Jabra Active

The basics

These sports headphones are intended for use with your smartphone, and they come with a mic attached to one line. They aren’t in-ear, instead the drivers sit inside special rubber plugs that fit inside your ear cavity. Designed with iPod and BlackBerry users in mind, they also come with a 3.5mm jack adapter for use with Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung handsets.

The good

Being sports headphones, you’ll be glad to know the speakers are sweat and water resistant. This makes them ideal for heavy workouts, and they won’t mind too much being dropped on the side in the locker room. The cable is a good length and Jabra even supplies a neat little wallet you can wrap them away in to help keep your kit bag tidy.

We took them out for a run and found the in-ear housing worked surprisingly well. Sure, there are better solutions out there but for the budget asking price, these proved more than adequate.

When it came to sound quality we were happy with the overall sound quality these budget speakers offered. Tones tend to be fairly even without too much overpowering bass. Just after the point at which the separate lines meet you’ll find a volume control dial, which can make a serious boost to the volume.

The bad

The headphones come with three different sizes of ear plug but even so there is plenty of noise bleed when wearing them. This may be fine when jogging or working out but less ideal when using them for the daily commute. Sound quality tended to be good at lower levels but we did find that cranking them up caused distortion levels more than we’d like.

The bottom line

Cheap they may be but if you were hoping for a hidden gem then you’ll be left sadly lacking. We found the Jabra Active worked best as a backup pair to your everyday ones, decent enough for jogging but not good enough to be seen out with your iPhone.