Last week we were given the opportunity to try out a pair of Philips SHC5100/05 Wireless headphones. Now, as you may well know, wireless is the devils word for music lovers as it usually means that the quality of sound is lost when it’s sent across the air.
While they’re not strictly designed for music, infact, they’re more suitable for home entertainment we thought we give them ago. To set them up is quite easy: you get a bay station that needs to be plugged into the mains power supply, and then the bay station plugs into your laptop, TV, games console or iPod – basically any device that has a standard headphone jack.
In the box, you get the headphones, the sender unit, and charger unit, a set of sparse, all be it, adequate instructions and a couple of AAA rechargeable batteries.
The sound quality isn’t going to win any awards, but they’re far better than your average in-ear Apple headphones everyone seems to use. They’re not the loudest headphones you’ll probably come across, but this just means it’s hard to take them out of their comfort zone – meaning they don’t distort when you take them to the top of its volume range.
The bass is a bit weak, but the overall clarity is very good considering they’re wireless. Where they do start to make sense is when you wear them. They’re incredibly light compared to most over-ear headphones, and the elasticated headband is probably the most comfortable we’ve ever come across.
As for range, like all wifi headphones, the further away you go from the base unit, the greater the chance of hiss and the signal dropping out. We were able to move 3 rooms away from the sender with still reasonable sound quality. So all in all, good value, decent sound and very comfortable.
We’re going to giveaway a pair to one lucky ready, and all you have to do is leave your name in the comments section and we’ll choose a winner on Monday next week.
HBF Rating 3/5