The Jaybird Freedom, might just be what you need to grab alongside your latest iPhone 7 that has decided to ditch the headphone jack. These sports bluetooth earphones are tiny compared to their predecessors and are geared toward giving you a sweat-proof and foolproof workout
Design and Fit
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The Jaybirds are incredibly thin and sleek. Weighing only 13.6g, these earphones are one of the lightest devices out there in the market. The rounded earphones come with earwings and eartips which you have to slot on yourself.
The eartips come in 3 sizes, S, M and L. There are also 2 types of eartips, the silicon ones and the ones built with memory foam. Silicon eartips are ones you normally get with your other earphones and memory foam pretty much feels rough and foamy. My experience with the foam ones weren’t great as they didn’t provide a great fit for my ears, but the silicon ones worked just fine.
The earwings also come in 3 sizes and they can be inserted into your earbuds so that a more secure fit is created with the Jaybirds.
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Your Freedom is also armed with a remote control to control volume and playback. It’s convenient to be able to control your music without having to touch your phone, but this remote control was a little too heavy for our preference and it causes the Freedoms to droop to one side more frequently than we hope for it to be.
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Instead of just plugging a microUSB jack into your Jaybirds, you now have to use a cradle to charge it. Whilst this reduces the number of messy wires you have on your table, it also means that losing this cradle could mean the inability to charge your Jaybird Freedoms until you find a replacement set.
This cradle actually acts as a battery booster as well. This cradle gives you an extra 4 hours in addition to the 4 hour of battery left the Freedom has itself.
The combination of earwings and customisable silicon tips made the Freedoms fit extremely well in my ear and the tapered-down design was certainly awesome.
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Running around and pumping iron didn’t cause the Freedoms to fall out of my ear. However, I noticed that if I choose to attach the charging cradle, the Freedom tends to fall out of my right ear due to the heavy weight of the remote combined with the additional charging clip.
Sound Quality
The Freedoms do sound good, but I had hoped for it to sound better than it did.
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Volume-wise, the Freedoms did their job well. Being a set of sports earphones, you would expect the Freedoms to be able to blast out some serious beats even in the noisiest environments and these guys sure don’t disappoint.
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No one really wants to listen to Mozart when you run a marathon or do some explosive crossfit. You probably want something like Kanye West, Major Lazer or the good ol’ Linkin Park to be beating as you dominate the weight room, and you got to have some serious bass to do that. Fortunately for you, the Jaybird Freedoms don’t compromise in this department. To them, it’s all about that bass. In fact, the obsession with a heavy bass can sometimes be a little too strong for those who want to use it for casual purposes.
The mids of the Freedoms is average, but definitely less powerful than what a device over $200 should offer and this was a major disappointment since songs didn’t sound all that congruent when your mids are sub-par.
The highs are strong, though and the trebles do sound fairly decent.
One thing that’s interesting about the Jaybird Freedoms is that you can download their Android or iOS app to help you customise your music. This equalizer app does its job fairly well, to help with the occasionally overpowering base and the entire design of the app is actually quite aesthetically-pleasing.
Battery Life
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As mentioned earlier, the Jaybird Freedoms can give you up to 8 hours of battery life. The buds itself give you 4 hours and the charging clip gives you an additional 4 hours.
The average set of bluetooth earphones give you around 5 hours of playback, so the Freedoms, without the attachment has fairly average battery life, but with the extra add-on, it performs rather remarkably.
The only thing you should take note of is not to lose the charging clip, or else your Jaybirds are going to be useless in 4 hours time until you buy another clip.
Conclusion
The Freedom is a pretty solid pair of earphones if you are a sports enthusiast. It’s design and fit is probably its strongest point. Sound quality is decent, but not absolutely spectacular for a device this price. However, if you are after an aesthetic masterpiece with a sporty twist, do give the Jaybird Freedoms a go.
About the Aut
hor
A Dentist-To-Be Dabbling in Tech Journalism:
Zayne is a writer who reports for VR-Zone, Stuff Singapore and The New Paper on all things tech-related. Follow this geek on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram!
