Do you want the best headset? 
For those of you who use, or plan to use wireless earbuds for work and play, this blog should be one of interest.
Many of us started using earbuds when we got an iPhone and we wanted to be hands free. Back then, the earbuds were wired. They’ve come a long way since then. In fact, they’ve come a very long way.
Today, earbuds are not only wireless, but you’re now seeing them come with premium, high-end features such as longer battery life, hearthrough for listening to what’s going on around you or having a conversation without the need to remove the earbuds.
You can also find them with high quality noise cancelling microphones to allow you to be heard clearly in a variety of different environments.
Yes, earbuds today aren’t the ones your Grandma used to wear. Like with any technology, these too have evolved, and by evolved, I mean evolved in a good way.
In this blog, I’m going to put two popular earbud headsets to the test. I’m going to compare the highly popular, and easy to recognize, Apple AirPods Pro to the newly released, and highly anticipated, Jabra Elite 7 Pro.
I’ll not only go over the specifications of both earbuds, but I’ll provide you with a link where you can watch a Youtube video I recorded where I do microphone tests on both units.
Watching this video will allow you to not only see these earbuds, but you can hear how both of them sound. Sounding good is important, especially when on a business call.
I’ll also be testing the Jabra Elite 7 Pro and the Apple AirPods Pro to see how they do when confronted with office noise, dogs barking and of course the dreaded blender test. Will they pass these tests, or will they fail? Watch and decide for yourself.
In the end, you should have enough information to help you decide which one sounds better, which one deals with noise better, and of course, which one of these two earbuds you like best.
Here’s the link where you can watch. If you like the video, I’d appreciate it if you’d hit the like button. Better yet, if you like this type of content, and you feel our channel provides it, why not subscribe? Because when you subscribe, it helps to support our channel which allows us to continue to produce this content that helps people to make more informed buying decisions.
Ok, let’s take a close look at the Jabra Elite 7 Pro, and the Apple AirPods Pro and see what they’re all about.
Feathers for your ears
What good are earbuds if they’re heavy and uncomfortable? Answer: Not good at all really.
So how much do these earbuds weigh?
Jabra Elite 7 Pro tips the scales at 0.19 ounce, and 2 ounces with the case The Apple AirPods Pro, by comparison weighs in at the same exact weight of 0.19 ounce, and 1.61 with the case.
When compared to ordinary household items, these headsets weigh less than a sheet of paper, and less than a half slice of bread. To me, that sounds pretty light, and having a lightweight pair of earbuds is important considering it’s worn in your ear.
How long you can talk or listen
Hey, when it comes to wireless earbuds, the more battery life you can get, the better. Here’s how much you can expect with the Elite 7 Pro, and the AirPods Pro.
The Jabra Elite 7 Pro provides you with up to 8 hours of listening time without the Active Noise Cancellation and HearThrough feature on, and up to 6 hours of talk time. This is extended to 30 hours with the charge case. Five minutes in the charging case gives you 1 hour of battery life.
The Apple AirPods Pro gives you up to 5 hours of listening time without the Active Noise Cancellation and transparency feature activated, and up to 3.5 hours of talk time.
The battery life is extended to 24 hours of listening time, and 18 hours of talk time with the charge case. Like the Jabra Elite 7 Pro, when placing the Apple AirPods Pro in the case, you’ll get up to 1 hour of battery life.
It’s pretty easy to see that the Jabra Elite 7 Pro has a distinct advantage over the Apple AirPods Pro. You get 60% more battery life in the earbuds, and with the case, there’s a
20% increase in battery. This can really translate into something meaningful if travelling for business, watching a movie marathon, or finding yourself with a packed meeting calendar. Having more battery power is always preferred over having less. Always.
The sound of silence
ANC is a cool feature that’s finding its way into many headsets today. Just a few years ago this wasn’t a feature you could find on a headset, but thankfully, it’s becoming more prevalent.
What is ANC?
ANC is an electronic feature that uses microphone technology to counter incoming sound from your environment. It helps you to have control over how much incoming sound you hear.
Why is this useful?
ANC is useful because it helps you to be less distracted while working. It allows you to remain focused on your work without being distracted by the sounds going on around you. Distractions are one of the leading causes of reduced worker productivity, and studies suggest that it can take as long as twenty minutes to regain the same level of concentration once interrupted.
The Jabra Elite 7 Pro has five levels of ANC that allows you the ability to regulate how much noise you hear from your work environment. Some people prefer to work in silence, while others could find that too confining, and prefer to have some background sounds detectable. With five levels available to you, it will be easy to find the setting that’s right for you.
On the Apple AirPods Pro, I wasn’t able to find information on how many levels of ANC with these earbuds. So at this time, I can’t make a true side-by-side comparison to determine which model might have an advantage. I’d imagine that there’s more than just ANC on/off, but I’m not sure.
If color choices are your thing
Some people really like having choices, especially when it comes to having choices of colors.
The Apple AirPods Pro comes in the highly identifiable Apple white color, and that’s your only available choice.
The Jabra Elite 7 Pro gives you the choice of these colors:
- Titanium
- Black
- White
Being that we’re comparing here, which is best, a product that offers you one color, or a product that offers you the choice of three? I personally like choices, and I’d side with those that offer a color choice, all things being equal of course.
Hear your surroundings at will
Most people find it to be a hassle when they wear earbuds, and someone comes up to them and begins a conversation. This normally requires the earbud wearer to remove one, or both in order to have a conversation, and then get them refitted when done.
This process repeats itself throughout the day which most people find to be annoying. Fortunately, technology has come to our rescue once again.
The Jabra Elite 7 Pro earbuds come with a feature they call HearThrough. Essentially, this is a feature that allows the earbud wearer to press a button which in turn, allows sound to be heard.
This can be the sound of those in your environment, or sound from someone standing next to you wanting to have a conversation. This feature solves the annoying problem of having to remove the earbuds every time you want to hear sound around you.
Not to be outdone, the Apple AirPods Pro also has this feature, which Apple refers to as Transparency Mode. It does the same thing as I described in the Jabra section above.
No real difference in Bluetooth
The Jabra Elite 7 Pro operates off of Bluetooth version 5.2, whereas the Apple AirPods Pro uses Bluetooth version 5.0. Though there are subtle differences between version 5.0 and 5.2, there’s not enough of a difference to allow one to claim theirs to be notably superior in this area.
In my way of thinking, there is no real advantage to the Jabra Elite 7 Pro by having a slightly higher version of Bluetooth. However, if you’re one that’s inclined to want to split hairs a bit, then you might find the modest improvements of v. 5.2 to be enough to seal that deal.
Buttons or Touch Sensors - what’s your preference?
When you use the Jabra Elite 7 Pro earbuds, you’ll find that they use a traditional button that requires you to press on it to execute the function. By comparison, the Apple AirPods Pro uses touch sensors that have you sliding and tapping.
Is one preferable over the other? That’s a personal choice honestly. Some like the deliberateness of a traditional button, while others like the techy aspect of sliding a finger, or tapping once, or multiple times to access a feature.
No advantage here because this comes down to personal preference.
Connectivity
When using the Jabra Elite 7 Pro earbuds, you can use them with any Bluetooth enabled device such as a mobile phone or tablet for example.
The Apple Airpods Pro are recommended for use with Apple products, though they can also be used with other Bluetooth enabled devices.
So, in terms of connectivity, these devices are pretty much the same.
How forgiving are they when it comes to dealing with water?
The Jabra Elite Pro 7 has an IP57 rating where the Apple AirPods Pro comes with an IPX4 rating.
What’s all this mean? For sure it can be confusing because these are terms that most of us aren’t familiar with. Jabra has put together a pretty good article that explains this, and it can be found here.
Based on the information contained in this article, it’s pretty clear that having an IP57 rating is better than IPX4. Advantage Jabra Elite 7 Pro.
The Apple AirPods Pro are essentially water, or sweat resistant, where the Jabra Elite 7 Pro is waterproof. In fact, we put that to the test by submerging the Jabra earbuds underwater for a full 10 seconds. We then dried them off and used them. They worked fine.
You can see this dunk test at the video below by skipping to 16:20
How do these compare when it comes to microphone sound and noise reduction?
I’m pretty sure we’d all agree that having great features is a good thing, but they become less attractive if the earbuds don’t sound good.
We put both of these earbuds to the test by seeing how good you sound when using them, as well as throwing these background noises at them:
- Office noise
- Dogs barking
- Fan blowing
- Blender test
First, how did they both sound when using the earbuds to talk on a call?
In my opinion, the Jabra Elite 7 Pro earbuds sounded better than the Apple AirProds Pro. The Jabra sounded louder and richer when compared to the Apple. For voice sound quality, the nod goes to Jabra.
Moving on to the noise tests, well, things changed. When we put both of these earbuds up against those noises mentioned above, the Apple Airpods Pro came out on top. It was clear that the AirPods did a superior job of reducing unwanted background noise. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the Jabra earbuds did a poor job at removing background noise.
The takeaway here is if you’d be using earbuds in environments that don’t contain much distracting noises, then the Jabra Elite 7 Pro would be fine. Even your better choice. However, if you have varied environments, many of which contain noises, and you don’t want those on the other end to hear them, the hands down, the Apple AirPods Pro is the way to go.
If you’d like to hear how they both sound, and how they both did on those background noise tests, make sure to watch the video. It’s pretty telling really.
Are there Apps available to manage these earbuds?
The short answer here is yes. Both brands offer an App to help manage the features of the earbuds. For example, Jabra has an App that’s called the Jabra Sound+ App which allows you to adjust a multitude of things such as:
- Audio characteristics
- Sidetone
- Tones
- HearThrough adjustments
- Active Noise Cancellation adjustments
- Audio equalizer
- And much more
The Apple AirPods Pro also can be accessed through an App. I’m not sure what this App is called, as I couldn’t find it referenced in the product datasheet. But, it’s my understanding that it is available, and I’m sure that the types of adjustments you can make are very similar to what Jabra’s Sound+ App provides.
Fitment
You might be wondering which brand of earbuds is more comfortable. Which one feels more secure. Which one offers more ear tip sizes?
The short answer is they both come with three sizes of ear tips; small, medium and large. So in that sense, they’re both the same.
In terms of which one feels more secure when in the ear, I’d have to say the Jabra Elite 7 Pro does. At least when comparing both, I found the Jabra model to feel more stable in the ear. You might have a different experience, but that was mine.
The Jabra also is less noticeable when compared to the Apple. This is largely due to the fact that the Apple AirPods Pro have that signature Apple mini boom arm that protrudes from the ear canal, which makes that earbud pretty easy to identify as well as see.
By comparison, the Jabra Elite 7 Pro doesn’t have a boom. These earbuds are contained in the ear itself with nothing sticking out of your ear which helps to make them less noticeable.
As far as comfort goes, that’s one of those subjects that is truly impossible to answer because the matter of comfort is so subjective. I can only give you my own opinion, which may, or may not be what you can expect to experience.
To me, the Jabra earbuds felt more snug, and comfortable over the Apple. But, as I said a moment ago, that’s just my opinion.
Price & Warranty
You can have the best sound, and have the most comfort in an earbud product, but if the price is out of reach, you’re not going to buy them. And, the warranty also matters. So, how much do these earbuds cost, and what kind of warranty do you walk away with?
Jabra Elite 7 Pro - Suggested selling price of $199.99 - 2 year warranty Apple AirPods Pro - Suggested selling price of $249.00 - 1 year warranty
So, the Jabra is 20% less, and it comes with twice the warranty. These two facts could certainly help sway one’s opinion I’d imagine.
Final thoughts
So, which of these two earbuds would I get, or which do I think are better? Wow, tough call.
With the jabra you get a lot more battery life, a better sounding microphone, a more discreet look, a snugger fit, a lower price, longer warranty, and the choice of three colors.
The Apple earbuds give you a product that many would buy simply because it bears the Apple name. Apple loyalists if you will. You get good microphone sound quality, and far better noise reduction over the Jabra.
And though these earbuds cost more, that’s something that most of us have come to expect when considering an Apple product. We want them because we like them, and we’re willing to pay more.
If my back were in a corner and I had to decide, I’d likely choose the Apple AirPods Pro for many of the reasons outlined in this blog. That’s not to cast cold water on the Jabra Elite 7 Pro. The Elite 7 Pro is a very good product that’s made to a very high standard. They’re priced right, backed by a solid warranty, but the noise reduction feature, in my opinion, needs to be improved.
You can get the Apple Airpods Pro here or Jabra Elite 7 Pro here.
Thanks for reading this blog, and please consider subscribing to our Youtube channel because we have a lot of content that we post regularly on emerging new products, and a ton of product comparisons and reviews.
