Budget Headset Head-to-Head Review

Performance

Music

Since I’m trying to find the differences between these headsets I’ve decided to try some new techniques out to gauge their performance. As you can see from the chart below we’ve got three dBA scores for each headset. Direct is measured by placing a decibel meter directly between the ear cups and cranking the volume as high as it goes. The next would be myself wearing the headset while leaving the decibel meter on my desk at a distance of 0.75m with the volume at 100% and then again at 50% volume. I’ve chosen a specific piece of music and a specific time frame of that song for this test, which is the first 90 seconds of Devin Townsend’s – More, with each test performed three times to ensure results that are as accurate as possible.

As you can see, the Medusa is considerably louder than the other two headsets. It is the only one which features a USB sound card and it seems to work pretty well at driving the headset. It’s a little uncomfortably loud if I’m honest, but you can max out the Cronos and the Ceres without feeling like your going to damage your eardrums. At 100% the Medusa does leak quite a lot of sound, so too does the Cronos, with the soft padding and more enclosed driver design of the Ceres 300 keeping most of the sound in, with the same being reflected in the 50% volume test. If you like to keep your noise to yourself, the Cronos seems the best choice, it’s much louder than the Ceres overall, but still does a great job minimising noise pollution.

For the next set off tests I decided to pick a few songs (YouTube videos of each song are linked below) that I felt would push various aspects of each headset. Of course the results of this test are purely subjective and everyone has their own personal preferences, but I’ve tried to be as fair as possible at scoring each aspect out of 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best. I’ve taken into consideration the quality and general power of each aspect and represented that with the score I feel is best matching each, leaving each headset with a total score out of 40.

• Devin Townsend – When
• Project Bassline – Drop The Pressure
• Steve Vai – Angel Food
• Focus – Sylvia

The Cronos is noticeably superior in sound quality compared to the others, the clarity is superb, with really detailed mid tones that highlight all the little details while listening to music. The Cronos has a very flat EQ range, giving a balanced sound that provides pleasant results no matter what you’re listening to.

The Medusa has a heavy low end punch compared to the other two, which is great for dance/electronic music, but it lacks the same level of detail as the Cronos in favour of a more boosted EQ sound. This isn’t a bad thing, it actually sounds very good and the extra bass gives a nice wow effect that will add to your gaming, movie watching or music listening experience.

The Ceres 300 didn’t perform especially well in comparison to the other too, the Ceres just isn’t powerful enough to give much of a thrill. The mid tones are nice and warm sounding with a good level of detail overall, but they fall short the quality of the other two headsets.

Gaming & Movies

When it comes to gaming, I found that all of the headsets offered very similar performance as what I saw in the music tests, the same can be said for movies. The Ceres 300 sounds good enough while gaming and the closed ear cup design works really well for blocking out ambient noise, but really reaped its own rewards in terms of long term comfort as the padding on the headset is very soft. It also has a very good microphone that I found to be clear and responsive, so this would be a good choice for those looking for a cheap headset so they can chat with their teammates.

The Speedlink Medusa’s powerful sound was superb in games likes Battlefield 3, giving plenty of power to the games plentiful explosions and the clear mid tones made it easy to pick out the sound of enemies on the battlefield. The fabric ear padding did leave my ears a little warm, but they’ve got a gentle fit that remains comfortable after extended use. The microphone was nice and clear and the extra long boom meant that I could easily get it into a comfortable speaking position.

The real winner is once again the Cronos, the balanced EQ might lack the wow effect of the Medusa, but the clear treble and superbly detailed mids make every footstep easy to pick out when playing online FPS titles, while also giving a more natural tone to the voices of others in team speak. The balanced sound is refreshing too, as heavy bass can leave you feeling a little worn out after a few hours of gaming, so your ears will be happy for a more relaxed and accurate sound over longer gaming sessions. The microphone was also the best of the three, noticeably more sensitive (not that this matter too much for those who use push-to-talk).