Expert's Rating
Pros
- Smart and cool-looking
- comfortable to wear
- light and portable
Cons
- Unremarkable sound quality, particularly at this price
- precarious security of fit
- don’t seem very robust
Our Verdict
The Jabra Vox in-ear headphones look great and are conveniently portable and comfortable to wear, but at this price we’d expect stronger audio. We’re also concerned about the headphones falling out of our ears during exercise, and they seem a little fragile. There may be more robust alternatives available if you want something for running, hiking or gym work.
Price When Reviewed
$80
The Jabra Vox in-ear headphones are light, portable and good-looking. But sound quality didn’t blow us away, considering the price tag. Here’s our Jabra Vox review.
With their sleek packaging and high-tech design, the Jabra Vox in-ear headphones seem like a classy affair. But they’re better at show than substance.
Sound quality is fine but not outstanding – they’re a bit tinny, and don’t hugely enhance the music-listening experience. They’re a step up from the earbuds that would come with an iPhone, but you’d probably hope for more at this price.
(You can improve on the listening experience slightly – but not dramatically – by using the Jabra Sound app. It’s free, but you need to type in your product code to activate it. It’s a neat and generally easy-to-use app that pulls in your tunes and playlists from the Music app, then gives you finer control over the audio frequencies, shaping the sound to suit the music or your personal tastes. And a Dolby Digital Plus button does indeed make the sound fractionally deeper and richer.)
Read next: Best Bluetooth wireless headphones | Best wired headphones
In terms of fit, the Vox headphones are comfortable to wear for extended periods. But security of fit was more precarious: when exercising (or even just running for the bus) we were never certain whether they would stay in the ear. Even on occasions when they didn’t fall out, this produced a kind of perpetual unease. If you have to jog for a couple of blocks to catch the bus, never mind undergo a punishing workout of the gym variety, you should probably opt out of listening to music entirely – at least with these headphones.
The design, on the other hand, is thoroughly appealing, particularly at first (we may be jaded, but the cool factor of the Vox headphones’ styling faded for us after a bit). They are light and portable, and wouldn’t add noticeable weight or bulk in a pocket or bag. Whether they’ll last is another matter, since they seem far from robust to us.
A final quibble is that the L and R labelling on the earbuds is tiny, with the result that we frequently ended up with the headphones positioned the wrong way round.
