'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
Tribit CallElite 81 Bluetooth headset review: Lightweight headset for long meetings
The Tribit CallElite 81is an ultra-lightweight Bluetooth headset that is comfortable enough to wear all day and will deliver clear sound to either ear.
ZDNET Recommends
Weighing 70g, the headset has one ear cushion and a microphone arm that can rotate over about 270 degrees. This means that you can wear it on either ear and adjust the microphone to suit your preferred position.
Inside the box, there is the CallElite 81 headset, a sturdy charging base and a USB dongle. There is also a USB Type-C charging cable and a user manual.
The CallElite 81 headset is adjustable to suit your head and does not pinch the sides of the head. Its 30mm diameter speaker is enclosed in a soft pleather cushion, and the button at the centre of the ear cushion acts as a multi-function button. This button will power on and off the headset, play and pause music, and answer, end, and reject a call. The button also activates your voice assistant.
Tribit CallElite 81
pros and cons
- Lightweight and comfortable
- Long lasting battery
- Wear on either ear
- Nowhere to store Bluetooth dongle
- Intermittent signal loss when using the dongle
The headset has a battery capacity of 400mAh which seems to last for days. The base unit which holds the headset is not a charging station unless you permanently connect it to a 5V power supply.
I found it useful to place the headset into its base every time I stopped wearing the headset. Wearing it for an eight-hour day only reduced the battery to 75% capacity.
Tribit reckons that the headset will last for up to 23 hours, but I think that is a conservative estimate on battery life. If the battery goes flat, then it takes around 1.5 hours to recharge the headset up to 100% again.
The CallElite 81 has a range of 2402 - 2480mHz and is sensitive enough to receive signals that are 83dBm. Its frequency response is 20 - 20,000Hz+10/-10dB so that it will deliver good sound across the bass and high ranges. I did not notice any distortion, even with thumping bass.
The Tribit website mentions that the CallElite 81 has acoustic noise-canceling, which you can adjust between three different levels to get the level of noise-canceling you want.
This ANC functionality is not mentioned at all in the manual, and my attempts to invoke ANC by pressing a combination of the buttons failed.
I took the information about ANC with a pinch of salt. However, the sound coming into my ear was not impacted by surrounding noise -- which I could hear from my other ear. Perhaps ANC worked well -- or perhaps the ear cushion was properly seated on my ear.
I did have some issues with the Bluetooth dongle that comes with the headset. I found that sometimes the signal dropped intermittently and randomly.
I found that connecting the headset using Bluetooth gave me a much more stable connection. The Bluetooth USB dongle has nowhere it can be stored if it is not in the PC. There is nowhere to store it in the charging stand. If I don't keep it stored in my USB slot. I will lose it for sure.
Apart from wondering what to do with the USB dongle, the Tribit CallElite 81 Bluetooth office headset is a useful Bluetooth headset for the office. Choose how you want to connect to Bluetooth, enjoy hours of wear, and enjoy clear audio sound across the ranges without any discomfort.