Jabra Elite 10 review – Great-sounding in-ears featuring Dolby Atmos and head tracking

Jabra says that the Elite 10 offers the “ultimate sound”. Slightly exaggerated, but not wholly unjustified. This is because the Elite 10 indeed sounded exceptionally lively with a clear and transparent sound stage during our testing. We only wish that low frequencies had more oomph. Rock music and action-heavy films lack power when played over the earphones.

Then there is also Dolby Atmos, a technology that gives both music and films an noticeably better audio presentation and makes them sound fuller and more natural. The optional head tracking detects head movements and adapts the audio to make the listener feel as if the sound is always coming from the same direction. Whilst this feature works very well, it is also somewhat a matter of taste.

During phone calls in a quiet environment, the microphones on the Elite 10 make the user’s voice sound very natural. However, they aren’t particularly effective at suppressing ambient sounds, regardless of whether it’s voices or traffic noise. Although muffled, both types of noise remain fairly audible throughout.

Things are different with the Advanced ANC, which is enabled automatically during phone calls. It reduces noise very well and is considerably more effective when you aren’t making a phone call – excellent performance for a pair of in-ears. The HearThrough function works well too, but it is accompanied by a noticeable static noise when used in a very quiet space. This noise disappears when there’s more going on in the surroundings.

The Jabra Elite 10 only offers support for basic Bluetooth codecs (SBC and AAC) at the moment. That said, LC3 and LC3plus support are coming to the earphones via future updates.