About this deal
Speaking of deep sounds, Jabra is renowned for its booming bass reproduction so we're elated that they’ve only sought to improve it this time round with the Elite 85t buds. It makes up for the less impressive fit, for one.
Thankfully, the same goes for the brand new Elite 85t earphones. As the name suggests, they follow in the footsteps of Jabra’s last release, the Elite Active 75t, with a very similar design.
In isolation, the Jabra Elite 85t fall into the ‘good not great’ category. They have many strengths and a couple of fairly significant weaknesses. A bigger problem, though, is the quality and the sheer number of rivals – similar money buys you decent alternatives from some of the biggest names around, such as the Sony WF-1000XM4, Apple AirPods Pro 2 or (if you can a good deal), Bose QuietComfort II. You can certainly do better in sonic terms, so unless you value the size and comfort of the 85t above all else, we’d advise you to shop around.
The Jabras use Bluetooth 5.1 for wireless connectivity – there’s no aptX, let alone aptX HD, but 5.1 alone is more than sufficient to get some hi-res audio files on board. And with an MQA-powered Tidal Masters file of Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) playing, the 85t don’t take long to establish themselves as a reasonably balanced, reasonably sophisticated listen.
Jabra’s last attempt at ANC headphones, the Elite 85h, was surprisingly good and fared well against category kingpins like the Bose QuietComfort 35 II and Sony WF-1000XM3. The same can be said about the Elite 85t’s noise-neutralizing capabilities when pitted against the AirPods Pro and Bose QuietComfort Earbuds.