These are the JayBird Run, JayBird’s first pair of truly wireless sport headphones. JayBird is a little late to this space, we’ve had the Gear Icon X’s, Bragi Dash, Jabra Elite Sport, AirPods of course, but I’m happy JayBird did finally grace us with something truly wireless because I like JayBird products, I like the X3’s, I like the Freedoms, I like the JayBird app that goes with them all, and I really wanted to like the Run. I was hoping that these might replace my AirPods, but unfortunately my personal experience with the JayBird Run has not been that great. I wanted to like these, I wanted to be able to recommend them, but in my time with them I just can’t. Now before we get too into this, I want to stress that this whole video focuses on my personal experience with these along with a little confirmation from other online reviewers who have had similar things to say. I also purchased these with my own money, they weren’t sent out for review or anything like that. Now your experience with these might be different, you might find that you really like these, and that’s great, and if you do, I encourage you to leave a couple comments down below and let me know that. But with all that being said, let’s dive into this.
Jaybird Run (Amazon Link)
Other Jaybird products I’d recommend instead:
JayBird X3 (Amazon Link)
Jaybird Freedom 2 (Amazon Link)
As far at the unboxing experience and what all is included, the first thing you’re greeted by are the headphones tucked away in their charging case and you can see right away that everything is pretty small and compact. Also included in the box is the usual little JayBird baggie that has all of the extras and accessories. With the run, you get a short micro USB cable that goes directly into the charging case for charging the headphones, you also get a whole bunch of different size ear fins that you can swap out to ensure that the Run fit securely in your unique ear, and you also get a few different size replacement rubber ear tips as well.
Connecting the Run earphones to my iPhone was actually super simple and I didn’t encounter any issues at all. The instructions just ask you to remove the right earphone from the case since that’s sort of
the main one in charge of everything, press the button on the earphone with Bluetooth turned on and your phone should quickly recognize them. They both connected right away without any problems and I know the pairing process on a lot of other truly wireless earbuds sometimes and great so props to JayBird for getting this right.
My first little disappointment with these came with the build quality. They look and feel not all that great, just not as good or high quality as some of JayBirds other products. Like the Freedoms for example always came across as high quality, but these with the chunky and cheap feeling plastic just don’t really convey any sort of good quality to me. The rubber ear fins and tips are easily removable and changeable, and the main controls for the Run earphones are buttons on each of the buds. I like having controls on both sides, but there are some limitations. First off, the button is really hard to press. It’s not a tap, it’s a solid clicky button that really requires some force and that’s not the greatest feeling when these are in your ears. The left bud by default activates Siri or google assistant and the right bud by default can play and pause music, accept and end phone calls, and also can be used to skip forward with a double press and with long presses serves as your power and connect button. If you want, you can change these button functions to be volume controls instead, but you lose most other functionality with the button controls which is a bummer.
The charging case for the Run earphones is what charges the buds, you plug in the micro USB cable around back and that charges both the case and the buds, and I’ll talk battery life in just a second. Its pretty small and compact and also really solid with sort of a latch to ensure that it’s always closed. When you place the Earbuds in the case, you have to Lineup up the pins and connectors and unfortunately there’s no magnet or any sort of like brace, the buds just kind of sit in there and they’re a little loose so you have to completely click the case closed to actually charge them.
Now, as far as fit and function, this is where my experience is probably going to vary from a lot of other people’s, and that’s ok. But I could not for the life of me get these to fit comfortably in my ear, or even just stay in at all. I tried every combination of ear tip and ear fin, and nothing would work. They just constantly felt like they were these mass of an object just barely hanging on inside my ear. Maybe my ears are weirdly shaped, I’ve gotten that as a comment before, anything is possible, but I’ve never had an issue finding a good fit with an other pair of earbuds I’ve ever tried, and I just could not get these to work. So obviously because of that, doing any sort of exercise or physical motion at all was simply out of the question. Walk on the treadmill, I constantly felt the need to adjust these and squish them back in because they just wouldn’t stay put. And running with the Jay Bird Run earphones was not a fun experience at all. After like 15 or 20 steps, these were basically falling out of my ear. I tried everything I could think of, I made every adjust possible, I fit them any way that I could, and they just would not work for me at all and I was really disappointed about that.
Another common complaint that’s been coming up a lot with these is some serious Bluetooth connectivity issues. Fortunately, in the couple days I had these, I just didn’t experience any connection issues. Bluetooth range was fine, I always had both earphones working at the same time, now there is a decent amount of lag from these when watching video, that’s the case with most Bluetooth earbuds but I felt it was more prevalent with these, and there was one random occasion where the volume and sound indicator kept popping up on my phone screen 5 or 6 times when I wasn’t touching the volume, but that was just 1 single instance.
So one of the reasons why I think a lot of people choose JayBird over some other earphones is the JayBird app. The Run earphones sound pretty good by themselves given that they’re truly wireless earbuds, but with the JayBird app you can make them sound however you like. They sound relatively clear and crisp in general, but if you want to adjust the sound profile, like adding more bass, or increasing the emphasis on the mids or highs, you can get the perfect customized sound coming from your jaybirds right from the app and can even try out some preset ones too. That’s just something we don’t see with most other earbuds now and that’s a standout feature for these earphones and all other JayBird products. Within the app, you can also make those adjustments to your button preferences like I mentioned earlier if you need to, and there’s also a find my buds functionality where you can locate a lost earphone. And yes, it does give an accurate map with street names, I just cut those out for the video.
The last thing I want to talk about is battery life. The buss by themselves will give you up to 4 hours of playback time, and I was actually getting a little better than that which is great. The charging case will net you another 8 hours of battery, so you can charge them a couple times more without ever needing to plug into USB. In theory, using them an hour or 2 a day, they’ll last a week or more without having to think about plugging them in, so in that regard, I really can’t complain because that’s pretty good all in all.
Ok so, let me just sum up my thoughts on the JayBird Run and then maybe you guys can let me know your experience. The build quality, overall, I wasn’t impressed with it. Luckily, I didn’t have any connection issues, but I know that’s an issue with a lot of people. They didn’t fit me well, and they just didn’t stay in my ears. Everyone’s ears are different, AirPods fit me really and I know they don’t fit other people, so it is what it is. The clicky buttons were not executed all that great both with how they function physically and how they can be used in general. But sound quality and sound profile customization is awesome, and battery life is there, no problem with that. Unfortunately, for me, the cons just really outweigh the pros and these I’m sad to say are going back to Best Buy.
