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Noise cancelling technology used to be the reserve of expensive headphones that wealthy travellers owned.
Then the pandemic transformed everything. Noise cancelling technology became essential to drown out kids, animals and neighbours when working from home, especially on video conferences.
Even when one returns to the office, so many video conferences are happening that you need to be able to take them at your desk without background noise.
So, we know noise cancelling technology moved from the territory of expensive headphones to office worker headsets. What you may ask is the difference between headphones and headsets? Mainly that a headset includes a microphone.
We got our hands on the Danish manufacturer Jabra's Evolve2 85 headset.
First of all, this is an over the head design which fully encapsulates your ears. The padding around your ears is soft and comfortable.
The part that goes over your head extends to accommodate any head size and feels comfortably soft.
These connect in four ways, over Bluetooth, with the enclosed USB-C wireless dongle, with a USB cable or using an analogue cable.
The analogue connector is a 3.5mm jack with an included cable and adapter for aircraft usage.
Most people will use it wirelessly from their laptops and/or smartphones. You get the choice of connecting over BlueTooth or plugging the included USB-C dongle into your device. We found both sounded amazing!
When charging, a quick 15-minute charge will get you about 8 hours of usage, while a full 2.5-hour charge will get you the entire 37-hour theoretical maximum.
The headset also includes a handy microphone boom tucked away, which swings down for video or teleconference usage.
The noise cancelling is active, and up to par with any other high-end brand we have experienced. We even found that they did surprisingly well in windy scenarios, which are often tricky for noise-cancelling headsets and headphones to handle.
40mm speakers in the headset also generated great sounding audio, probably way better quality than any office worker will ever need. Although maybe you are someone that can work while listening to music.
They're also certified for Microsoft Teams usage, as well as all the other conferencing platforms.
One of the cleverest features is a busy light, which shows a red halo around each side of the headset to show your colleagues that you are on a call or video conference.
When it's time to travel, the two ear covers swivel flat and fit into a hard-wearing case with any cables you want to take on the road with you.
Overall, this superb office headset is so good; you may not need an office and a home headset any longer. Of course, it's got a premium price, but it's well worth the investment.
