Un-boxing
The first thing you’ll notice is that the box is surprisingly easy to open given the fact that the package looks like it’s one of those vacuum-seal plastic containers that are harder to get into the playboy mansion. Lo and behold I was able to pull it apart without exerting too much effort which is always a good thing. The box also touts a full 20hz-20Khz frequency response. We’ll get into the testing portion of the review. The headset uses two 3.5 (mini-stereo) jacks for both your audio and microphone. Inside the box along with the head phones of course, expect to find a small carrying bag and a USB dongle incase all your audio ports are already in use.
Testing, testing one two.
Now, I could have done the anal retentive thing and actually see if I could hear the 20hz-20khz range as advertised on the box, but that would seem just a bit impractical mainly due to the fact not everyone can hear everything in this range anyhow. The first thing I did was go through my MP3 collection and started playing songs at random keeping in mind any EQ settings were turned off. The bass comes through hard hitting and was a welcome treat for my ears as my previous head set was completely incapable of responding to frequencies that low. As far as any mids and highs were concerned everything seemed to be there nothing stood out. When I was listening to some pod-casts, I could even hear things going in the studio that I wasn’t hearing before such even just a little move of the microphone was being reproduced. Something like this is imperative to gamers as it’s essential to hear if anyone is sneaking up on you while you’re sniping. Microphone wise, nothing really stood out when I listened to my voice as compared to other headsets I’ve used in the past but is clear and great for screaming at your buddies online. I tested out the USB dongle and didn’t have any problems. It will take it a second the first time you plug it in as it creates a new audio device and has to install some drivers. In the past I’ve had USB headsets that would install a new sound device and when I went to go play a MIDI file (I still love old midi music, sue me) for some reason they wouldn’t play. I was glad to see the USB dongle was capable of playing MIDI files without any problem.
Problems.
There are some design flaws, but this just may be me nit picking. The ear-phones don’t cup the entire ear, and after fooling around by trying to stretch out the head-band that’s made out of aluminum and resizing it, it can still be a bit uncomfortable. You outer ear canal will start to get a little sweaty after prolonged use as they ear-phones need to be right on your ear holes for maximum comfort. If the ear phones cupped the entire ear and if the headset wasn’t so tight this would bump up the score considerably.