Not too long ago, affordable true wireless earbuds were a rarity, and good ones were rarer still. Today, though, it's not unusual to see earbuds that cost $150, $100, or even less sporting desirable features like active noise cancelation and multipoint connectivity. Jabra's Elite 4 earbuds, which launched in March 2023, cost just $100, and offer audio quality and ANC that are both better than they need to be for the price. They may not have every bell and whistle you're after, but if all you really need is solid audio and ANC, the Jabra Elite 4 might be for you.

Price and availability

The Jabra Elite 4 come in at an eminently reasonable $100 and are available in Dark Gray, Navy, Light Beige, and Lilac colorways. You can get them from the usual places like Amazon and Best Buy, or from Jabra itself.

Design and hardware

The Jabra Elite 4 are awfully familiar looking. They're visually very similar to a number of other Jabra buds, including the entry-level Jabra Elite 3, the existing Jabra Elite 4 Active, and the Jabra Elite 5. The earbuds are relatively small, with one triangular(ish) button on each bud, and a small, flip-top charging case.

The buds come with several different sizes of silicone ear tips; the pre-installed medium size fits my ears very comfortably. The Elite 4 have no stabilizing hardware — no ridges, fins, or stems — but the earbuds have still felt secure enough in my time with them, even while jogging.

Audio and ANC

As $100 earbuds, the Jabra Elite 4 aren't going to be challenging high-end earbuds from Sony or Samsung for best audio quality honors. What we do get out of the Elite 4's 6mm drivers is pretty good for earbuds in this price range, though, with plenty of bass response. With the earbuds' default tuning, higher-frequency sounds don't come across quite as clearly as they ought to — vocals and percussion in particular can sound just a little lifeless.

But Jabra's Sound+ app lets you customize the Elite 4's sound with a five-band equalizer, and pushing the Treble sliders up a little helps quite a bit. There's support for SBC and aptX codecs, but no AAC — though that shouldn't matter unless you've got an iPhone.

Noise cancellation, the Elite 4's claim to fame versus the more affordable Elite 3, is quite good for the price as well. Switching back and forth between the Jabra Elite 4 and the pricier Elite 5 in public, it wasn't always easy to hear the difference in ANC quality. The more expensive Elite 5 seem to do a better job of quieting mid-frequency noise than the Elite 4 do, but the two aren't in entirely separate leagues. Neither can match the best earbuds from Bose or Apple here, but for $100, it's hard to complain.

Call quality is also good enough, with recordings showing that the Elite 4 earbuds do an admirable job isolating my voice from background noise. Again, the Jabra Elite 4 aren't quite as good for calls as earbuds that cost twice as much, but they're good enough that you probably won't think much about it.

App and features

The Jabra Elite 4's feature set is a little strange. While the earbuds offer Fast Pair and multipoint connectivity, niceties that aren't guaranteed even in pricier earbuds, they lack features that are seemingly more basic. There's no in-ear detection, meaning the buds don't pause playback when you remove them. You also can't change the earbuds' control scheme, and the earbuds don't report their case's battery level — the only indication of how much juice is left in the charging case is a color-changing LED on its front side.

The Jabra Sound+ app is required for earbud firmware updates and allows you to change the earbuds' equalizer settings. The app is straightforward and easy to navigate, but I do wonder why the only control option is which ANC modes the earbuds cycle through when you press the left bud's button. The control scheme is otherwise fixed, so if you'd prefer a single press on either bud to function as play/pause (rather than play/pause for the right bud and ANC modes for the left), you're out of luck.

Battery and charging

Battery life in the Jabra Elite 4 is on the lower end of average, with the earbuds managing about five and a half hours of media playback with ANC turned on. That's a little disappointing; I tend to complain about anything shorter than six hours per charge. But these earbuds are notably small and notably inexpensive, so it's hard to complain too much about battery life. If you're looking for headphones to drown out the noise of an international flight, budget earbuds probably aren't on your list anyway.

The Elite 4's charging case provides about three additional full charges, which is admirable given how small it is. But you can't see the case's remaining charge on your phone, even when the earbuds are inside it. Instead, there's a color-changing LED on the case that you can ballpark it by. The case also lacks wireless charging, topping up exclusively by USB-C. That's not unusual for more budget-friendly earbuds, but it bears consideration.

Competition

At an MSRP of $100, the Jabra Elite 4 are competing in the increasingly crowded budget true wireless space. If you're thinking about the Jabra Elite 4, you may also be considering the $59 OnePlus Nord Buds 2. OnePlus's newest earbuds offer similar battery life at five hours per charge with ANC and better audio quality than you'd expect given their ultra-budget price tag, but the quality of that ANC isn't on par with what you'll get from the Jabra Elite 4.

The tried-and-true Pixel Buds A-Series also come in at a budget-friendly $99. Google's affordable earbuds offer better audio quality than the Jabra Elite 4, but don't have any ANC to speak of — in fact, thanks to their "spatial vent" design, they let environmental sound into your ears on purpose. The Pixel Buds A-Series eke out a similar five hours of playback time per charge, but without noise cancelation, that's nothing to write home about.

Should you buy them?

The Elite 4 are yet another competent pair of affordable earbuds from Jabra. While nothing about the buds is really noteworthy on its own — audio, ANC, and battery life are all pretty average here — the fact that there are no deal-breaking flaws in these $100 earbuds is impressive. They sound pretty good and block out environmental noise well enough, which is far from a given in budget earbuds.

There are plenty of reasons to spend more on earbuds if you can afford it. Even Jabra's own Elite 5, which come in at a very reasonable $150, come with features like wireless charging and in-ear detection, both of which make for a meaningfully better overall experience. But if all you're looking for in earbuds is decent sound and passable noise isolation, and your budget is about a hundred bucks, you could do a lot worse than the Jabra Elite 4.