Jabra Elite 45h review: On-ear headphones with good sound, on-battery time

The Elite 45H is an affordable on-ear wireless headphones from the Danish audio accessory maker Jabra. The headphones boasts foldable design with soft moldable memory foam on ear cushions, 40mm audio drivers, fast charging support, and dual microphones to attend calls.

Priced at Rs 8,999, the Jabra Elite 45H seems to be a good value-for-money headphones for people on the go. Is it? Let’s find out:

Build and design

Jabra likes to keep the design theme minimal, and it is true for the Elite 45h as well. The headphones have simple yet functional design. Its foldable form factor makes it easy to carry, even while hanging around the neck. Moreover, its soft and moldable ear cushions make them comfortable to use all day long without facing any discomfort.

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Though made mostly of plastic, the headphones do not look cheap. It features a premium matte texture on the headband and ear cups. The underside of the headband has cushion for comfort and rubbery material for grip. The ear cups have memory foam on ear pads with leatherette covering that makes it comfortable

for extended usage.

While the headphones look good, there are some grey areas like the ear cups do not cover entire ears resulting in sound leakage and abysmal passive noise isolation. Moreover, there are physical buttons on the right ear cup for volume, track change, voice assistant, power and pairing. Though easy accessible, the buttons require some effort to press – touch buttons would have been better here. Also, the headband is not wide and has a tight fit that might not suit everyone.

Performance

The Elite 45h has Jabra sound signature, which is balanced and not bass heavy. The headphones sound neutral in default equalizer settings with fine vocals and smooth bass. It does not shrill even at maximum volume levels and the sound output remains warm and comfortable. Interestingly, there are additional sound equalizers that can be set through company’s Sound+ app. These lets you tinker with audio output, if you find the neutral default output underwhelming.

Like most other Jabra headphones and earphones, the Elite 45h supports ‘MySound’ feature, which runs a few tests quickly to measures your hearing and creates a personalised listening profile.

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As for the value-added features, the headphones support digital voice assistants – Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. For calls, the headphones have two microphones that work independently to pick the voice. These are sensitive microphones and work well even in environment with loud ambient noise.

Therefore, the headphones deliver good on-call experience.

Battery

The Elite 45h boasts 50 hours of on-battery time and supports fast charging. In actual usage with volume set to 100 per cent, the headphones works for more than 35 hours on a single charge. It charges quickly and a 15 minute charge is good for a day’s usage. There are hardly any headphones in its segment that can offer similar on-battery time.

Verdict

The Jabra Elite 45h has everything that you can expect from headphones. At Rs 8,999, the Elite 45h makes

a good deal for someone in market looking for on-ear wireless headphones with good sound, comfortable build, minimal design and exceptional on-battery time.