Cell Phone Reviews

Jabra Evolve 75

Jabra's Evolve 75 Bluetooth headset is certified for Skype for Business, offers noise cancellation, and delivers strong mic clarity, though it could be easier to operate.

Jabra's Evolve 75 is a call-service oriented stereo Bluetooth headset with active noise cancellation and strong mic intelligibility. At $279, it's not cheap, but it's made for business applications, and certified for Skype for Business and Cisco, among others. It's a very comfortable headset that offers high-quality audio performance, excellent mic intelligibility, and better-than-average active noise cancellation. It could be a bit easier to use, but if you need noise cancellation, it's a strong option.

Design and Usage

You can buy the Evolve 75 in a model that is optimized for Skype for Business or Unified Communication (both are the same price). It's a lightweight (6.3 ounces), supra-aural (on-ear) headset with a primarily black design. The earpads have a well-cushioned leather feel that is exceptionally comfortable, even over long listening periods, as is the headband, which has a rubberized padded area.

The majority of controls are located on the right earcup. There's a central button that answers and ends calls, volume up and down buttons, the power/pairing switch, and a dedicated mute button (which is, oddly, the voice assistant button when not on calls). The central button doesn't play or pause music, nor are there any track navigation controls. Arguably, one of the reasons you may opt for a stereo headset is so you can listen to music, so this feels like an omission—one that competing models we've tested don't leave out.

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If you want to hear your colleagues without removing the headset, pressing the central button on the left earcup's outer panel activates the ambient mic so you can monitor your surroundings with ease. The ANC (active noise cancellation) button is also located on the left earcup.

Jabra Evolve 75

When you power up, you get a vocal prompt telling you how much battery life remains, and the headset will automatically pair with your phone and/or computer, assuming all other devices are ready.

The boom mic can be adjusted to a wide range of angles to align with your mouth easily, or be pushed up and out of sight when not in use. There's a red LED on-call indicator so no one around you interrupts you while you're on a call (assuming they know what the red light means).

The headset ships with a long USB charging cable, a USB dongle, and a hardshell zip-up travel case the headset folds down flat into. A charging stand is available for $50. When paired with a mobile device, you can connect the USB dongle to your computer and use both. This works well for fielding calls on the phone and listening to audio from the computer. If you're playing audio from your desktop, an incoming call will mute the music from your computer while you field the call. This is quite useful, but it should be noted that the Plantronics Voyager 4220 UC takes the extra step of actually pausing your music and resuming it, rather than merely muting it while it continues to play.

Jabra estimates battery life to be roughly 18 hours for talk time, 17 hours of music, and 15 days of standby, but your results will vary, especially with ANC added into the mix. A full charge takes approximately two hours.

It's surprising that there's no app—we've tested far less expensive Jabra headsets that work with Jabra Assist. On the surface, that's fine, but apps often allow for refining the overall performance and behavior of a sophisticated headset, like fine-tuning vocal prompt preferences. There's nothing to tweak here as a result. That said, Jabra does a great job of making everything work pretty seamlessly out of the box.

Clarity and Performance

The boom mic offers solid intelligibility. Using the Voice Memos app on an iPhone 8, we could clearly understand every word we recorded, without any fuzzy or distorted Bluetooth artifacts. If your device supports it, the mic uses HD Voice, and the results are excellent. Calls could be understood easily on both ends in testing, with solid in-ear vocal feedback to facilitate speaking at normal levels.

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Noise cancellation is also solid for a Bluetooth headset. It takes out wide swaths of AC and fan whir, and does a solid job with low-frequency rumble like you might hear on a plane or train. The ANC also doesn't seem to have a notable effect on the audio performance, which isn't always a given with wireless models. Generally speaking, this noise cancellation isn't quite on par with Bose, but it's far better than average.

Sonically, the Evolve 75 delivers high-quality stereo audio, with a bass-forward sound signature that's equally at home playing modern mixes from Panda Bear and Radiohead or classical music. There's a solid balance between lows and highs, and generally speaking, the headphones sound better than plenty of non-headset, audio-only headphones we test. This makes the lack of on-ear controls for playback and track navigation all the more frustrating. If you press the Listen-In ambient button on the left earcup, for instance, you'll be able to hear your surroundings, but your music or podcast will continue to play without you hearing it.


Whether the Jabra Evolve 75 is right for you comes down to your needs. If seamless operation when connected to a computer and a phone is most important, we find the Plantronics Voyager 4220 UC to be a stronger option. Both the Voyager 4220 UC and the Evolve 75 offer high-quality audio performance, but if your priorities include active noise cancellation, that's an area where the Evolve 75 shines and the Voyager 4220 UC has nothing to offer. The Voyager 4220 UC has an app that allows you to fine-tune settings, vocal prompts, and overall operability, while the Evolve 75 has been designed to integrate with call service software your business may already be using.

Were it not for the added noise cancellation, it would be less of a contest—the Voyager 4220 UC may lack ANC, but everything that it does, it does well. The Evolve 75 lacks music controls and has some operability quirks. Generally speaking, it's a strong headset, but less graceful than the Voyager 4220 UC. We're also fans of the Plantronics Voyager Focus UC for noise cancellation, and the monaural Plantronics Voyager 5200 if you don't need stereo audio and want to save some money.

Jabra Evolve 75


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