Jabra’s Evolve3 Line and Prep for Hands-Free Office Work

Jabra’s new Evolve3 headset range is paving the way for keyboard-less work settings. 

According to Jabra’s study conducted with the London School of Economics Behavioural Lab, voice AI is set to become the default interface for how we work by 2028.

That means instead of typing emails, documents or prompts for analyses, gen AI-related tasks and everyday system navigation will all be done through voice recognition. 

And the best, most accurate way for computers to pick up our voices – in order to use AI to turn it into a command – may be through Jabra’s headphones. 

A Victorian construct in the era of AI

14% of participants that took part in the Jabra-London School of Economic study – titled Welcome to the work beyond the keyboard – said that they prefer voice over typing when interacting with gen AI. 

In fact, Richard Trestain, Product Marketing Manager at Jabra, uses a foot pedal and his Jabra Evolve3 65 Flex to do his job.

“I barely use my keyboard anymore,” he says. “I’m now using Wispr Flow [a voice AI dictation app] most of the day and if it didn’t pick up my voice properly, I’d be blooming annoyed because I’d be having to go back and correct everything I’d asked of it.”

“I guess I’m an early adopter,” Richard acknowledges. “But let’s face it, a keyboard is a Victorian construct.”

With the first practical, commercially successful typewriter having been invented in 1867, Richard isn’t factually wrong.

But, he corrects himself: “I mean to say that the modern day keyboard was needed to get information into a computer and we’ve been using it quite happily since. But it’s not fast and it doesn’t allow us to get free-flowing thoughts into a system.

“Whereas a nice little foot pedal – like I’m using – is much more practical. If we can allow our users into their platform of choice quickly and easily, that’s where we’ll be headed.”

Richard has his office set up so that if he pushed on his pedal and said “Hey Wispr Flow”, the technology would listen to him and do what it needed him to do.

“We think this set up will be very normal within three years. The AI era is very different from the regular voice assistant era,” he says.

“I could see a future where you literally talk to your computer to get everything done.” 

What is Jabra ClearVoice?

Conveniently for Richard, he works for a company that specialises in wireless headsets so his computer picks up his voice with over 99% accuracy through Jabra’s Deep Neural Network (DNN), named Jabra ClearVoice and which fundamentally understands what a human voice sounds like. 

“DNN is trained on 60 million different sentence examples in different noisy situations and it’s able to discern the acoustic features of a human voice,” Richard says.

“It doesn’t learn your voice as a user – it’s not measuring or recording that – it’s about the structure of the human voice and programming that information into the chip of our headsets so your voice is never missed.”

Jabra ClearVoice is one of many features from Jabra that is tested in the Jabra Sound Lab  in Ballaray, Denmark.

To test how the products pick up more then 99% of your voice, Jabra uses hearing assistive technology systems, known as HATS. 

“We have a very expensive mannequin that we put the headset on, which is tuned perfectly to respond like a human in terms of hearing,” Richard explains.

“We test it in anechoic chambers to simulate all sorts of different environments with different background noise and then we measure the sound that’s coming through the microphone in a very scientific, objective way.”

Choosing the right tool for a voice-first future

All three of Jabra’s new products – the Evolve3 65 Flex, Evolve3 65 and Evolve3 45 – use Jabra ClearVoice to isolate the user’s voice in busy environments.  

The main difference between the products are that the Evolve3 65 Flex has a foldable, mic arm-free design – to allow professionals to carry a single headset that can fit into your coat pocket across locations and workspaces – while the Evovle3 65 and Evovle3 45 have beamforming technology, with 3-microphones built in for Jabra ClearVoice. 

Evolve3 65 is more expensive then Evovle3 45 as it has “bigger speakers, more powerful ANC and is designed to be worn for a lot of the day for user focus and calls. The 45 is a bit more in the essential category and is focused on you wearing it all day for calls.”

“The Evolve3 65 Flex takes pretty much all of the same philosophy from the 75 and 85 but distilled it down into a lighter, more portable headset,” Richard says.

“You wouldn’t wear the [Evovle3 65 and Evovle3 45] out and about.”

Calum MacDougall, President at Jabra, adds: “The way people work has changed dramatically, but many companies are still trying to solve every communication challenge with the same headset.

“Desk-based callers, open-office professionals and hybrid workers all face different communication demands and design requirements. 

“When audio performance doesn’t match how people work, it becomes harder to deliver a consistent call experience across the workforce, which impacts both conversations and AI tools increasingly built around voice.” 

In two years’ time, typing out a response may feel completely outdated and with the Evolve3 range, Jabra is ensuring businesses are ready for that voice-first future today.