UC Advanced’s Editor, Elliot Mulley-Goodbarne, reviews the Jabra Evolve 3 85 Headset.
Over the last few years, Jabra has doubled down on premium earbuds and then made a big strategic pivot away from consumer headphones toward hearing health and enterprise audio.
Given how competitive the consumer market is and the opportunity within the enterprise, it seemed like a no-brainer. In a world where being in the office is as distracting as being at home, we need a headset that can help us zone in on some work and mitigate what is happening around us.
In comes the Jabra Evolve 3 series of headsets, the top‑end, AI‑ready, boom‑less headset that blends advanced ANC, exceptional mic intelligence, and all‑day comfort for serious hybrid and office use. Let’s see how they get on!
Design
The key point of the Evolve 3 is the boomless design, which I think has been a long time coming. If the more popular in-ear earphones can provide a decent calling experience, it’s hard to imagine that a similar feat isn’t impossible in over-ear headphones.
Regardless, the boom arm being eliminated means that the headset is over 50g lighter than its predecessor, and slightly smaller, leading to a comfortable fit that I’d be happy to wear anywhere.
Evolve 3 is available in over‑ear and on‑ear versions, with the main difference coming in fit and feel. The over‑ear model in the Evolve 3 85 has a more cocooning fit and gives the best passive noise isolation in the range, whereas the on-ear 75 is slightly less cocooning but is still designed for focus.
Sound Quality
The big one for this product category. To improve call quality, the Evolve 3 uses three microphones on the outside of the earcups that beamform, or triangulate, a cone in front of the user to isolate their voice and reject surrounding noise. That’s backed up by a deep neural network trained on 60 million sentences, so the chipset inside the device fundamentally understands what a human voice is.
All this means that, in extremely loud environments, such as a busy café with music, coffee machines and shouting, the Evolve 3 is set up well to ensure the person on the other side only hears the person talking.
In terms of media playback, I’ve enjoyed using the Evolve 3. In our weekly catch-up call, voices were clear and distinctive, and I’ve had no complaints from the other participants. I haven’t played around with the EQ yet, but I’ve been able to fall back in love with the Stadium Arcadium Album by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, along with regular listening, which can be described, kindly, as “varied”.
For the spoken word, Evolve 3 are equally as competent. ANC is always a blessing when trying to lock into a Podcast or, if you’re a fan of brain rot like me, Sidemen Among Us, and my re-watching of Mindhunter hasn’t been dogged by shoddy audio once.
Features
Top of the feature list is the Active Noise Cancellation, an advanced adaptive hybrid ANC that takes advantage of microphones both outside and inside the earcups. The outside mics detect external noise and generate the inverse wave; mics on the inside act as a second line of defence, cancelling any noise that leaks past the earcup seal and adapting to fit, such as leakage around glasses.
One of the more interesting features on the Evolve 3 is Side Tone. Technically part of the ANC arrangement, Side Tone isolates the voice of the person on the call and feeds it into that person on the call so they can hear their own voice. It’s an interesting feature, and one that takes a little getting used to, as I didn’t think I had a problem speaking up in meetings before.
On reflection, when ANC is at play, it can be hard to regulate how loud I am on calls, especially in a noisy environment. Using Evolve 3 meant I was able to hear my own voice and felt heard at the same time.
I was particularly impressed with how quickly the mic was able to feed my voice to me and cut out the excess noise around me. I’ve used similar systems on headphones, and it’s mainly been white noise with a bit of my voice on a second delay, which was jarring to put it mildly.
Editor’s Verdict:
Overall, the Jabra Evolve 3 would be a great pair of over-ear headphones in their own right. The design is light, comfortable, and doesn’t make you look like a sci-fi fanatic, and the sound quality is equally impressive.
Where the Evolve 3 really shine is the technology inside them. The microphone, Side Tone, and ANC turn this into a great headset that can aid productivity.
Add features like a dedicated Teams button for joining calls, which doesn’t require setting up, and convenient elements like a USB-C or USB-A receiver for laptops, so that users don’t have to worry about connecting the headset to the laptop, and you can see why Jabra are so excited about this headset.
The Evolve 3 Series is one of the best headsets I’ve had the opportunity to test out. I’m just hoping they don’t ask for it back!
