Launched locally late last year, the Jabra Evolve2 Buds is being sold as an option for the hybrid working professional. As such, it is really equipped to be the best of two worlds – general music consumption, and work call clarity. Which is fine, as both are what the brand is known for. But as you’d expect, when something is being marketed as a working tool, there’s a premium to be expected. And when you’re paying a premium for it, let’s just say expectations are set high.
With that in mind, does the Jabra Evolve2 Buds live up to its price, and the expectations that it sets?
What Am I Looking At?
The Jabra Evolve2 Buds are a pair of pretty premium TWS earbuds. And I say pretty premium because of the price tag on the thing – it costs RM1,640 on its own, and RM1,860 if you choose to get a wireless charging pad bundled in.
Each bud comes with a 6mm driver, two microphones and a bone conduction sensor. The latter two are used for not only the voice calls, but also to help its variable ANC work its magic. Naturally, there’s also a transparency mode that the company calls HearThrough. The pair has a battery life rated at eight hours for music listening with ANC, and 10 hours without, as well as five hours of voice calls.
The company says that with the case, the Jabra Evolve2 Buds has a total battery life of 33 hours with ANC turned on, but didn’t specify if this is purely for music listening or with some calls mixed in. And as you probably gathered, the case does support Qi wireless charging.
Connection to other devices comes in the form of Bluetooth 5.2, with support for two connections simultaneously, and eight paired in total. There’s also a Bluetooth dongle in the case that you can just plug into a device to skip the whole pairing process, but it’s still included in the two-device limit.
On the software side of things, you have either the Jabra Direct for PC, or Jabra Sound+ for mobile. This is required to bring the most out of these buds, as with them you get access to a bunch of settings. These include sound profiles for your ears, the variable intensity ANC, as well as setting controls for the earbuds. When it comes to the discussion of sound quality in the section below, keep in mind that testing is done after the sound profile personalisation step is done.
Unlike most buds in the market, this pair uses button presses rather than touch taps. That aside, the old single, double and triple press commands should be familiar to anyone who has ever used headphones and earphones in the past decade. Those are the default anyway, and you can change them to some extent using the aforementioned apps. There are odd limitations, which we’ll get back to in a bit.
Worth pointing out at this point is that there are many variants of the Jabra Evolve2 Buds. One has the Bluetooth dongle come in a USB-A dongle, while another comes in USB-C. Of the two, the latter is what we got for the local market, as well as this review.
What’s Good About It?
Jabra Evolve2 Buds has plenty going for it. Though with its asking price, all this is more a baseline standard you expect it to meet, rather than it a performance that is well above expectations.
Let’s just start with the sound quality. Being made primarily as a remote work tool, Jabra has made sure that the Evolve2 Buds has clarity above all else. This is not only for voices, but throughout the frequency spectrum. Personal preference may come into play as to whether a punchy sound signature or a flat and neutral one is better, but this pair of TWS buds manages to achieve the former without giving the sense of bias for either end of the spectrum. Even on tracks with a lot going on simultaneously, you never hear either end of the spectrum trying to drown the other out.
Making all this especially impressive is the fact that, according to Jabra, the Evolve2 Buds only supports the most basic of audio codecs, SBC and AAC. And yet, despite the apparent lack of support for hi-res audio codecs, you can tell the difference between tracks streamed from Spotify and .flac files played directly from the device.
Similarly impressive is the quality of the microphones on the earbuds. The wearer’s voice generally gets transmitted to the other end of a call with no issues, though there’s a bit of inconsistency with the microphone’s noise cancellation. On two separate Discord voice calls, one recipient tells me they can’t hear the wind buffeting from the table fan directly in front of me, while another caller said they could hear it when I speak.
As an added bonus to all of this, the buds themselves are IP57 rated, meaning you can wear them for a workout if you so choose. The fit is pretty good, and comfortable to boot, so with the added water resistance, the option is there for those who want it.
What’s The Catch?
Price aside, there are a lot of smaller problems that may annoy the user of the Jabra Evolve2 Buds, as well as one big one which I’ll keep until the end. Remember when I mentioned earlier that there are odd limitations to the customising of the controls? This mainly lies with the right bud, where all of its functions are locked. The app says that this is because this is a Microsoft Teams headset.
Another minor issue with these buds is the slight lag between the action of resuming music playback and actually hearing the music coming through. This applies to both manual pausing and playing, as well as the auto-pause and resume feature when you remove or put in an earbud. Equally unfortunate is the fact that the dongle that comes in the charging case also uses Bluetooth rather than 2.4GHz wireless. So while it has excellent sound staging that can help you identify the direction of sound sources, the noticeable latency makes gaming a no-go.
Then there’s the battery life. On one hand, it does achieve the claimed five hours of voice calls, as well as eight hours of music playback with ANC. But for something that’s meant to be a hybrid working device, barely lasting the work day seems inadequate, especially if you intend to continue using it while you unwind.
But by far the biggest issue with the Jabra Evolve2 Buds is the ANC. On one hand, it provides variable ANC, which is nice. But even when cranked up to the maximum, it performs only marginally better than its native noise isolation. Which is fine if you use it to work from home in the strictest sense. But if you need to run some errands while also being on a call, you need to be prepared for distractions to some degree.
Should I Get It?
With many places slowly transitioning back to working on-site, the Jabra Evolve2 Buds seems to have missed the boat somewhat. That being said, those who are still given the allowance for remote or hybrid working may be able to take advantage of what this pair of TWS buds have to offer. Provided they can justify its asking price, of course.
If clarity is what you’re looking for, be it for work calls or just your listening pleasure, then you’ll find it in spades with these earbuds. That being said, you’ll still have to work around its quirks. Its battery life of just about a working day’s worth would also be fine, if that is all you use it for. But for what it can do, it feels like a shame to limit it to just that. And for its price, one can’t help but wish it can do more.
So in conclusion, if you like what you see and have no problems using it as just a work tool, then sure, pick up the Jabra Evolve2 Buds. Though if you want to keep using TWS earbuds for when you unwind, you’ll either need to ration your use, or have another pair for those times.
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