like HearThrough voice, but basic inclusions like customising playback commands are missing – I for one would find it pretty handy if I could sub out mic mute and AI assistant to add skip forward/back controls.

Jabra Evolve3 85 – Final thoughts

There’s merit behind the idea of a single pair of headphones for work and play. Jabra’s nailing the work part, but the middling audio quality and poor ANC make the Evolve3 85 a hard sell for $959, let alone if you opt for the $1,059 version, complete with wireless charger.

Thanks to the hybrid identity of the Evolve3 85, it’s hard to draw one-to-one comparisons with like-priced competitors. But given you can pick up far superior sound quality in something like the Nothing Phone A for $329, anyone for whom the professional-focused aspects aren't a high priority might want to keep their work and play separate for now.

In the other corner, there will be people for whom the trade-off is worth it. These will be folks who want a good, work-focused headset that can sideline as passable headphones in the off hours. And, of course, who have $959 to spare. The mic and its noise reduction are fantastic, the battery is impressive, and I'm a bit in love with how comfortable and portable the Evolve3 85 are.

So, which are you: the music lover with an office job or the office worker with a taste for music? One of these should consider the Evolve3 85 as an option; the other should not.