Jabra Elite 8 Active vs Elite 10: What’s the difference?

Despite releasing a flood of wireless earbuds in the last few years, Jabra has unveiled more true wireless models, and they look set to be the company’s most advanced efforts yet.

The Elite 8 Active and the Elite 10 are the two new earphones that Jabra hopes will set a new standard for true wireless earbuds, taking everything they’ve learned from their 7-series Active models and the Elite 85t and putting that knowledge into practice.

So, here are the main similarities and differences between the Elite 8 Active and Elite 10 earphones.

The Elite 10 supports Dolby Atmos head-tracking

The Elite 10 is Jabra’s most advanced true wireless pair for “work and life”, and it has jumped onto the spatial audio bandwagon with its support for Dolby Head Tracking.

With Dolby Atmos tracks available from the likes of Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon Music streaming services, you can listen to immersive 3D audio with these buds. The real trick is the head-tracking. Move your head and the audio won’t move as if it’s trapped in your ears but sound as if was playing all around you to create that sense of immersion in music.

The Elite 8 Active are extremely durable

Take part in an activity like Tough Mudder? The Elite 8 Active should be able to get through as much pain and hardship as your body thanks to its IP68 rating that ensures it is dustproof, water-proof, drop-proof, and sweat-proof. By comparison, the Elite 10 have a (still very tough) IP57 rating.

The Elite 8 Active was tested to, and passed, the US Military Standards (MIL-STD-810H) for ruggedized electronics, as well as Jabra’s own Highly Accelerated Corrosion Test.

That means they’re able to survive extreme temperatures, exposure to salt water (for at least fifteen minutes), humidity (two hours at 40 degrees Celsius at 93% humidity), and shock, among other strenuous tests. Survive being left in a jean pocket whilst it goes through a spin cycle in the washing machine is the least of their talents.

Submerge them in water and they’ll survive that too, and if they don’t then be safe in the knowledge that Jabra offers a two-year warranty against failure from water and dust once the earphones have been registered in the Sound+ app.

The Elite 10 has more advanced noise-cancelling

Both the Elite 8 Active and Elite 10 feature active noise-cancellation, with the former supporting Adaptive Hybrid ANC and the latter featuring Jabra’s Advanced ANC solution.

Adaptive Hybrid ANC automatically adjusts its performance in accordance with the environment, suppressing sounds in real-time, and muffling wind interference for a clearer audio performance.

The Advanced ANC on the Elite 10, however, delivers a “completely bespoke” experience. With scanning technology and built-in noise leakage detection, with Jabra claiming that the ANC performance of the Elite 10 is twice as strong as their ‘standard’ performance.

Neither one supports Hi-res audio codecs

While there’s Dolby Atmos Head Tracking on the Elite 10, and Dolby audio support on the Elite 8 Active, Bluetooth codec support taps out at AAC for both true wireless buds.

That means there’s no room for aptX (which is about CD quality in terms of performance), and no aptX-HD, Snapdragon Sound compatibility, LDAC, or LHDC codecs that claim to offer higher quality audio over a Bluetooth connection.

Both earbuds will be compatible with Bluetooth LE Audio in a future update, a feature that claims to offer better audio quality (at least compared to SBC Bluetooth) while consuming less power. The earbuds are also compatible with the Auracast standard but don’t expect much use from that feature since it’s still a new and emerging piece of technology.