Harley Benton AirBorne Pro 5.8Ghz Instrument

I bought this Harley Benton Wireless System because it seemed like great value for the money and in most ways it actually is.
The package came with two units: The receiver and the transmitter. It's made of plastic but it felt sturdy enough and is quite a feature packed piece of kit.

It has a display on both the receiver and transmitter, cable tone, built in tuner, a cradle on the receiver to charge the transmitter and a foot switch which toggles between the tuner and also acts as a bypass switch.

I also found the sound quality to be excellent with no dropout. I didn't bother testing the distance because i only use it in my studio.

The first thing i noticed when i unboxed the system was the rather large transmitter but i said to myself, this must be a good thing because it probably has a large battery inside that should give at least five hours solid playing time.
How wrong i was. Alas, this was not to be and herein lies the downfall of this otherwise excellent unit.

The battery time (at least on my unit) is awful. I'm Lucky to get just over a couple of hours playing time out of the transmitter and it seems to take even longer time to recharge when it's flat.
The receiver is ok because i have mine plugged into the mains, so no issues there. I would give up all the extra features just to have longer battery life but unfortunately this is not the case.

Conclusion:
If you want a feature packed affordable wireless system and don't care about battery life, then the Harley Benton wireless system is something you should consider.
However, if battery life is important to you, then i cannot recommend this system.

This is a fairly new product, but seems to provide a great value for the money. A more professional product would be 4-5 times the price.

The transmitter/receiver adds 5.87 ms latency - I measured it accurately. This is barely noticeable on its own, but will of course add to latency elsewhere in your chain. The transmitter seems to apply a high-pass filter with a cutoff around 45 Hz, which is certainly no problem for guitar. It also adds a little noise, but quite low and "white", so again no problem.
I've experienced no dropouts or connection issues, but have so far only used it at home.

When testing the sound quality with a guitar with an active pickup, the AirBorne was transparent if the Cable Tone filtering was set to off. Note that 'off' is all the way clockwise - opposite of what one might expect. Hence CCW = more filtering.
In an A/B setup with a strat with passive pickups and 3-6 m guitar cable the Cable Tone came in handy, in order to match the treble roll-off due to the guitar cable.
When switching between a wired and wireless connection to the same effects and amp, it's essential to compensate for the effect of the cable. Otherwise separate presets with different EQ would be required to accommodate this.

Pros:
- Great value for money
- Transparent sound quality
- Cable Tone filter useful, switching between playing wired and wireless
- Convenient built-in charger in the receiver
- Colour-coded channels, to easily see link between transmitter and receiver
- Potentially 5.8 GHz is less crowded than the 2.4 GHz band

Cons:
- Impossible to tell the difference between Power and Channel buttons (before pressing it), with the transmitter plugged in
- Counter-intuitive direction of the Cable Tone knob
- Low-battery indicator seemed to kick in just shortly before the transmitter switched off
- Might not trust the "dongle" transmitter in a live performance, but would prefer one tied to the strap.

I've used this in long rehearsals, and long gigs and I have not had a single drop out. I trust it in gigs and the battery got through the whole thing (I do charge it on the nest in the interval though just to make sure). I've read some reviews about battery life but I have not had any problem. It does take a while to charge though.
The cable feature is terrific. I use it at about half and it sounds great.
The tuner is OK too.
5.8Ghz takes it out of the busy Wi-fi area.
TOP TIP. I put a small piece of velcro on the unit and the guitar. It holds it in place and stops it flapping about.

Got this in preference to the more simple plug to plug systems, as it advertises an onboard charging facility & footswitch-operated tuner - which allows the user to noiselessly change between guitars.
Good - the signal is clean, you also have a tone control to compensate for high frequency loss, and range is pretty good. I can go out front & listen from at least 15m away whilst soundchecking, which is more than enough for a product in this price range I think. Frequency selection is trouble free & reliable also, & I've not experienced any problems playing indoor or outdoor gigs from interference, so happy on that front. The tuner is, er well, a tuner, but as a bonus the footswitch works well as a noiseless on/off whilst changing guitars, and overall unit construction is solid.
Bad - Main reason for loss of stars is the charger function. The jackplug "fob" is supposed to lock magnetically to the main unit, using a similar principle to the "Magsafe" on Apple MacBooks, but it's nowhere near useable. The magnet seems too weak to hold the fob in place & so it never charges. The supplied charger cable is an alternative, but again it's just too short for practical use IMO, so budget for another, longer cable as the fob uses a rechargeable battery only. And charge up several hours before gigging, as it takes a while! Battery life, is thankfully quite good, I've used it live for 3 hrs at a time & it's never run out yet.
It's basically a good product, as if you need the sort of functionality described above there are not too many alternatives out there.

I bought this because of the mains powered receiver; my idea was I could leave it plugged in, then when I turned on the mains, my FX unit and receiver would come on, I'd just need to turn on the transmitter. Unfortunately, when you turn the mains off the unit needs to be turned on - this means grubbing on the floor to find the the button and hold it on. I really don't know why it doesn't just stay on.

The other problem is using it with my Taylor ES-2 system; it's noisy - there's a high pitched background noise which isn't there if I use a wire or Xvive wireless system.

I had high hopes for this. There's five different channels that you can easily click through, and the device will tell you the best connection. Super feature. However, even with all bars and the green light, if I'm more than 5 feet away, the sound gets really garbled. If I move the dongle around, it gets garbled. And you can't avoid moving the dongle around, it just flops around freely in the input jack. I think it's the weight. It's always trying to point down.

The features are great, everything the site brags about it having is nice: Powered by your normal power supply, you can put it on your pedal board, built-in tuner, charging station for the dongle. None of that matters if it won't keep a connection though. Completely useless product as it is.