R. Goan said:
First, off, I've only had this headset for a day. I can't really go into detail about sound quality, how good the surround sound is, etc. However, I feel like I need to clarify a couple of things.
There are two major issues that people have been complaining about with this headset: the "flimsy plastic" joints holding the ear cups on, and the lack of a graphic equalizer. Please disregard anyone who mentions either of these two "problems," because it is completely false.
If you look closely at the ear cup joints, yes, there is plastic there. However, if you pay attention, the plastic isn't actually the part that's moving. It's merely a covering for the actual joint. On the back of the box, under "Durability," it clearly states that the joints are made from an aircraft grade aluminum alloy. This is a very well made product guys, I get no sense that, if treated properly (take your game rage out on something that costs a bit less, children) it will ever break on me.
Now, I'm not quite sure why people are saying there's no graphic equalizer, and that they are limited to bass and treble adjustments. Directly below the bass/treble bars, there's a big button that looks like a graphic equalizer. If you click it, guess what happens. Yep, a 10 band EQ pops right up, complete with preamp volume adjustment. If you have this turned on, it grays out and overrides the bass/treble adjustments.
Now that I've cleared that up, I'll give my one day impressions on the product.
Super comfortable. I have a fairly large head, and yes, the headset does squeeze a little tighter than what you might be used to, but that's because the headband is made of metal and not cheap plastic. It's the squeeze of quality, learn to love it. It's not a bad thing at all, you just might not be used to it. After a few days of breaking it in, I doubt I'll even notice.
The sound quality seems fantastic so far. I'm still working on getting it to sound just right with my game of choice, TF2. With movies, music, tv shows, etc, it's just amazing. Crystal clear, rich, amazing sound.
I initially had problems with the mic, people in Team Fortress 2 were telling me that it was cutting out, and screwing up sound for everyone (if you've ever played the game, you know what I'm talking about). This was fixed by turning the mic gain way way down. I've been so used to mics that are super quiet, so I had windows set to max out and boost mic input, and maxed out mic input through the game as well. Turned the levels down quite a bit and presto, clear as a bell.
One thing I don't like, the mic level resets itself every time I unplug the headset (rather, the usb dongle) then plug it back up. It remembers every other setting, just not mic gain. I've solved this by setting one of the G keys to reduce mic gain, so if I ever launch a game and accidentally leave it set too high, I can easily fix it on the fly.
Speaking of the G keys, I was kind of disappointed that they work with ventrilo, but not teamspeak. No big deal though. Still, I was hoping to be able to sit on my porch and chill in our TS channel and be able to chat with people. (I have to go outside to smoke here...ahem >.>...you know what I mean.)
The wireless range and battery life really seem to be just as good as advertised, which was a very nice surprise. I can go anywhere in my house and still have completely clear audio. The majority of my front porch gets signal as well, and that's going between three walls. Last night I went in game with only a partial charge, the software said 7 hours of battery life left. I played a little over two hours, left game, and it said I still had five hours left. Good stuff.
I love this headset. Completely. After years of frustration over broken wires ruining headsets, I could not be happier with this product. If you've got a nice, functioning headset already, like a g35 or whatever, I couldn't justify telling you to purchase this. However, if you've got a cheap POS, or if you're in the market to buy a new headset because you rolled over your current pair's wires one too many times with your chair, I couldn't recommend this enough. I've never spent this much money on one before, I've always been in the 50-70 dollar range. Dropping 160 wasn't easy for me to do, money is tight these days. I don't regret the purchase at all.
