Philips TAA6606

Verdict

The Philips TAA6606 are snug bone conduction headphones that may ship noticeably greater sound for exercises than rival headphones. You simply must sacrifice some battery life and cope with an at occasions flaky app to get it.

Introduction

The Philips TAA6606 are a set of bone conduction headphones aimed on the train crowd that need that hit of motivational audio but additionally wish to preserve their wits about them close to busy roads and revel in your music or or deal with calls in a safer approach.

To assist stand out from the closely populated bone conduction crowd Philips is providing a decide of sound modes, a set of LED lights to maintain you seen and guarantees loads of battery life together with a useful quick-charge mode.

They’re priced up towards bone conduction headphones just like the Shokz OpenRun and Haylou PurFree BC01, two headphones I’ve had actually good expertise with. The query is whether or not the Phillips TAA6606 can match the competitors and even be a greater choice to purchase.

The Philips TAA6606 is that can be purchased from Amazon for £99.99, making it a less expensive various to the Shokz OpenRun (£129.95).

Design

• Accessible in black solely
• Onboard bodily controls
• IP67 mud and water safety

Philips opts to go together with a kind issue that’s just about turn into the usual for many fitness-focused bone conduction headphones. It’s an open-ear design that wraps its body across the again of the pinnacle, inserting the entrance of the arms simply in entrance of your ears. 

It is available in simply the one black look and whereas it’s not fairly as slim and slender as a pair of Shokz headphones (image included), the 35g body doesn’t weigh heavy once they’re on. The slender body is damaged up by the thicker sections the place the bodily controls and the LED lights are positioned, however aside from that it’s a streamlined look.

Philips has slapped them with an IP67 water and mud score, which doesn’t imply it’s best to bounce within the pool with them, however they’re completely match to deal with moisture like sweat and a rainswept run exterior. Charging the headphones is completed through a USB-C port, so it’s not a proprietary charging cable setup and that port is effectively lined up by a lid that sits securely and doesn’t really feel unfastened or generally tend to flap round.

Controls-wise, there are two bodily quantity buttons on the precise aspect of the headphones and a button beneath to show them on and pair them to your chosen Bluetooth gadget. There’s additionally an even bigger multifunction button up entrance on the left aspect of the headphones to cope with calls and to summon your smartphone’s voice assistant. There’s sufficient room for 2 microphones, which does imply these are headphones you should use to take calls as effectively.

Options

• As much as 9 hours of battery

Philips talks an enormous battery sport, placing it up there with different equally priced bone conduction sports activities headphones. It states as much as 9 hours from a single cost and there’s a quick-charge mode that provides you an hour of listening time from a 15-minute cost. 

These numbers, based mostly on my testing, relate to utilizing the headphones minus the bass mode and when the LED lights are in use. I noticed a noticeable drop-off when utilizing these lights and bringing the bass mode into play. 

Thirty minutes of working with the bass mode enabled noticed the battery drop by 10%. That places the battery of a single cost decrease than the quoted 9 hours. You will get huge battery life and one thing that may final a very good week of use, simply with out the massive sound to go together with it.

Sound High quality

• Makes use of bone conduction expertise 
• Provides Bass and Voice sound modes
• Constructed-in LED lights

Like different bone conduction headphones, Philips goals to strike a very good steadiness between listening to your personal audio and being in tune with the world round you. It does that utilizing transducers, transmitting sound up in direction of your ears with out blocking them.

Not like most bone conduction headphones, nevertheless, Philips offers you the choice to select from two sound modes and to customize sound (extra on that later). There’s a Voice mode, which unsurprisingly is designed to provide you a efficiency that’s higher suited to listening to voices and is a profile most just like the vast majority of bone conduction headphones. 

There’s an even bigger emphasis on delivering readability and whereas audio is evident usually, it’s not probably the most thrilling, however largely according to what you get from equally priced bone conduction headphones. It’s a contact harsh within the treble and maybe not as balanced as what you get from the Shokz or Haylou headphones, but it surely’s okay on the entire.

That brings in Bass mode, which because the identify suggests, brings the bass. There’s a notable enhance in energy and there’s a contact extra heat and general punchiness to the sound. 

Upping the bass, significantly at louder listening volumes, does introduce a contact of muddiness into the proceedings and at occasions there’s a extra noticeable feeling of the bone conduction vibrations the louder you go. It’s not sufficient to make the expertise a nasty one, fortunately, and for those who wished bone conduction headphones with a beefier sound whereas nonetheless supplying you with that sturdy sense of consciousness, then you definitely get that right here.

Philips says past these two preset modes you possibly can alter sound ranges. I’ve performed round with the app a good bit now and have but to discover a approach to do this. In the meantime, whereas the promise of software program updates has been delivered on, I’ve tried a number of makes an attempt to replace the headphones via the iPhone model of the app and it simply hasn’t occurred.

One subject right here is that to change between these two modes you must have the companion Philips telephone app. It’s a reasonably fundamental app that allows you to additionally allow the working lights function, however in contrast to that function, you possibly can’t swap between these listening modes on the headphones themselves and that seems like an oversight from Philips.

What you possibly can management away from the app is the amount, skipping audio information and dealing with calls. The bodily quantity buttons sit fairly shut to one another and will maybe profit from there being a contact extra space between them, significantly when utilizing them for actions like working or brisk walks. 

You may also management the LED working lights, which sit on the highest of the arms. Utilizing the on/off button (or from the app), you possibly can set these lights to flash at two completely different speeds or keep fixed. It’s a considerate inclusion, particularly for those who like working at evening or early within the morning and like the thought of one thing that provides to your visibility.

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Sustainability

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As a part of this mission, every time we evaluation a product we ship the corporate a collection of questions to assist us gauge and make clear the impression the gadget has on the atmosphere.

We at the moment haven’t obtained solutions to the questions on this product, however will replace this web page the second we do. You’ll be able to see an in depth breakdown of the questions we ask and why in our sustainability data web page.