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0 Edifier kindly sent TC HQ their G5BT Gaming Headset for us to review. Thankfully without the cats ears! Having recently put their MR4 studio monitors through the review process. Link to review here. I was excited to see how the amazing sound that I was on the receiving end of would transfer to a head-worn device.
Edifier G5BT – Gotta Get Yourself Connected!
Available in either black or white, let’s see how these perform!
Design and Control
Presented inside a black cardboard box, the black G5BT headset sits peacefully awaiting deployment. The contents are of a simple nature. Headset, USB A to C charging cable, and also a 3.5mm jack-to-jack audio cable.
Lifting the headset out of the box, it is noticeably weighty at 357g. This puts it 12 grams slightly less than the feature-packed JBL Quantum One and 37g heavier than the HyperX Cloud Flight S.
The G5BT has a matt black band connecting to the two leather-effect plush-padded ear cups. To break up the matt look are 2 shiny gun-metal coloured bands sporting “Hecate” where the headset band can be adjusted. The same colour and style is used on the outside of the earcups, giving them a premium, if not fingerprint-attracting look. The headset is foldable, helping save space, however, there is no carry case included.
RGB is present to give the G5BT a Tron-like effect around the earcups that can illuminate as a selectable whole colour.
When it comes to buttons, the more commonly used ones are found on the left earcup. There are 4 in total with 3 being multi-action and the 4th a mic mute. Here you can perform normal expected functions of powering the headset on and off, pairing, volume control and skip track. The right earcup features one button to control lighting effects and select either music or game mode EQ.
The 800mAh built-in battery provides the headset with around 40 hours of use with the lights off, while it is only 17 hours with them on.
Delving Deeper
When it comes to the tech behind it all, the G5BT has a retractable microphone and features a dual mic array to help with the elimination of background noise. While the microphone being retractable is a clever idea, it did feel a bit cheap as you are left with what looks like a bendy black straw with a chrome tip on the end. Due to its design, there is no pop filter either.
The headset speakers are 40mm titanium drivers with a frequency of 20Hz to 40KHz, promising to give you more dynamic bass and clarity across a wide range. They are also certified Hi-Res with 24bits/96KHZ high resolution. This is only guaranteed as lossless if you use the audio lead.
Onboard is a 45ms latency chip to offer great reactivity to what you see in the game and the audio that you experience through your ears. Coupling up with the tech is also PixArt who have helped develop “H+”. This allegedly helps give an enhanced experience to the gamer with regard to sound effect clarity.
Connection
The connection, if not given away already by the headset name, is BlueTooth. V5.2 to be exact, running protocols A2DP, AVRCP, HFP & HSP. Incidentally, unlike other gaming headsets that I have reviewed, there is no dongle included with the headset.
As mentioned earlier, to make the G5BT headset compatible with other devices such as gaming controllers, Nintendo Switch, old mobile phones, there is an included 3.5mm audio jack cable.
Sound and Performance
Powering up and pairing with the PC via my Creative BT-W3 Bluetooth dongle, a female Asian voice in my ears tells me that I am connected. All is clear and I quite enjoy the quiet for a brief second. The headset is comfortable to wear.
I commence testing by playing some music through Spotify, and I am struck with the tinniness of the sound. It sounds as if the EQ is all set mid to high. There is bass present however what I am hearing sounds awful. It is as if my ears are pressed against the tweeters, there is no depth.
Pressing the button on the right earcup, the familiar voice tells me that I am now in “Music Mode”, therefore the previous experience was “Game Mode”. The EQ clearly changes into a thicker mix of bass and less of the high-end. The music now sounds very muddy and stuffy with the clarity of vocals suffocated.
Upon track pause, I was met with around 10 seconds of static hiss in my ears before silence was achieved once more. When resuming a track there was around a second of hiss before the song recommenced. Thinking that perhaps it was my BlueTooth dongle, I decided to try connecting to my Samsung S23 Ultra phone. Once more I was met with the same hiss. I tried different apps such as YouTube and Amazon Music but to no avail.
I decided to check out some games and put on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. Hearing footsteps and gunshots is key to understanding where the enemy is and reacting accordingly. Sadly I still struggled with the overall sound. While having the G5BT in game mode certainly aided the sound of footsteps, it took too much away from the blast of explosions, sounding more like I was playing within a tin can. Any hissing was not noticeable when gaming due to the constant ambient noises.
In game chat, the mic worked well, although the headset lacks any ability to adjust mic gain. Disappointingly there is also no app available to download to further control and create profiles for the headset.
The lighting is simply either red, green, blue or purple and either solid or fading in and out. While it scratches an itch for people that enjoy RGB, it isn’t massively exciting. There again, is there much point in lighting a headset when you can’t see it when you are wearing them?
Final Thoughts
The Edifier G5BT looks very stylish however falls short of the bar that has been set by gaming headsets of a similar price. With two terrible preset EQ’s to choose from, the sound quality of what you are listening to is not conveyed well. There are features that are missing such as mic gain and sidetone that I would like to see while other items such as a rotating dial for the volume control would have helped with the day-to-day functionality.
An app to allow the configuration of the EQ would have made the headset easier to achieve the sound that you wanted. Sadly the hissing of static when connected via BlueTooth is distracting and unwanted. It is not something that I have had with other BlueTooth headsets.
The Edifier G5BT Gaming Headset receives a Thumb Culture Bronze Award.
Disclaimer: A product was received in order to write this review.
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