Choosing a pair of quality wireless earbuds can be a painstakingly long process, given thousands of options available on the market across a diverse price range, and in my experience, can often be hit-and-miss across many brands. Jaybird Freedom have caught my eye during a half-price sale, and I got my hands on a bright red pair from BestBuy. Over extensive use throughout two months, the headphones have met or exceeded my expectations when it comes to reliability, design, and sound quality, delivering consistent performance across the board. If you get them during a sale, the Jaybird Freedom are often available at a half price point, which I highly recommend waiting for, and make full use of that value by delivering a strong set of features. Jaybird Freedom make a strong case for why premium audio products command such consumer demand, and their general availability at an affordable price point backed by high quality ensures user satisfaction. Below, I discuss the full extent of the product’s features, taking into account extensive quality testing throughout a two month period to highlight why these rank among some of the best wireless earbuds money can buy.

Jaybird Freedom come packaged in a nicely-designed box, and include all accessories you could possibly need for sport earbuds. There are interchangeable ear hooks and plugs (both silicone and memory foam) of various sizes to aid users in finding the best fit, as well as an additional clip for securing headphones that runners will find great use of. A slim carrying pouch lets you bring them on the go, although I’ve yet to get use out of it in an urban setting. The charging dock for the headphones is also included, along with a USB cable that’s way too short if you’re looking for any flexibility whatsoever during charging, but that fact won’t bother many. Because the headphones charge through this docking system rather than a straight micro-USB port, this also allowed Jaybird to ensure a light sporty design to ultimately make the Freedom sell in large numbers. You won’t find any surprises here, but having everything needed is at the end the biggest plus of any product packaging.

The Jaybird Freedom headphones have an attractive sporty design that’s bound to get attention of many, especially with a range of four distinct colours to choose from. The shiny red palette ultimately captured my attention, offering a distinctive look from the various sets I’ve used in the past. Other choices aren’t bad either, with a bright water blue, midnight black and white-gold culminating the variety of colors. There’s also plain white and rose gold, which are essentially the same as the first option except the first removes gold finishes on the ear-pieces and the starter remote in favor of white, and the latter replaces the standard gold with its rose-toned counterpart. Color choices really highlight Jaybird Freedom’s design elements, offering style for just about everyone and making the shopping experience further engaging through excellent color choices. Not many brands offer a mix of such bright colors, and although Beats and Monster come very close within the color mix of Jaybird Freedom, they don’t offer such sleek choices to go along with them.

The actual design at hand is a sleek and streamlined take at headphone building, and packs all wireless features into a form factor resemblant of standard wired headphones. The allocation of charging to a dock-like accessory results in the absence of USB access to the unit, however it also removes any extra microchips associated with the process to ensure a slim construction. Ear hooks are also detachable, and further provide convenience when bringing the headphones along, however this also led me to lose 2 pairs of ear plugs due to lack of permanent attachment to the headphones themselves. Aside from a simple remote with power and volume controls, Jaybird Freedom aren’t hampered by any affixed ear hooks or intricate design choices, which in the end works to the product’s advantage.

The especially compact build nonetheless allows for extremely high quality of sound matched by equally strong volume delivery through the headphones’ sound drives. Throughout my experience with the headphones for two months, the Jaybird Freedom never disappointed, always delivering superb sound backed by excellent bass. From slim earbuds like these, one wouldn’t expect much power delivery, although recent market trends certainly show one can also pack quality tech into a pair of Air Pod-sized headphones. This product packs in significantly more volume than you’d expect, reaching louder than one would typically be comfortable with, although this is far often a plus than a negative. With higher volume comes higher bass power respectively, and typically listening to midrange-louder volume, the Jaybird Freedom maintained excellent clarity while delivering exceptional bass at the same time. Sound quality on offer certainly doesn’t disappoint, and makes the case for why it’s worthwhile to spring for higher-end headphone brands.

With any pair of Bluetooth headphones comes the worry of battery life, and unfortunately this is the area where the Jaybird Freedom don’t particularly shine compared to the competition within the price range. The earbuds last for about 4-5 hours of continuous music playback on average, which is along the lines of what one would expect from a small pair of wireless headphones, and often forced me to recharge them more often than I’d like. Worse is when they unexpectedly die because you forgot to shut them off for an hour or two, with battery slowly draining even when not in use, or run out of juice when you would like to keep the music going but don’t have the means to charge them. (i.e. doing a full shift at work) This case certainly isn’t among the weakest battery lives out there, but doesn’t promise anything exceptional either. Expect to recharge them fairly often if you listen to music on a consistent basis.

Ultimately, though, the Jaybird Freedom deliver the full range of features one would expect from a premium brand of audio products, which is one of the most important things for consideration when buying a quality pair of earbuds. They further stand out with their attractive design and slim form factor among the crowd of similar products, coming in multiple color variations to suit diverse tastes. The superb sound quality comes unexpectedly, although within the unit’s price range Jaybird simply won’t be able to sell anything notably weaker. This sadly doesn’t apply to battery life expectations from the Freedom headphones, however considering similar products and competition, the earbuds perform on average with user expectations. On the overall note, these are an excellent buy for the sound quality alone, and surpass expectations by delivering superb sound quality hidden behind an attractive design proposition. Jaybird Freedom retail for $130 CAD but can often be found at BestBuy on sale for $60-70.