I was always disappointed by the first iteration of bluetooth headphones we got. Growing up, I hated the restrictiveness of wired headphones, of having to stop to untangle them every time I wanted to listen to something. But I think the bluetooth headphones that connected to each other with one thick wire were even worse. The wire was always too long so there was a lot of slack, and they were hard to casually sling around your neck because the weight threw them off, leaving me trying to catch them as they slip. So I was excited by the prospect of getting to try some true wireless earbuds that pair totally seamlessly to my phone and to each other.

Jabra are an audio-centric company, with a strong focus on professional and medical-grade audio equipment, but with a nice selection of consumer audio options as well, including some true wireless earbuds.  Not surprising for a company with that pedigree and focus, their products are geared towards more expensive, high-quality options. The Elite 75t, their top-of-the-line option for true wireless earbuds, shipped to me in a sleek, minimalist little box. The earbuds have a similarly minimalist design. Lacking the stems that appear on some TWS earbuds like the AirPods, they’re just two small buds with a big button on the outside of either one. The charging case is also minimalist, but effective. A simple rectangular design, it has a charging port on the back and opens up to reveal two magnetized slots for the earbuds. The magnets will ensure the buds slot into place correctly for charging every time. Jabra claims the earbuds can get around 7.5 hours on a charge and the case can hold another four charges, and in my testing this appears to hold water. If anything, I got closer to 8 hours out of the buds.

Tech Specs

• Battery Life: 7.5hrs music playtime.

• Rechargeable case: Built-in battery can recharge buds up to 4 times on a single charge.

• Auto pairing: one-step pairing for easy connection.

• Bluetooth 5.0.

• Special Features: Noise Isolation

The initial setup is as simple as it can be; press the button on both earbuds simultaneously and it’ll pair to your phone. From there, these buttons will control your music player. Given how snugly the buds fit into your ears, I expected it to be a little uncomfortable to activate the buttons (and it is if you press too hard), but the buttons are sensitive enough that a light touch is all that’s needed. The controls are fairly standard if you’ve had on-board controls like this before (tap on the right earbud to pause/play, double tap the left one to go to the next track, etc.), so they’re all pretty easy to remember. The only one that doesn’t quite work is the volume control, done by holding either the left or right earbud to slide the volume up or down. It’s slow moving, yet still not quite precise enough to be totally effective.

The earbuds will automate some controls as well for ease of use. If you take one of the earbuds out, playback will pause on its own, and resume when you put it back in. It’s a convenient little feature that’s helpful if you just need to keep an ear out for something occasionally. (It can also be turned off in the companion app’s settings if you don’t want playback interrupted.) If you want to just listen with one earbud, you can hit the button on the right one to resume play after removing one of the buds. Since the right earbud is the “main” one that connects to your phone, and the left one just connects to the right earbud, there’s no option to only listen to the left earbud. However, the right one will fit in your left ear if that’s absolutely necessary, though of course it won’t be quite as snug as if you put it in the proper ear.

One-ear mode is when those sensitive buttons mentioned earlier can cause some issues. On more than one occasion I took my earbuds out for a moment and accidentally clicked the right earbud button, activating one-ear mode and resuming playback. If you don’t set the left earbud back in your ear within 60 seconds of starting one-ear mode, there’s no way to restart playback in both without setting the buds back in the charging case, which automatically disconnects and powers them down. Even manually turning off the earbuds by holding both buttons and then reconnecting them had them come back in one-ear mode. This isn’t too big of an issue as long as you’re careful not to touch the button, but it can be slightly annoying.

You’ve also got options for voice controls. Each earbud has two microphones, one in the front and one in the back, that work very well for voice commands and calls. You can activate your voice assistant by double tapping the left earbud, but you still have the option of calling out to touchlessly activate it. Admittedly, this feature has always been spotty on my phone (iPhone 6) and I didn’t have another device on hand to test it with, but the Jabra Elite 75t allowed me to call out to my voice assistant with more consistency than the microphone on my phone itself.

For calls, they perform admirably as well. The clarity is good, and for outdoor use they cut out background noise well. I live in a particularly windy area and they were able to totally eliminate low winds and, while they couldn’t cut out mid-to-high speed winds, people were still able to clearly make out what I was saying on the other end of the call.

There’s another interesting feature that use the microphones called HearThrough. Since the buds fit so snugly into your ear and block out other noise, the microphones can be used to pick up noise around you. There’s a slider in the app that lets you control the volume at which you want to let other noise in, but I found I basically always needed it at max and my music fairly low in order for it to be effective. Regardless, it works phenomenally. For outdoor use it did a great job picking up road noise and other pedestrians, and even picked up cyclists on the sidewalk pretty well. Inside, I was able to have full conversations with it activated, and I really stopped noticing it after a while. Given how comfortable the buds are in your ear and how well HearThrough works, it felt like I was listening to music through speakers, but without having to actually bother anyone else.

The actual sound quality is excellent as well. While of course they can’t compete with wired, over-ear models, these buds are exceptionally clear and handle both music and speech well. The bass leaves a little to be desired, as you might expect with anything this small, but the companion app allows you to tweak the EQ setting, including a bass boost mode.

It’s also worth noting that I had some mild technical issues when I first started using these, but Jabra’s customer support was excellent at helping me troubleshoot. They responded quickly and gave me a thorough rundown of everything I could try to fix the issue.