Asus ROG Vulcan ANC Pro Gaming Headset Review

The Vulcan ANC are rock solid performers and while they didn’t exactly blow me a way in terms of audio performance, they still manage to either match the performance of headsets that cost nearly twice as much. Any headset that I have tested that provides a more impressive audio response come with a whole different set of draw backs such as comfort, cost, build quality and a range of other factors that really play the to subjective world that is peripherals. What the Vulcan offers then is best described as being balanced, the build quality is superior to most any other headset on the market, the design is sleek and stylish, the technology and feature list is robust, audio performance is to a high enough standard to put a smile on your face and most importantly these all tip toward the final winning point, value for money.

The Vulcan ANC costs around £70 and for that money you’re getting an impressive amount of build quality and performance. The fact that the headset comes in a custom made, durable, leather carry case, with detachable cables, in line controller, removable microphone, powerful drivers, active noise cancellation and the peace of mind that comes with the Asus ROG brand name – is all excellent stuff. While £70 might sound like a big investment to many, you do get a lot for your money and from a consumer point of view this is always a good thing.

Asus could have easily marketed this headset without the ANC feature or the carry case and it would have still been a fantastic headset for this price range. As I said before I’m not a fan of ANC, but I can’t deny that it serves a purpose when it comes to community gaming and LAN events where noise can be a big problem, especially when you have 2-3k people in one room as we do at events like iSeries. The feature does work, albeit at the cost of some of the depth to your audio but if it lets you focus on your game then who am I to say it’s not a worth while feature.

It’s been designed with a lot of care and this really shows after several hours of testing, my ears didn’t hurt, my head didn’t feel like it was stuck in a vice and I could quite happily wear the headset all day long, which is more than can be said about 99% of headsets that I have tried.

What we have here then is a good balance between value, performance, build quality, features and style. It’s for this solid mixture of capabilities that I am happy to award the Vulcan ANC with our Bang for Buck award, I simply can’t think of anything better within this price range.