Jabra denies support for Elite 85t Bluetooth earbuds on computers

I have the Elite 85h, and it has the same problem, as well as about a dozen other problems when you connect it to a computer. Same response. But the sales letter for the product makes it clear that they do support computers.

My last email to Jabra was ignored:

The message that computers are not supported devices on the Jabra Elite 85h was a very upsetting response to receive, so I didn't respond for quite a while. It's quite frustrating to hear that expensive bluetooth headphones designed to connect to 8 devices are not meant to work with computers. If that were the case, I would expect the Jabra site to say that computers are not supported in BIG letters, as I imagine a lot of people, like me, would expect their computer to be one of those 8 devices.

However, this statement about computers not being supported cannot be true. On the Jabra site for this product, it says: "no need to plug your headphones into your computer." It also has a picture of the product beside a Macbook. I've included screen shots of the product page that show these two points that clearly indicate computers are supported. I've heard this issue of the Elite 85h not being compatible with computers before from Jabra support, but it seems so implausible that Jabra would make bluetooth headphones that don't support computers, and equally implausible that they would mislead people into buying them on their site by suggesting that computers are supported if they are not.

I'm still hoping to get solutions to all the problems I'm having connecting my Jabra Elite 85h to my MacBook Air. Currently it's unusable and I'm going to have to buy another headset to replace them, which is much more wasteful than I would like.

I use my Jabra headphones to connect to all 8 of my cell phones. I'm sure that is the use case they were built for.

When I receive a call, my Bose SoundSport headphones randomly ring at max volume, with audible clipping. This happens when the iOS ring volume slider is set to the middle and hearing protection is enabled at 75dB. The sound is shockingly loud, especially when listening to an audio book at low volume. There was a multi-year megathread about it on the Bose forums before the company removed the forums entirely.

I chatted with five different Bose Support staff and they all refused to file a bug report. They are happy to send me a third pair with the same problem.

How can we get companies to respect their users?

Ouch. I'm not sure if this fixes your problem, but on Android I like to enable developer options and disable absolute volume to decouple the phone and speaker/headphone volumes, so I can use the device itself to turn down the peak volume (and hopefully noise floor) no matter how loud of a sound the phone tries to output. This might help ringtones, but probably not sounds generated by the headphones. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be exposed by Apple for iPhones.

Yeah, I got burned by this "philosophy" when I found their Elite 85h full headphones wouldn't play with anything but a very specific subset of my devices (my Android phone, amusingly, not among them) and tried to complain.

They do sell a dongle to make this work, and more generally I have heard you can use things like the Creative BT-W2/W3 to make Bluetooth devices that don't play well with whatever chipset/driver mess you have play well - because they just show up to the OS as a generic soundcard and don't mention the word Bluetooth to anything the OS can see, and their implementation, unlike many software/hardware vendors', _works_ robustly. But I have not personally tried it, yet.

(I'm still using the 85h for some things because the set of {USB-C charging, good noise cancelling, does not break with strange bugs in a week} headphones is much smaller than you might hope, but not for more general use.)

That's such shit. Companies that pull nonsense like this shouldn't be allowed to market their products. If you're in the US, try contacting the FTC.

I have the Elite 85t and it works fine with my Android phone and both my Dell Win 10 machines, so it may be a Mac issue. No excuse for their shitty behavior, but I'd research Mac-specific BT fixes.

Or it could be an issue with the button functionality. Try disabling button actions for calls in Sound+.

So then install Android-x86 on your laptop. Use it for a bit, verify the mic fails.

Call them up and tell them that you're performing a hardware compatibility evaluation to the same standard of due-diligence that would be used ahead-of-time in any competent enterprise-scale hardware accessory rollout - and that a prerequisite step in this process is to validate candidate accessories on Android in unusual environments, to exhaustively verify interoperability considering the known variability of the Bluetooth landscape (on both sides of any given connection).

"But that's a computer."

"Yes, running Android, an OS explicitly supported by logos on your packaging, specific instructions in the user manual and support in the official app."

"Using this hardware on a computer is not supported."

"Your official product communications clearly convey that you unilaterally support Android regardless of device type. The type of Android device I am using here is an x86 laptop, precisely to facilitate wide-range compatibility testing, and to catch potential compatibility issues early on. I'm interested in using this hardware, but after only 20 minutes of testing I've found I experience dropouts while using the officially supported app and running on an officially supported operating system."

I would be very interested to know how the conversation would continue...

Sadly this would be one of those Weird Thing In Instruction Manual-generating events ("why does this say it's not compatible with Android on PC???") but it might work.

(And if the person on the other end of the phone is mostly listening for keywords and they actually think you might be doing some sort of enterprise rollout (*cough* and want to buy a lot more hardware *cough*)... they might suddenly be very interested...)

This fails at the “call them up” step. Nobody you get on the phone is going to understand or care about any of this.

They might, best-case-scenario, just be listening for keywords, and actually think I want to do a rollout. It's kind of sad one has to think this way, and I wouldn't push things to the point of actively deceiving, but what if something like the above worked?

I admittedly don't care about any of it either. My goal would be to introduce chinks in the armor in the arguments presented and try and carry that as far as possible in the hope a solution presents itself. The idea in the GP popped into my head as one entirely-throwaway potential solution to that bigger-picture problem. It's quite possible a different approach may work better.

You don't tell them it's Android-x86 until you get escalated, I suppose.

At which point they'd say "Android-x86 is not Android" and hang up.

You can be as right as you want once they hang up.

There's a good answer below about how to disable this feature in Chrome.

An alternative to starting it with the experiment flag is to use the "Disable Automatic Gain Control" Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-automatic-...

I've been using it for a while with an 85h and it at least removes _that_ part of the failure. The stupid things keep rebooting themselves randomly while I'm on calls, however - I will never buy another Jabra product again.

(there was a discussion about this a while ago on reddit where folks identified these workarounds): https://www.reddit.com/r/Jabra/comments/qikzif/elite_85h_spo...

And then people keep asking me why I have trust issues with wireless tech. A 3.5mm jack just works, with everything, every time, all the time, regardless of any outside factors.

Tell that to my linux desktop which keeps losing track of the 3.5mm jack audio output.

I keep having to reset it and fiddle with it every reboot.

Sounds like you pushed the wrong button. If you can't even keep your 3.5mm audio running there's little chance you can work Bluetooth with all its foibles.

Huh. No issues like that at all with any of my Linux desktops and analog jacks (mostly Devuan). They all seem to detect and maintain sources fine.

The problem I personally have (if there are any pulseaudio experts out there) is it continually re-enabling ephemeral audio sources like HDMI and bluetooth when they are plugged back in, even if I'd set them to "off" before unplugging them - fortunately since I set the analog to default it usually doesn't mess anything up, but it's a bit untidy, and also annoying for the one USB webcam that has a mic plugged in, where I get a surprise input if I don't watch it.

It'd be great to have it persist settings for identically named sources even after they are removed.

> linux desktop

I'm surprised this Rube-Goldberg-esque mess works at all for you.

Audio has worked great on Linux for a while. Pulse Audio improved a lot, and now Pipewire, pretty much everything just works.

To be fair, I’m at a point where my audio works better on my personal Linux setup than on my high end Windows Dell laptop at work.

Which is the exact opposite as my situation 10-15 years ago. That’s how much Windows transformed itself into a pile of shit during the last decade.

As you can see from the parent comment, pretty much everything just works, except when sometimes it doesn't :D

I'd hope they lose the Bluetooth label and certification for this kind of crap, but we know nothing will happen.

Come on; bluetooth is in year ~20 of public alpha test. No certification would mean a thing besides, "Bluetooth: it could work!"

That's a pretty good slogan. I vote for a duel between Bluetooth and USB-C marketers as to who can use it.

EDIT: the idea of tunneling USB-C ports over Bluetooth (like the wireless USB standard that I never quite saw take off) just occurred to me while writing this comment. What fresh hell.

You'd have to prove that they're the ones with the faulty Bluetooth implementation, not the PC hardware, drivers, or OS.

Not when they're the ones claiming they don't want to interoperate with stuff that does have Bluetooth certification (e.g. Apple hardware).

Who exactly certifies MacOS (or any OS) for Bluetooth compliance?

I've just initiated a within-30-days return for a full refund of my new Jabra Evolve2 75 headset. It comes with a USB dongle so they definitely won't be claiming it doesn't support PC use, but I don't trust a company that makes such scammy claims and I've tweeted them to say just that.

Ah well, I thought I was enjoying my third Jabra product and it turns out I won't touch them with a barge pole again, unless and until they publicly retract and apologise for this behaviour.

Anyone have recommendations for a good on-ear headset for (mostly) work calls?

Bose QC 35 headphones work reasonably well, good noise cancelling, good enough mic for calls. I hear the Sony NC headsets getting better reviews in the last couple years on at least their NC functionality.

This is a blatant abuse and they should be sued and shut down. This is beyond unacceptable. There is no reason to do this kind of thing.

So if you sell a bluetooth device, it is legally required to work properly with every other bluetooth device on earth? I don’t see how that will fly.

The obvious reason for doing this kind of thing is their target market & 99.9% of sales are to people using them with phones, so Jabra has no business reason to spend money providing customer support for PC interoperability.

> So if you sell a bluetooth device, it is legally required to work properly with every other bluetooth device on earth?

It actually is. If you use either the Bluetooth patents or trademarks (e.g. logos and names), not only you must pass a certification that ensures this, you must also "maintain a level of quality that meets or exceeds industry standards", and this evidently doesn't.

Well, I've never got any non-Apple phones/computers to work with Apple phones/computers using Bluetooth.

Extremely bold claim there.

I definitely use my macbook with non-apple hardware. From headphones to laptops to android phones.

My first Macbook used to pair with a Nokia E72 to get internet via the GSM modem, I used it every day on the train.

Two weeks ago I connected an old Oneplus One via bluetooth to my macbook (2020 mbp) to get some old photos from its internal memory.

What doesn't work?

EDIT: actually, I'm not sure I ever connected a laptop to a macbook, but I have a linux laptop so I can try it if you want.

I couldn't get file transfers to work. It was a while ago so there might have been a Bluetooth version mismatch or something. I didn't bother troubleshooting it much because WiFi is more convenient for me anyway. I'll give it another try.

How many have you tried?

I’ve never had any non-Apple phones/computers not work with Apple phones/computers using Bluetooth.

Two or three. I couldn't get file transfers to work. It was a little while ago.

Gotcha. I’ve not tried that many either, and occasionally it took some wrangling, but it’s always worked. (Also I may be forgetting a time when I tried but succeeded using something besides Bluetooth)

Quick aside: there are a lot of wireless headsets that simply suck on MacOS. I have a pair of Sony XM4s that I can run with 990kbps audio on Linux that are stuck at 330kbps, barely connect half the time and auto-open Apple Music every time they connect for some godawful reason. I think Apple's desktop audio experience is getting really so-so. Pretty much their only advantage is CoreAudio at this point, and even that's shaky when you compare it with the likes of PipeWire...

Does the Bluetooth trademark owner have a place to report violations of the spec? It's their brand to protect, not yours.

Then again from their marketing perspective properly supporting computers on all devices would likely be smart. It is not like they don't have the expertise with their other product lines. This sort of stuff eventually reflects badly on those too.

You want to “shut down” Jabra because a product they released doesn’t have perfect Bluetooth compatibility? Seems harsh. Thank God you’re not in charge of these things.

Not supporting is one thing, false advertising and failing to provide a refund is another.

There's always the slight possibility that this might be a bug in the macOS Monterey bluetooth stack ? Hardware interoperability is quite complicated, but the device did work with the previous version of macOS (presumably the one Jabra had to test before shipping).

Indeed. There are 100s of complaints on Reddit about Bluetooth devices being broken on Monterey, including Apple peripherals: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/search?q=monterey+bluetooth&r...

Had the same issue with my 75t Elite on OSX with Slack Huddles. It seems like the root cause was the "Enable automatic gain control", or something along those lines.

It was super annoying, as they kept muting me mid-sentence, but since turning this option I haven't faced this issue anymore.

(OP) That's what on the Reddit post indeed, but unfortunately this option isn't available everywhere, and it doesn't always work :/

this is a"feature" added to the OS in Monterey that applies to bluetooth headsets - it will auto-mute you when input volume drops to zero, and, AFAIK, many video conferencing clients (zoom, google meets, etc) use this feature to help deal with background noise.

- Zoom instructions to disable dynamic input volume - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/432445/bluetooth-h...

- google meet instructions (when run via Chrome) - there's a flag you can add when starting Chrome, --force-fieldtrials='WebRTC-Audio-AgcMinMicLevelExperiment/Enabled-20' , that will fix the issue. For ease of use, create an AppleScript file, convert it to a shortcut, and launch Chrome from it.

edit - formatting

No, this happens on Windows too, and it’s not related to auto mute or anything like that. The audio stream just drops for a second, like if there was interference or buffer issue.

I have the same issue with Elite 75t. It seems to be the result of the microphone volume adaptively creeping downwards. When it gets too low, Jabra auto-mutes.

You can bump the volume up to the midpoint in your audio settings and it will take about another month to re-occur. Sorry this isn't a better solution.

It could be that Jabra isn't the actual manufacturer of the headphones and it's just a rebrand and the actual manufacturer doesn't give a crap to resolve the issues.

My Jabra Elite 85h over-ear headphones suffer from the same issue. These are Wirecutter's suggested Bluetooth headphones, which is why I bought them. I wonder if they still would be if it was widely known that these headphones are not meant to be used with computers.

> These are Wirecutter's suggested Bluetooth headphones

I stopped trusting Wirecutter a long time ago when they "recommended" powerline adapters that sucked. After buying some and doing my own testing I realized the whole product category sucks unless you're super desperate with no other options.

Of course instead of saying that Wirecutter happily gives the best piece of garbage 8 or 9 stars. That's the problem with affiliate marketing blogs like Wirecutter. They'll happily do relative rankings of pure crap if it means you'll buy something for them to get the affiliate revenue.

We need a new generation of review sites and reviewers.

Powerline networking is a great example of where review sites totally fall down; it's amazing in most cases, providing great bandwidth and very low jitter and packet loss. Then for no reason*, it will absolutely suck for some people. The only way to find these kinds of problems is to survey every situation and test each product in all of them, which is clearly impossible.

People will hear this and go, "aha! Crowd sourcing!" The issue with that is that with modern technology the problem is overwhelmingly user error (or to be generous, perhaps UX). So you will spend essentially all your time chasing down people who don't know how to charge their product, or have their powerline adapter hooked up upstream of a UPS, etc

Your wiring is to blame. Maybe some staple missed and nicked the wire, maybe you have something leaking EMI, maybe you just have dirty power.

Yeah, this is sketchy behavior for a premium brand. They really seem to need you to run their mobile app. It's hard to tell from their advertising that it covers more than iPhones... although it does say it works with Google Assistant.

The only info I found about supporting other laptops (it mentions phones, tablets, and mobile devices?) was in their help faqs:

https://www.jabra.com/supportpages/jabra-elite-85t/100-99190...

Which basically says it won't fully function... but it might work with MS teams?

I wonder what data they're collecting with the mobile app, whether it's being monetized to support development, or simply that they don't care about a fairly common use case.

That's different than OP was implying. They're saying that a lot of the playback and volume controls may not work as expected, not that you won't be able to hear and speak.

I've the same headphones, and the two problems I've had with them were: 1. Mic auto-muting during meetings. The fix here was to disable automatic mic gain or whatever 2. Headphones not always properly playing music from my phone when also being connected (but not used) to my laptop. Fix was to turn off Bluetooth on my laptop.

In both cases, it seems to be purely an issue with macOS and Apple software, as I've never had a single issue when using windows or my Android phone. For the second issue when I researched it, the conclusion was that apple just regularly does poorly with BT devices connected to multiple sources as why would you use something other than your apple product?

Surely anything that supports bluetooth is by consequence "a computer"?

What is a good alternative for a USB/Bluetooth office/WFH headset with a noise canceling _microphone_ (no background voices/noise), especially one that would also work on Linux?

Jabra Elite2 40 for example looked almost perfect, but was almost unusable on Linux/without their custom software.

I don't know about noise-cancelling, didn't even know there were headphones doing that.

But I have the Jabra Engage 75 (not Engage2) and I'm very happy with them. The mic doesn't pick up other voices in the house, since it sits 1 cm from my mouth and is fairly directional.

Also, the phones and base don't seem to communicate over Bluetooth because the range is great: more than 10 m through a thick house wall. I also don't notice the lag. The base is connected to the PC via USB. It also supports BT for connecting to a phone. And the volume controls on the phones affect the volume reported by Pipewire. The only thing that doesn't interact with PW is the Mic mute button. I don't have any kind of Jabra software installed - and there isn't any for Linux (they only have an SDK).

My only gripe with them is that they always prioritize my phone, so whenever I get a random notification they will cut the audio from the conference on the PC in order to play the "ding".

I was going to recommend the Sony WH-1000XM4 (which are more expensive). But I wanted to Google Linux support first and I ran into this discussion on Reddit [0], it sounds like the issue is not with the headphones (any BT headphones you choose) but with Pulse Audio.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sony/comments/jght5s/sony_wh1000xm4...

A problem with Linux support for Bluetooth audio? Say it isn't so! I don't understand why people are surprised that using Bluetooth devices on Linux frequently requires "their custom software". This is why.

On the flip side, Linux audio supports things that MacOS and Windows do not. Do you have 990kbps LDAC running on your desktop? Probably not if you aren't on Android or Linux. With PipeWire, I feel pretty comfortable saying Linux has Mac and Windows beat with wireless audio compatibility. Yes, Pulseaudio/ALSA and Jack kinda suck. That's a pretty dead horse to beat when you consider the offerings on... other platforms.

Of course I do, I wanted to be sure for myself that the difference is inaudible on Windows like it is on Android. I bought an adapter which supports it and confirmed it was transmitting it, then did my a/b/x testing.

It sounds like you agree with me, the default Linux support for Bluetooth audio is bad and requires custom workarounds to fix. That's exactly what I said.

Bought them after reading good reviews on r/audiophile and r/jabra and after some use they have this bug of one of the headset lowers the volume without fix. Last time i buy from them.

I own the Evolve2 65 and had issues at first but a firmware update on the app fixed a ton of issues. Been going strong using the Bluetooth directly on my MacBook running Monterey. I would not use the included dongle if possible. It’s UC adapter is absolutely terrible on macOS.

I have a eerily similar problem with my Galaxy Buds+ on my macbook. 15-20 minutes into a Zoom call and suddenly my audio doesn't work and neither does the mic, I have to ditch the headphones and use the laptop mic + speakers.

Going to guess it's a macOS bug given that other headphones are showing the same behavior

Website says requires Bluetooth 5.1 but macOS only supports Bluetooth 5, right?

And yet I'm quit sure this is just yet another Bluetooth 2.0 A2DP device, rather than something running LE Audio which would require BT 5.0.

Search for "false advertising lawyer". This is a good case for a class action. Provable misrepresentation, deep pocket company. You may not get much out of it, but you can apply some pain to Jabra.

I'm currently struggling to find usable bluetooth earbuds. One pair that I found comes flying out of my ears when I moved my head at all. Another is dangerously loud even on the lowest volume setting. The third came with a nonstandard (and therefore essentially useless) charger. It really seems like the entire market is flooded with garbage.

What device was connected when the sound was too loud? Both iOS and Android have the ability to adjust volume limits to minimize this.

Have you tried Samsung Buds+ or the new Galaxy buds? They have incredible battery life and decent microphones. Unfortunately they don't fit my ears so I'm using Airpods 3.

This is iOS. I haven't been able to find the ability to lower the minimum volume, and based on posts in the support forums, this seems like a common complaint that has yet to be addressed by Apple. That said, if you happen to know something that I don't, I'd be delighted to hear it.

There's a reason Apple has sold over 300 million pairs of AirPods, even though they are expensive.

Have you tried Sony WF-1000XM4? I currently have them and have had 0 issues with them so far. Bluetooth connectivity is great and i regularly switch them between a linux laptop (used for meetings, slight media) and android phone (calls, music).

Thanks for the recommendation! I'll definitely look into them.

+1 for the Sony XMs, doubly so if you're on a Linux machine. These things "just work" as well as the Bluetooth adapter you have on the other side. Connection is easier than literally any other Bluetooth peripherals I've used.

How's the mic on those? I have the WH-XM3s and boy do they suck. I've never managed to get good audio from their mic, be it on Linux, macOS, or iOS.

I bought them for listening to music, so I don't really mind, and for this they are absolutely great, even on Linux.

Never had any issues with them and didn't have to jump through any hoops.

Thanks for sharing this, I have the 75t which I use for mobile and work. I love them and would rbuy again in a heartbeat but this kind of nonsense is unacceptable.

My Jabra Evolve2 65 started dropping mic under Windows randomly as well... Maybe it's the same chip and the same problem as in 85t?

I bought them and then stopped using them. They're junk. Why? There's always something, some reason why they're not ready to go when I need them such as when someone calls. .

Why is this submission 2x as wide as the comments? (I’m on mobile Safari)

This kind of shit is why I just went with AirPods Max.

Reason #329 that I don't buy Bluetooth stuff. The OP's description above sounds like a good day using Bluetooth, in my experience.

I own the 75ts, they work excellent on Linux. None of my wireless headphones work all that well on Mac, come to think of it...

The Elite 85t has also been working well for me. mSBC, PipeWire 0.3, Linux 5.17, Intel AX200

I bet your credit card or merchant will provide a refund.

Which is too bad because the only thing I don't like about my Jabra 65t s after probably 1k hours of use is they don't get quiet enough, but :shrug:.

> I bet your credit card or merchant will provide a refund.

After 2 months? I guess it depends on the merchant, but I think my credit card requires that I dispute a charge within 30 days.

What does it even mean they don’t support “computers”? Bluetooth doesn’t distinguish between computers and mobile phones.

This is a lesson in not buying from sketchy companies unfortunately.

They don't, as far as I am seeing, advertise PC compatibility. So you are out of luck there.

Return them if you can and buy something better.

They also don’t advertise supporting phones…

The thing is, Jabra or GM NetCom are bot sketchy vo.paniea. GM NetCom is a global leader in hearing aids.

Well-known to be the bane of meetings in offices everywhere.

Why anyone would buy their garbage is beyond me, not that that excuses how they treat their marks^Wcustomers.

Now question really should be all they better or worse than the alternatives? Haven't used their product overly much, but never truly had issues.

We exclusively used Jabra speakerphones at my last few offices and I have a few at home. They work very well and I've never seen them have a single problem.

Same. They also regularly win recommendations from a variety of review sites.

It's a brand I would expect my 70 year old mom to buy because she remembers it from 15 years ago.

I wouldn't call it sketchy. It says right on the product page what connectivity the device supports. https://www.jabra.com/bluetooth-headsets/jabra-elite-85t##10...

They don't attempt to mislead at all.

> It says right on the product page what connectivity the device supports.

I don't really see anything there beyond "bluetooth support", and it seems to me that expecting very common systems such as macOS and Windows would work is pretty reasonable.