JBL Quantum 810 wireless headset review

I’ll start with some general characteristics. I wasn’t dead set on an exact choice of headset model, but I wanted it to have these features (and then made my choice by looking around the store website, checking a few reviews, and then seeing what was in stock on site and in a sensible price range):

• A headset, i.e. headphones with an integrated microphone. I don’t want to subject the people I talk with to terrible webcam audio, and I don’t want to have a separate microphone with a mic stand on my desk either.
• Wireless. I originally got a wireless headset to replace my old wired one early in the pandemic, because coworkers were complaining about echo from me, which I attributed to crosstalk between the speaker and microphone wires. But it turns out a wireless headset (or headphones) is also massively convenient – it’s just nice to be able to walk around the apartment with it, or even just lean further back in my chair than I previously could. I’d recommend it for anyone.
• With a USB dongle. This is quite important for me because it means I can plug it into my USB switch, together with the mouse, keyboard, and webcam, and then easily toggle all four peripherals between my work laptop and my private PC. (The screens are on separate switches. You can get devices that let you switch everything together – the usual term seems to be “KVM” – but they appear to be much more expensive, so I’m happy to just press three buttons instead of one.) The JBL Quantum 810 apparently also supports bluetooth, but I haven’t had a reason to try that so far. (It can also continue working while plugged in to charge, which wasn’t the case for the HyperX Cloud Flight.)

And some specific points on the JBL Quantum 810:

• Its microphone is attached permanently, with a hinge to let you move it between your mouth (in use) and your temple (not in use). The microphone is automatically muted while pointed upwards, which is convenient, though I wouldn’t rely on it alone. The HyperX Cloud Flight had a detachable microphone, which wasn’t bad, but it certainly was a bit more fiddly to put it on my head and then attach the microphone each time.
• The power switch is a switch (with on and off positions), rather than a button you have to hold down for several seconds. I find this much more convenient. (It more than outweighs the minor disadvantage that, if the headset turns itself off due to inactivity or low battery, the button’s position no longer reflects the actual power state.)
• The wireless range is longer than with my previous headset – enough to pretty reliably reach my whole apartment. (Which isn’t huge, but the HyperX Cloud Flight only reached part of it.) I assume the previous headset used Bluetooth internally, or at least the 2.4 GHz frequency range; the JBL Quantum 810, when used with its dongle, apparently uses the 5 GHz frequency range, and I assume that helps with the range. (If you want measurements, my guess would be that the range is at least 10 m, probably closer to 15 m, and that’s with a concrete wall or two in the way.)
• It works on Linux, at least using recent versions. (I found some reports of issues around 2021 or so, so if you’re on an older kernel you might want to look that up for yourself.) It shows up as a sound output and a separate input for the microphone, as you’d expect. Unlike with the HyperX Cloud Flight, the volume wheel on the headset does not affect the system volume – they’re separate. Initially I had the wheel set to the max and the system volume around 50%, but it turned out that this meant my system audio was very quiet on live streams (i.e., my viewers couldn’t hear the game I was playing), so now I instead have my system volume at max and the wheel somewhere around the middle. I would prefer the wheel to adjust the system volume instead, but I can live with this as well.
• The JBL Quantum 810 has some features I’m not interested in – I don’t remember the exact details, but there was at least some form of RGB lighting, and some kind of noise cancelling. It was possible (and, following the manual, relatively straightforward) to turn all of these off using the controls on the headset itself: I did not need some vendor-specific Windows-only app, and I appreciate that.
• Speaking of unused features: the JBL Quantum 810 has a second “volume” wheel above the “real” one. Apparently this is meant to let gamers adjust the relative volume of the game vs. voice chat – if I understood correctly, the headset is supposed to offer two sound outputs, you configure your system to send the game to one and the voice chat to the other, and then the wheel on the headset adjusts the mixing between the two. I haven’t seen any trace of this on Linux, but I also don’t need it anyway, so I just keep that wheel turned all the way to the “game” end. 🤷
• The battery life is quite remarkable compared to the HyperX Cloud Flight. I haven’t kept close track of it, but so far my guess would be that I’m recharging it slightly less than once per week, and I would say I don’t exactly use it sparingly. The manufacturer claims a battery life of 43 hours (when using the dongle and with RGB turned off; over Bluetooth it would apparently be 49 hours?), and I have no reason to disbelieve that so far. It also charges over USB-C, which is convenient at this point in my life (the HyperX Cloud Flight charges over Micro-USB, but I have barely any other devices left which require that plug).
• The biggest downside: when it’s not playing sound, the headset likes to turn its speakers off. (I’m guessing this helps with the battery life?) This sounds minor, but it gets pretty annoying after a while. It means that, if I’m wearing the headset but not currently listening to anything, any quick notification chime will either sound like it has a weird fade-in effect for no reason, or I won’t even hear it at all. And the headset’s threshold for “not playing sound” is high enough that sometimes it turns itself off while I am listening to some quiet audio, and I’ll have to crank up the volume just to stop the headset from turning itself off, even if my ears could hear the audio well enough at the previous volume. I searched around a bit, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything you can do about this behavior.
• And a less important downside for the end: while the battery life is good, there’s no way to see the current battery level, and the first of the three (IIRC) “battery low” chimes comes a bit late for my taste – only an hour or two, if memory serves, before the headset is totally dead. I wouldn’t mind having a bit more advance notice that I’ll have to charge the headset soon. That said, the headset recharges pretty quickly, so it doesn’t take too long to get it back into a usable state.

I think that’s all I have to say about it right now! (If you were hoping for me to say something about the audio quality… sorry, I don’t really have an insightful comment on that. It sounds alright.)