Jaybird X3 - My First Bluetooth Experience

[jiyeon]

 

Hi, and welcome to my review of the Jaybird X3! I got these earphones after looking at reviews from people like Justin Tse and MKBHD.

 

What appealed to me about these earphones is their comfort factor, design, and proclaimed sound quality, especially when there's a dedicated Jaybird app which has an equaliser in order to get the exact sound profile the user wants. In addition to that, it's Bluetooth, as I'm wanting to get into the wireless life.

It was everything I wanted in a pair of earphones, so I looked around and got a pair of Jaybird X3 in sparta - that's white and gold - color to compliment my already dominantly lighted colored setup aesthetic.

 

These are quite possibly one of the best earphones I've used thanks to their form and function. They're also my first pair of Bluetooth earphones too, and so I'm honestly blown away by these earphones.

 

 

 

One of the the most prominant features that attracted me to these particular earphones were the add-on wings, they support holding the earphones in my ear so very well it's almost black magic how well they do it. I have fairly small ears so I use the smallest set of wings as well as the smallest set of silicon eartips.

They hug the for a lack of a better word, inside of your ear and mould to it so allow a perfect fit, they're magically stable.

 

 

Like I mentioned before, I use the smallest set of silicon eartips, I tried the comply foam ones but those honestly felt uncomfortable to both touch as well as feel inside my ear, so I'm using the trusty silicon ones which I find more comfortable. They fit excellently inside my ears since the drivers themselves are tilted just a bit to fire audio directly into your canal, it's a neat little design choice that is definitely welcome.

 

 

They're also removeable which is a nice touch.

 

 

 

The Jaybird X3 connects seemlessly to my phone and pretty much any other device.

 

It was my first time trying to connect a Bluetooth device to my phone but the Jaybird X3 made it so easy to connect that a toddler could do it. I just held the middle button on the in-line remote and kept the Bluetooth page up on my phone, and done, all connected. Stupidly easy.

 

 

There are volume up and down buttons, as well as a connectivity button in the center, that's for Bluetooth pairing, as well as a power button to turn on or off the earphones. It's comically easy to pair devices with this button.

 

 

 

Charging the Jaybird X3 is where perhaps it loses some points. It uses this tiny pin-grid micro-USB powered charging dock which is super easy to misplace.

 

 

It connects via the underside of the in-line remote, where there are pins laid in parellel to the charging dock itself, it's fairly easy to align as the charging dock as well as the earphones have ridges that you can align to start charging the earphones.

 

You have to remember where you've placed this small dock, as once you've lost it, it's game over for your Jaybird X3's battery life.

 

 

The Jaybird MySound app is a heaven for anybody who doesn't like the out-of-the-box audio profile on the Jaybird X3. It allows you to set your own equaliser, or even choose community-shared ones. Go wild!

 

Spoiler

 

 

Lastly, I'll discuss sound, and honestly it's quite hard as I'm by no means an audiophile, and the Mysound app might skew my audio perception of these earphones.

 

I listen to a lot of Korean pop, hip-hop, and the ocassional mainstream pop songs, so a lot of mids and highs, with the exception being hip-hop where I do prefer lows as all the hip-hop artists I listen to favor bass and have fairly low-toned voices.

I'll put this section just like I did for my Audio-Technica ATH-M50x and review audio of some songs I listen to.

 

I'll be listening to the YouTube MV versions of these songs, but I can't link them here so try your best to find them if you want to see what I've listed!

 

Song 1 (Bubblegum Pop) - Apink - 1도 없어

• 0:31 - The female vocals are crystal clear, and the background tropical instrumentation is nice and pronounced, nothing sounds muddy or distorted.
• 0:47 - The whispering vocals remain super clear as well as the background music which doesn't flood the stage in any way, it all blends together nicely and doesn't get muddled.
• 1:01 - The female vocals here are super crisp and pronounced and I can feel the energy she puts into her singing, I also love how the background sparkling noises sound clear in conjuction with the backing synth.

Song 2 (Latin Pop) - (G)I-DLE - Senorita

• 0:22 - The soft whisper-ish vocals are clear and almost sounds like she is literally whispering into my ears. The background bass is also deep and pronounced.
• 0:52 - The powerful vocals are heard perfectly in parallel to the amazing Spanish instrumentation in the background, I can hear every bit of it seperately and nothing shadows anything else.
• 1:24 - The horns are so loud and punchy yet so clear and vibrant, and the female vocals at this section are amazingly crisp, I can pretty much hear every vocal chord and it makes for a heck of a listening experience.

Song 3 (Dancehall) - KARD - Rumor

• 0:38 - I can hear the bass on this male rapper's voice so very crisp, and even the high parts of his voice are heard cleanly and clearly. The backing track is also still prominent and clear to my ear.
• 1:00 - The female vocalist's tones are so prominent and clear, and the now elevated backing track has more bass and highs to it, I can still hear both of these equally and nothing sounds likeit's overpowering the other.
• 1:54 - This part's nice because it's the same beat as 0:38, only the female rapper is taking the lead on the bars for this one. - Just like 0:38, the backing track is clear and the vocals are even clearer. Excellent listening experience.

 

 

I've been quite extensive for something as simple as sports earbuds, but I just like these earphones so much that I could literally go all day talking about how great these are in terms of design, comfort, sound, and overall concept.

 

The design is primarily what drove me to these, specifically the wings, and those did not disappoint at all. They perfectly stick into my outer ear and hold the eartips in place so very snug. They also look quite cool as well, it almost looks as if I was gifted these earphones by Icarus himself the way these buds have these elegant wings on them, not to the mention the addition of the gold accent too, very royal indeed, Sparta is a fitting name for this color scheme.

 

The sound is amazing, I'm in awe of how great these sound, especially when used with the Jaybird Mysound app as mentioned above. Great user customisation and honestly the Mysound app probably was the key selling point that made me purchase these earphones.

 

Overall, I love these and I would definitely say they're worth the price, especially since now the Jaybird X4 incremental upgrade is already out.

[dizmo]

I really like the reviews you've posted, they're clean, well thought out lay out wise, and complete.

Keep up the good work

[jiyeon]

18 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I really like the reviews you've posted, they're clean, well thought out lay out wise, and complete.

Keep up the good work

Aww, thank you! Aesthetics and layout are my thing, I love laying things out neatly.

[FIXXX]

Did I miss it or is there really no mention of average battery life OP got?

[jiyeon]

2 minutes ago, FIXXX said:

Did I miss it or is there really no mention of average battery life OP got?

Oops, my mistake.

 

Battery life has actually been a second thought as I've never seen my Jaybirds go below 60%.

 

To put that into context, 3 hours of usage on a full charge dropped it down to about 60%.

 

I'll add battery life to the OP when I get the chance to fully solidify the extent of the battery life, because I can't get it to drain for the life of me.

[FIXXX]

5 hours ago, seoz said:

Oops, my mistake.

 

Battery life has actually been a second thought as I've never seen my Jaybirds go below 60%.

 

To put that into context, 3 hours of usage on a full charge dropped it down to about 60%.

 

I'll add battery life to the OP when I get the chance to fully solidify the extent of the battery life, because I can't get it to drain for the life of me.

Install Winamp, if you don't have that anymore. In Options > Preferences >>Plug-ins>Output - select DIrectSoundOutput and configure it to these earbuds (obviously connect them to the computer first). Put a long-ass playlist of at least 10 hours, no hour-long mixes. Just run-of-the-mill 3-4 stuff.

Let it run, not Random.

 

I'm predicating this test on three factors:

1. Winamp, being old - it shows an error when the playback device you're using is no longer available (Error creating DirectSound buffer). Example below:

 

2. Winamp doesn't reset the playlist when this happens. Just stops at the current track once this error occurs. In my case I just turned off the bluetooth headphones I was using with it, to imitate when yours would just shut down when battery goes low enough.

 

3. Windows allows windam to be a separate thing in terms of audio. Meaning when you mark some device to output there - windows doesn't switch its own output to that. So you can continue using the computer normally and let the bluetooth earbuds play all day till it fails.

 

So once it fails (not sure if windows will bring the application up or you'll have to bring it up from the tray) - you close the error, delete all the songs that go AFTER the "active" song. And check the playlist duration down below to see how long it lasted. 

Obvious bring down the listening volume to a reasonable level.

Didn't test it but though of a quick way for you to do it off the top of my head. Hope it works.

[jiyeon]

10 minutes ago, FIXXX said:

-snip-

I'm sorry but I'm not going to go through all that. I'd rather just use these as normal just like an average consumer with my own music and usage times.

 

Your method is too synthetic for me and isn't contextual of a proper use case for these earphones to me which isn't the type of battery test I'm looking to conduct.

[FIXXX]

16 minutes ago, seoz said:

I'm sorry but I'm not going to go through all that. I'd rather just use these as normal just like an average consumer with my own music and usage times.

 

Your method is too synthetic for me and isn't contextual of a proper use case for these earphones to me which isn't the type of battery test I'm looking to conduct.

As you wish. Simply wanted to give an easy way for you to establish a benchmark result as any other "lasted a whole day for me and even a few hours the next day" is fairly subjective.

You said it yourself "I'd rather just use these as normal just like an average consumer with my own music and usage times." Which is obviously going to lead to your feedback on the battery life being not useful objectively to anyone but you. 

 

PS: Modern circuits are very good at sipping energy while idle so even if you may imply that you can often not listen for hours while busy - thus a full-bore power draw cycle would not show your actual time of use - that would not be correct for a few years now. 

Thus I hope that if find a day to test, it would be useful information for you!

[jiyeon]

9 hours ago, FIXXX said:

As you wish. Simply wanted to give an easy way for you to establish a benchmark result as any other "lasted a whole day for me and even a few hours the next day" is fairly subjective.

You said it yourself "I'd rather just use these as normal just like an average consumer with my own music and usage times." Which is obviously going to lead to your feedback on the battery life being not useful objectively to anyone but you. 

Yeah, I get what you mean and can see what type of thing you're going for, but I'm just a regular girl with some earphones, so I feel like that would personally be a more useful method of testing battery, i.e "x hours got me y battery life."

 

Trust me, I've watched plenty of Jaybird X3 reviews and most of them have the same summary of "These earphones lasted a whole day" which I agree is super broad...

[dizmo]

3 hours ago, seoz said:

Aww, thank you! Aesthetics and layout are my thing, I love laying things out neatly.

I think it makes a massive difference when it comes to reading things! Makes it a much nicer experience.

Some of the walls of text I see are just painful