Review: Jawbone ERA

By Charlie Brown

I have long wanted an earpiece that lives up to its hype. Over the past few years I have had many PRs and companies come to me saying they have the ultimate earpiece for your mobile phone; “There’s no crackle”, “there’s no sound delay”, “there’s no echo”, and my personal favourite “the sound is as clear as a bell”. Well I have yet to find such a device. Until now.

Interestingly, the Jawbone ERA comes from a company that said some of the above a year or so ago, only for it to fail during a Today Show piece on Channel 9. However, this time around, they’ve come to the party. The reason the company is called Jawbone is because the technology tracks the vibration of your voice along your jawbone and turns it into sound.

Out of the box, it’s a smart-looking device that fits snuggly in the ear. Jawbone has provided a few different earpieces, so if the one that is already attached to the device doesn’t fit, there is sure to be one that will do the job.

So, the big test – how good is it really? To be honest, the biggest thing for me was clarity – not only incoming voices, but how they heard me at the other end. And this little beauty passed in spades. Whether walking along the street, driving in my car or on the train, I could hear clearly and concisely what was being said, and more importantly, clients, family and friends could hear me, too.

Jawbone says the ERA brings high-definition audio and a 25 percent larger bandwidth speaker than similar products, and it may well be these two features – along with its claimed military-grade noise Noise Assassin 3.0 technology – that makes all the difference.

In order to put it in pairing mode you can use the “ShakeShake” feature and there is also the “TapTap” mode to answer or end a phone call. The only problem I had with the phone is that it cut out if I answered it via hitting the ‘answer’ button on the phone instead of tapping the head piece.

Overall, whether you own a small business, are an executive, or are addicted to your mobile phone the Jawbone ERA stacks up in all sorts of ways

Pros: Excellent sound, fits in ear nicely, unobtrusive
Cons: A bit pricey, can’t answer phone manually with call dropping out

4.3 Shacks out of 5

RRP
$149