Jawbone Era – 2014 Edition Review

Nobody likes to hold up their phones on to the ear during long calls, instead they opt for Bluetooth headsets. The only problem with Bluetooth headset was that they always looked mediocre and untrendy, although it gave good performance while the ones that looked elegant were often low in performance.

Jawbone,  has decided to change it all by introducing Jawbone Era – 2014 edition, a Bluetooth headset which is high on performance and looks stylish altogether.

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Design and Hardware

Jawbone has taken good care of the design of the New Era and made sure it’s easy to fit into your ears and so tiny that it could be well hidden if you have got long hair. No doubt the earlier design of the original Era launched in 2011 was compact and neat but this time the company has taken one step further to make a much more lighter and smaller version of Era for their 2014 edition. After 3 years of innovation, the company has successfully shrunk the device by 42 percent without tampering its performance.

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While the design is elegant, neat and compact, Jawbone has also made sure to simplify the hardware yet adding some decent features to the device. They have kept the controls minimal that include a physical power button on the underside along with a multifunctional button on the back, just above the microUSB port for recharging. But the most exciting feature is the LED ring that surrounds the voice activity sensor which helps the device to understand whether it’s you who’s talking or it’s some loudmouth behind you. The microphones are equipped with the latest version of Jawbone’s NoiseAssassin, the audio DSP that helps in cancelling all sort of background noise and now up to v4.0.

Battery Life

Offering a talktime of up to 4 hours from the headset, the battery life is quite short span for the 2014 edition of Jawbone Era. Although, the New Era can be combined with its case (it’s included in the whole package or box contents) in order to offer a talktime of up to 10 hours. The headset can be simply tucked in to the USB port of the case and it falls flat in the case with the earbud sticking out for usage. There’s another USB port with which both the device and its case can be easily charged simultaneously and takes up to an hour for a full charge.

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The standby time for the headset unplugged from the case but paired with your phone is around three days while the New Era can stay fully charged for a year unless it’s turned ON.

Performance and Usability

The comfort and size of a Bluetooth headset doesn’t matter much if the performance is not that great for your ears. You will hardly use the device if it sounds bad. But with the New Era, Jawbone has delivered a decent device with good sound quality even when you are in the middle of a crowd.

It offers great clarity during calls with the help of the latest version of Jawbone’s own technology for background noise cancellation – NoiseAssassin. The device is pretty much simple to use as there are very few control buttons but still it would have been a great addition if the New Era had a volume strip to control the volume which currently is a bit tough to operate with the multifunctional button.

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The most exciting feature of the New Era – the 2014 edition from Jawbone is its compatibility to work with both Apple’s Siri and Android’s Google Now. The personal voice assistant on both platforms can be activated when you press and hold the multifunctional button on the headset. Hence, with the personal voice assistance activated, you can ask Siri or Google Now, whichever may be applicable as per your device platform, to call or message someone or in order to find directions or nearby restaurants.

Conclusion

Our verdict on the 2014 edition of Jawbone Era is positive as it’s an modern era Bluetooth headset designed to work with high end smartphones and supporting the built in features of highly popular platforms like Android and iOS. Such compatibility delivers great user experience and performance.Although, the only flaw we found was lack of buttons. It gets confusing and difficult to access the multifunctional button for different uses.