I love everything about the Jabra Elite 10 (besides the color), but I have an interesting probem that I have not observed before with any other TWS. One of the earbuds discharges at roughtly double the speed of the other one. If something seems to be wrong with a brand new sample I usually ask for another sample, but this time I chose to take it to Jabra Support, since I already had an open case # with the Spatial Audio I was missing initially.
After quite a bit of back and forth with a number of reps (standard reset procedures, multiple photos of the earbuds and case) support finally escalated the issue to a supervisor who got back with an interesting explanation. See below:
Hello Volker Weber,
My name is [redacted], I am a Team Lead here at Jabra. Your ticket has been forwarded to me for additional review.
Apologizes for any confusion. Where these are so new, some of us are still learning some their quirks.
What you are experiencing is actually expected behavior.
Whichever earbud is removed from the case first will become the primary earbud. This earbud has to communicate with both the phone and the other earbud. Where the single biggest draw on the battery is the Bluetooth antenna this will cause one earbud to drain at what is affectively twice the rate of the other.
To confirm this you can removed the left bud from the case first, wait for it to connect and then remove the right one. This will cause the left to be the primary and you should notice the difference in battery performance.
If you are getting less than expected battery time from either earbud, please let us know.
Should you have any additional questions please let us know.
Sidenote: DHRME observed a similar behavior in their review of the Bowers & Wilkins PI7 S2.
I tried forcing the left earbud to discharge faster than the right one, but so far I have failed. This is starting from 100% charge on both earbuds (3 hours in the case), very carefully starting with the left earbud. Exactly one hour later, the left earbud has lost 15%. This is inline with the expected behavior. The right earbud however is down 25% which is well belows specs.
However, I think there are two issues at hand:
- My right earbud is probably not performing like it should.
- Software should routinely switch the roles of primary and secondary earbud. You can force it by returning the old primary to the case for a few seconds, but why should you have to?
This will be resolved and I am still very satisfied with the Elite 10.
PS: This is real life testing, not unboxing or first look. You need to stay with a product to really learn what is going on.