Audio is impor­tant to me. If I’m going some­where, work­ing, clean­ing, tak­ing a show­er, or just need­ing to relax, you’ll like­ly find me lis­ten­ing to some­thing. Some­times it’s music with a great beat, and oth­er times it’s a riv­et­ing podcast.

A while back, I was com­mut­ing on the train to a co-work­ing space, and need­ed a good pair of wire­less head­phones. They need­ed to take some sweat from the walk, have great bat­tery life, and han­dle being thrown into my backpack.

I decid­ed to pur­chase the Jabra Move Wire­less head­phones. If you’re in the mar­ket for a great pair of wire­less head­phones, these may be the ones for you.

Criteria

• Qual­i­ty — You def­i­nite­ly want some­thing well built, but when con­sid­er­ing wire­less head­phones, the first ques­tion for many is how they sound.
• Fit — Head­phones need to fit com­fort­ably, espe­cial­ly if you plan to wear them for extend­ed peri­ods of time.
• Set­up — The set­up of wire­less head­phones has improved over the past few years, but it’s still an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion. Get­ting them from out of the box to play­ing audio shouldn’t take forever.
• Price — Cost comes hand-in-hand with qual­i­ty. You want high-qual­i­ty head­phones that don’t break the bank. (Well, maybe. Some­times you do want to break the bank with cool tech stuff!)

Quality

Build Quality

The head­phones are very well-built. The band com­bines a stain­less steel frame with a soft mate­r­i­al that cush­ions the top. The ear cups are plas­tic on the out­side and soft pleather on the inside.

The Jabra Move Wire­less head­phones feel light but not cheap or eas­i­ly break­able. They could def­i­nite­ly han­dle being thrown into your back­pack or bag, and they can equal­ly han­dle being dropped with minor (if any) evidence.

I haven’t tried show­er­ing while wear­ing the head­phones, but they’ve with­stood plen­ty of my sweat, and every­thing still works great. They’re easy to clean, but don’t look gross if you put it off for a while. The head­phones have ​“move” in the name, so they’re designed for you to do just that.

Sound Quality

Blue­tooth audio sucks. It just does. There is no com­par­i­son to wired audio. Blue­tooth audio per­formed notice­ably worse than wired audio when test­ed side-by-side. Which I should note is of no sur­prise. How­ev­er, in many cas­es it’s not the head­phone-mak­ers fault. Wire­less audio tech­nol­o­gy is not where it should be.

Still, Blue­tooth audio is not cre­at­ed equal. Some head­phones I’ve test­ed don’t sound good at all, even when not com­pared to a wired con­nec­tion. Not the case with the Jabra Move Wire­less head­phones. The audio they pro­duce is full and rich, and they han­dle a vari­ety of musi­cal styles excel­lent­ly. Addi­tion­al­ly, the head­phones man­age pod­casts and talk radio very well.

I nev­er felt like I was miss­ing sounds I could’ve heard on oth­er head­phones. For me, it comes down to the fact that all Blue­tooth audio is com­pressed — some head­phones do a bet­ter job of hid­ing that fact.

Fit

I was ner­vous buy­ing over-ear head­phones. In the past I had bought a pair of Beats Solo head­phones and was unhap­py. Leav­ing the poor sound to the side for a moment, the fit was uncom­fort­able and my ears hurt after using them for short peri­ods of time. I have big ears, so I’d sworn to nev­er pur­chase a pair of over-ear head­phones again.

These head­phones changed my mind. Yes, they are over-ear head­phones, but they’re com­fort­able. The ear cups are com­fy and soft, and the head­band is flex­i­ble enough to accom­mo­date my large head. When I first got them, I test­ed the head­phones for two hours straight and didn’t feel any ear pain or dis­com­fort on the top of my head.

That being said, I do wish Jabra offered an around-ear option. Head­phones like the Bose QC35 or the Sony MDR-1000X still beat these head­phones in the com­fort depart­ment because they don’t apply any pres­sure to the ears.

Setup

Here’s yet anoth­er area where Blue­tooth fails. Pair­ing them with a device isn’t sim­ple, and if you want to switch between devices, for­get it! How­ev­er, this isn’t a flaw of the head­phones, it’s a flaw of the wire­less tech­nol­o­gy being used.

Apple made a huge leap in this area when they came out with the W1 chip. This chip can be found in Apple-made head­phones like the Air­Pods or Beats. If you own a pair of these, you’ll know how mag­i­cal this chip makes the whole wire­less expe­ri­ence. Pair­ing is a breeze, and switch­ing between devices on your iCloud account is incred­i­bly easy. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Apple doesn’t license this chip, and while I love my pair of Air­Pods, there’s no way I’m fork­ing mon­ey over for the over­rat­ed and over­priced Beats.

The Jabra Move Wire­less head­phones unfor­tu­nate­ly have the stan­dard Blue­tooth set­up process. Noth­ing too ter­ri­ble, yet noth­ing delight­ful either. If you, or the per­son you’re buy­ing these for, is not some­what tech savvy, you’ll need to fol­low the quick-start guide.

Final Thoughts

As of this writ­ing, the Jabra Move Wire­less head­phones are $69.99 on Ama­zon. You could spend more mon­ey, and get a less­er qual­i­ty prod­uct. Essen­tial­ly, this is a great price.

I’m very hap­py with my pur­chase. As I described, I do have some com­plaints here and there, but over­all they’re a great prod­uct at a great price. If you’re in the mar­ket for a low-cost pair of wire­less head­phones, don’t over­look these.