ASUS ROG Fusion II 500 Headset Review

A Closer Look & Performance

ASUS has created a very high-end and fairly expensive headset with the ROG Fusion II 500, so it needs build quality to match. Thankfully, that much holds up rather well, and this is a very attractive looking headset. It’s lightweight but feels durable overall. Sure, there’s still a good chunk of plastic here, but it’s all got a nice quality look and feel about it.

The only thing I’m not sure about is the RGB stripes, which frankly, I think look a bit crap and really cheapen what could have been a flagship headset design. That being said, you can turn them off, which I will, and that’s no big deal. Plus, if you do like a bit of extra light on the side of your head, I suppose it’s no harm having that option.

The earcups are nice and large, clearly much larger than the 50mm drivers they contain. However, that extra space allows for the earcups to sit fully around your ear rather than on your ear. They also have a closed-back design, which helps further lock in the sound, increasing the bass response. Furthermore, it provides some ambient noise isolation too, helping you focus on what you’re listening to.

The earpads are lovely, with ample soft memory foam padding and a soft leather-like material finish. This provides a good seal around your ears, further locking in the sound of the drivers and blocking ambient noise out. If you prefer a more breathable and open earpad design, you’re in luck…

ASUS include these gorgeous hybrid-material ones that are best suited for those many hours long warm evening gaming sessions. I’ll stick with the leather ones though, as they’re my favourite.

The headband has the same leather material and padding too, and overall it’s all incredibly comfortable to wear. The headband provides a good clamping force, without being excessive, and the memory foam distributes the overall weight and force really well.

The headband is robust, and has a nice built-in slider mechanism, ensuring you can easily get the fit you desire.

While there is plenty of angle adjustment in the mounts here, ensuring the ear cups fit flush, and that they can be worn around your neck between uses.

The built-in controls are great too, and all have a unique shape and texture, making them easy to learn and index without having to take the headset off and look. The volume wheel is a welcome addition but also can be clicked to enable surround modes.

This headset isn’t cheap, but you’ll be glad to know the bulk of your investment is going into those mighty drivers and the quad DAC design. Why do you need four when surely one would do? Well, each is tuned to cover part of the frequency band. They have a 20 ~ 40000 Hz frequency response, meaning they’re Hi-Res audio capable, so if you listen to higher quality audio from Blu-Ray, Flac, WAV, and a whole host of higher quality sources, you can reap the benefits of them.

If you don’t care about what an ESS 9280 Quad DAC is, how it handles frequency response or any of that, let’s just get right to it, this headset sounds awesome. The bass is tight and has a superbly fast response, the sound quality is crystal clear and with loads of detail that you likely didn’t realise was missing while using lesser headsets. Ambient sounds in games really come to life, the brutal drums and guitar of some death metal absolutely rips, and even my audiobook fix sounds more natural and pleasant to listen to.

The surround sound is excellent too and given I mostly use my headset for gaming and movies, it’s a very welcome feature. I tried Dolby Atmos Headphone and DST: HeadphoneX on the Fusion II 500 also, but the built-in 7.1 processing was certainly superior. It even still handled stereo sources cleanly in the surround mode, but if it ever sounds off, you can quickly toggle it from the button on the headset.

One more impressive feature to finish things off is the Rog AI Beamforming Microphones with AI Noise Cancellation. That’s a bit more than marketing fluff too, it really is a stunning microphone, well actually, microphones! There’s no boom, but a microphone on each ear cup that focuses in on your voice. Plus, the noise cancellation tech works remarkably well, I had Top Gear blasting on the TV and my daughter was playing with Lego, and my Discord chatter was coming through without any of that. Albeit, my friends not being able to hear Clarkson screaming at Hammond feels like a loss for them all.