Jabra's new Elite 85h headphones promise a whopping 32 hours of battery life on a single charge, which makes them one of the longest-lasting pair of cans in existence.
Just-announced at CES 2019, the Elite 85h also comes with three of the world's most popular digital assistants: Google's, Apple's, and Amazon's. While assistants on wireless headphones isn't an earth-shattering novelty, they typically require the user to first press a button to summon the assistant — not so with the Elite 85h, which brings up either Google Assistant or Alexa with just a simple, hands-free voice command.
Digital Assistant
What kind of digital assistant a user will be able to access depends on what phone they're using. Alexa will be available to both iOS and Android owners, for instance. Meanwhile, Siri and Google Assistant will only be available on their respective native hardware. That means no Alexa or Siri for Android folks out there.
Noise-Canceling
That shouldn't really matter much, of course, because where the headphones shine is sound and its noise-canceling features. Jabra has packed in its SmartSound technology into these cans, which adjusts the sound settings based on the surrounding ambient noise. Move away from a busy commute into a quiet neighborhood and SmartSound will change the sound accordingly. Perhaps the headphones will reduce the background given the more silent surroundings, and vice versa. At least that's how it works in theory.
Three default audio profiles will be available at launch, and they are "Commute," "In Public," and "In Private," all of which are pretty self-explanatory. Jabra says users will be able to customize the exact volume levels, noise cancellation, and equalizer settings for each via the accompanying app. Right now, Jabra says it's not possible to customize which environmental cues will trigger these profiles, although that's a feature that could arrive via future updates.
Hardware
As for the hardware, the Elite 85h comes with a whopping eight microphones, which help it recognize the noise in its environment. Only two are for noise cancellation, however; the other two are for SmartSound and the remaining four are used for calls and voice commands. The headphones also come with a USB Type-C port for charging, and a single juice-up will get these working for up to 32 hours, even with noise canceling turned on. An IP52 dust and water resistance rating is the cherry on top.
The Jabra Elite 85h will come in two different shades of black, beige, and navy, and will cost $299 when they come out sometime this April.
