Best known for its gadgets that spearhead with quality and convenience, Jabra is known for its wired and wireless headsets. Now Jabra presents Revo Wireless, a headphone that fits the times in both its stylish design and technologically-advanced features Bluetooth, cable-free and touch-sensitive controls are now considered pretty standard in the premium headphone market. It is also backed by enhanced power management for up to 12 hours of music and talk.
Design
The Revo is a slick-looking pair of headphones. The matte black band with a reinforced aluminium frame looks modest but feels sturdy, offering a compact and sleek design. This makes it incredibly well-suited to travel and also makes it a dream for commuters.
Travel-savvy design features include folding ear cups, which makes them easy to store and carry around, along with a durable frame, steel hinges and a shatterproof tight-fit headband. This does mean that it is a bit heavier than some other headphones, although it is lighter than the Parrot Zik wireless headphones we reviewed earlier in the year. True to their tagline of “˜Designed to be used and abused‘, the build quality is great.
The snug fit of the memory foam ear cups and the rubbery padded interior of the headband make the Revo Wireless headphones comfortable even during prolonged usage. I was able to go through the day without feeling that familiar overheating or discomfort that‘s common with other headphones I‘ve used.
Battery
According to Jabra, you can expect around 12 hours of music streaming and 240 hours of standby time. This is of course all dependent on your usage patterns, when you charge the device etc. During my testing, which consisted of continuous music streaming from my phone, I saw over twelve hours before the batteries died on me.
This device is charged via a USB cable like most products of this kind, and recharging the battery took about 2 hours.
Sound and Jabra‘s Sound App
As you would expect when buying headphones the sound is vital, especially at this price point (more on this later). Let‘s look at the app first.
You can choose to run your music through Jabra’s Sound app, which is available as a free download for iOS and Android devices with an included code. The app allows you to tweak the bass and treble and gives you the option of turning on Dolby Digital Plus processing, which changes how your music sounds. The Jabra Revo Wireless headphone also come with a Jabra Sound App button on the headphones that’s used to launch the corresponding app on your phone. The downside to all this is that the sheer amount of function buttons on the earphones can seem a bit confusing and unnecessary. There’s a lot of touching and tapping of ear cups.
Some of the more “œgadgety“ inclined folks out there might really like the application and how it works, but there are an awful lot of settings you can change and in the end you can really screw up the balance of your music. It does help in some instances when watching certain movies though, it must be said.
Audio purists probably won’t like any of this stuff, but, as I said, some folks will prefer the Dolby processing. What I can say is that, overall, this just isn’t the cleanest-sounding Bluetooth headphone I’ve tested. It certainly can‘t compare to the previously mentioned Parrot Zik. While the headphones deliver a good amount of bass, it can sound a bit muddy or muffled, especially at louder volumes.
Don‘t get me wrong, the sound isn‘t bad in any sense of the word. This model came out sounding slightly better than some models in its price class, but fell short of the top-sounding Bluetooth models.
Conclusion
Jabra manages to squeeze a lot of features into the Revo Wireless Headphones’ sturdy frame. The capacitive touch panel is responsive and easy to master, and the NFC chip makes pairing with compatible phones quick and painless. The app is simple to use, and the Dolby Digital Plus tech can help you find your ideal settings, even though you need to dig around and be pretty adept at using this kind of technology.
The slight sound quality drawbacks are what make me doubt buying it in SA, because according to Jabra the recommended retail price is R4000. That puts it firmly in the sights of the Parrot Zik, and in fact the latter could be a bitter cheaper than the aforementioned R4000 by now. If you aren‘t able to get your hands on the Parrot, though, the Jabra is more than competent.
