The new Jabra Evolve2 75 is great but disappointing …

Never has there been a huge step forward in an upgrade and yet turn out to be incredibly handicapped in the end.

If you are a regular subscriber of Mixster, you might have already read my audio setup that includes a Jabra Evolve75 original. I did a Linux use review for it and you can read that for my initial views on it. I recently updated the blog to add a 2-year review of the headphones that were still going strong as I work remotely from home.

I am writing this blog solely because Jabra for sure is going to deprecate the superior original and unknowingly force people to buy the more expensive, but inferior Evolve2 75. This is a bold statement, but that’s my personal opinion. Take it with a cup of salt and I be very happy to learn more about your experiences down in the comments.

Trying out the new kid on the block

After a hugely positive experience using the original, I had high hopes for using the new Jabra Evolve2 75. It looks like a solid upgrade with everything you could possibly hope for and on paper, it looks great. The numbers do make it seem amazing but. And yes, there is a but. A huge but.

For starters, check out this in-depth sponsored review to get your hopes up. Any long-time user will immediately dismiss the mic quality of the new Evolve2 75 as nothing but sub-standard from what you come to expect from Jabra over the years.

The 8 microphones feature is nothing but a gimmick just like when Meta says they care about the privacy of their users. The statement sounds good, but you can’t trust them to deliver. Following are my issues with the new Evolve2 and what I thought could have been better as compared to the original Evolve75.

Issues // Problems

For my pair, at least the on-ear detection that Jabra has enabled with the sensors that come equipped has been erratic. Music starts and stops on its own with a minor lift of headphones. When I put them back on things don’t start again. I am a Linux user so sometimes the feature doesn’t work correctly and that I can understand. Truth be told it’s a bit all over the place even when using Windows or Android, I am a very active user and I disabled it the first chance I got.

They support fast pair but my Oneplus 8T couldn’t connect using Fast pair so that was odd and probably a “me” problem. So I let that one slide. The assistant works though but I dislike having Google Assistant-enabled headphones so I would love for a feature to disable it completely and allow button remapping.

The Sound

Nothing has improved here as compared to the original. At least to me, I felt the loudness has been reduced and felt the drivers were under-performing. I fully expect this. There are not audiophile headphones but again I know how loud the original is and this felt weak in comparison. The only way I could properly listen to music was by turning on Jabra’s famed Ambient Noise Cancelling (ANC).

While in the original the ANC is their MVP, Jabra managed to nail this again. I personally felt ANC too be too strong, to the point that I started feeling dizzy after an hour of music with ANC on. There is a hearthrough mode but it will take some time to get used to. I didn’t like both modes, so I kept it on OFF. No sound mode just headphones covering my ears basically is all the noise canceling that I needed.

Quality of life improvements detoriations

• Range even with the Type C receiver and better specs is worse than the original. Previously, I was able to walk around while being on calls and still had no audio input or output issues. I move 5 steps away out of my room and the audio output turns robotic. I debugged this on my own with my Type-C receiver getting interference from my Type C power that was right next to it. Running headphones on bluetooth mode solved this and the range is almost the same as before.
• The earcups have become bigger, and comfier. But, they still squeeze my head even more than before. This could be a passing issue with an adjustment period, let’s see.
• The lady that narrates connection status and battery in the original has been replaced by a less irritating and concise voice. But, Jabra felt it to be a good idea for the battery level to be indicated as: “The battery is high/medium/low”. I don’t know why they changed that. I don’t need that, just tell me how many hours of battery are remaining as a metric. Don’t overcomplicate it with relative terms.

The mic

Jabra has added microphones right into the headphone if you don’t intend to pull the mike down. I gave it a try and my voice was muffled and inaudible on calls.

Next, the dedicated mic is what I felt should be the star of this product but mic arm down is shorter and doesn’t exactly reach closer to my mouth. The headband would naturally creep backward on the head, which is by itself not an issue, but because of the way the new boom mic is designed, it would create too much distance between the mouth and the mic regularly creating variations in the loudness of your voice and needing to speak up constantly. I never raised my voice with the original. Noise-canceling of the microphones is still great as ever. Even the review the headphones sound muffled so you can make up your mind.

Another issue is the sidetone implementation. The sidetone is using the mics on the earcups to create the sidetone. This makes the ANC + sidetone a useless setup because you start to listen to the noises outside through the mic. I always felt awkward about that.

Button placements

Jabra thought what if we remove all the buttons on the ear cups and instead provide buttons on the circumference of the ear cups. There is only one button on the ear cup now, which starts/ends calls. And, on the unified communication models can change modes from analog input to digital input. Sure, it is awkward to press those buttons and the users would miss about a hundred times but who cares about the user experience on a $300+ headphones. I am legit angry, and that’s not even the least of it.

The absolutely unforgivable

THEY TOOK AWAY INSTANT MUTE!

In the original, there is a left big button that could be pressed to instantly mute all audio input and made it so effortless to listen in to conversations around the house without taking the headphones off. Sure, you can mute your music, but a single point of control from the headphone’s end provided ease of comfort and made sure I can immediately hear the bell of my house or someone calling my name easily however far I am from the source. This was my MVP feature, and once I found the new ones didn’t have them. It was pointless and I made up my mind.

So, I returned it …

My only recommendation is to buy the original Evolve 75 at a discount if they start selling the last of their stocks because those in the end at least to me might still be the best ANC on-ear wireless headphones in the premium audio products market.

I wanted this post to be a quick one. Until next time, live in the mix folks.

Disclaimer: I got a chance to check out the Evolve2 75 after an issue with my original Evolve 75 headphones. Jabra offered an upgrade instead of replacing the unit.