Geek Review: Jaybird Run True Wireless Sport Headphones

Like cheese and crackers, bread and butter, running and music have become one of those synonymous pairs. If you’re one of those runners who are unable to the endorphin high from exercising, a bit of musical motivation goes a long way. Otherwise, you’d end up stopping and walking a fair bit during trips to the park or the gym. That’s why a good pair of exercise earphones is important to certain runners.

So how does the Jaybird Run fare in this regard? It does a fairly decent job.

Here’s the breakdown:

Pros:

• Good battery life
• Stays in your ears once adjusted
• Convenient package
• Decent sound quality

Cons:

• Could do with more bass
• No track skip button
• Moderate audio delay

 

Sheer convenience

Something which really stood out about the Jaybird Run is the way it’s been designed to be so user-friendly and convenient.

The earbuds come in a stylish pill-shaped carrying pod that doubles as a charger. Imagine that carrying the two earbuds around on their own would be frustrating as they’d likely roll around and end up in the dark corners of your bag. With this carrying case, you’re less likely to lose them.

When kept in the carrying case, the earphones automatically charge themselves through a battery in the carrying case. Lights on the pod tell you about your earphone battery situation. On their own, the earphones are supposed to last 4 hours, with the carrying pod able to fully charge the earphones twice on a single charge. However, it’s challenging to verify this as most can’t last 4 hours of continuous exercise, the numbers seem reasonable given how long the Jaybird Runs have been able to remain usable without charging the pod.

Putting the earphones into the pod and then taking them out will also switch them on and off. So that means you don’t have to do any long presses to manually switch them on/off. The moment you remove them from the carrying pod, the earphones switch on and connect to your phone or music device. When you’re done, just put them back.

A minor nag would be with the controls. Being the type to load up all my music and skipping tracks happen a great deal depending on the mood.

The Jaybird Run has no control for me to do this. There is a button on each earbud: the left triggers your phone’s assistant and the right toggles pause/play.

Understandably, the earphones are small so there isn’t much room for comprehensive controls. But between triggering the useless Samsung Bixby and track skips, the latter is greatly desired.

Audio quality

The earphones sound good, definitely better than the crappy Disney-themed earphones that you got from an unauthorized online merchant. They’re not great, but they’re not meant for mastering your band’s new single either.

For music in the gym or a run in the park (which for me means goth metal, industrial metal and a bit of Taylor Swift), the earphones deliver enough oomph and clarity. A little bit more bass would be appreciated, but it’s not a deal breaker.

One potential non-issue discovered though was with lag. It’s a Bluetooth device so you expect a bit of audio delay, but these are fairly sluggish. Having to tinker with a video in VLC and it required a toggle of -850ms to get the dialogue to sync with the mouths.

That said, why are you watching a movie in the gym? Get your eyes back on your heart rate monitor and your feet back on the treadmill. In all honesty, it’s a non-issue unless you intend to use them as general purpose earphones.

Comfort

The Jaybird Runs come with two sets of round buds and two sets of oval buds, along with four sizes of fins. That allows for a good variety of size options (notice how I stealthily hid my poor mathematical abilities?) so you should find a combination that suits you.

As with any earphones, it’ll still take some adjusting every time you put them on. Once you get that right fit though, they’ll stay in place all while you go running.

That said, the advice would be to make sure you get the fit right before you set off on your run. I tried readjusting my earphones mid-run (the nice way of saying when I got sweaty), and while my right ear was fine, it took quite a bit of readjustment for my left ear to accept the earphone nicely.