Philips TAG5106 Wireless Gaming Headset Review

A Closer Look & Performance

Ths headset looks stunning, it’s a unique one-piece design for the ear cups backs and headband. This gives it a full arch that runs uninterrupted from one side to the other, and it does look very stylish. There’s a hexagonal design to the ear cup too, which is again fairly unique, and the split in the middle has a line of RGB lighting to create further contrast of that two-tone design.

The driver housing is fairly large, but then again, it needs to be as it contains a 50mm driver. It’s a closed-back design too, which means the sound is locked in, but it also provides a little passive noise isolation too, helping you focus on the audio.

The headset feels well made, and while it’s a more rigid design, there’s a good amount of flex in the headband that will help you find a more comfortable fit.

The ear cups are nice and deep, with a memory foam padding and PU leather coating that feels nice and soft to the touch.

The headband is a two-part design, with a fixed outer band and a suspended inner band, which has more of that lovely memory foam and leather.

It’s got two sprung wires that allow it to auto-adjust, and it even fits on my big head, so that’s one good bonus. No mucking about with side sliders, just pop it on and you’re good to go.

The ear cup ergonomics are peculiar, as there’s not pivot or rotation on the housing. However, there is a bit of flex in the padding, with can rock and pivot a little forwards.

And as you can see backwards too. It’s not much, but it’s just enough to give you a much cleaner fit around your ears.

The headband does have a good flex to it though, it’s a little stiff, but even bending it like this it didn’t feel like I was doing it any harm.

The headset is very versatile in terms of hardware support. It can use Bluetooth, Wireless (via the included USB dongle) or a 3.5mm cable. That means I can connect it to virtually anything these days, phones, consoles, PC, whatever really.

Being wireless, you’ll be glad to find all the major controls are easily accessible. There’s a large volume wheel that’s easy to use, and a lovely mute button for the microphone that has a nice and defined click, and pops out more when unmuted, so you can tell just by feeling its position.

The headset uses a Type-C charger, and still has the classic 3.5mm jack here too, giving you plenty of connectivity options.

On this side, you can control the wireless mode too, so you can actually jump from one device to the other pretty easily with this.

These three buttons are easy enough too, DTS enabled the surround mode, the bulb controls the RGB effects, and then you have a power button; simple enough really.

The headset features 50mm drivers which I think sound quite nice in stereo mode. However, the driver installation for the DTS mode was a mess, with lots of dialogue boxes and very little in the way of options once installed. I found just about all of them sounded like they had too much echo and lacked fidelity. I actually found better results using Dolby Atmos Headphones processing and frankly Philips need to improve their junky software, it’s better off less uninstalled.

The sound quality is decent, but for my taste, I found the maximum volume to fall a little short. It just doesn’t have the punch I would like from a gaming headset, and my usual playlist of metal and old rave tunes felt a little hollow on these. It doesn’t sound bad, but I just wanted a little more volume and bass. Where it does shine though is chat. The microphone is bloody fantastic, very crisp and clear, and the way the drivers are tuned leads to a very natural sound for team chat.

Honestly, it feels like Philips took a work or office headset and slapped some RGB on it to make it more gamer-friendly. I don’t think it worked, to be honest, but it really depends on what you want from a gaming headset. I want to hear a cinematic soundscape that wows me and lets me get into my single-player games. However, if you spend 99% of your gaming time in team chat and play competitive eSports where a lighter sound is preferred to hear foot steps and communication is important, I think it’s very well suited to that style.