Cooler Master MasterPulse Bass FX Headphones Review

A Closer Look

The headphones are fully hard-wired and come with a very good quality flat cable with rubber coating, which will help keep them tangle free, even when they’ve been screwed up in your pockets. The cable is also quite lightweight, so it doesn’t cause too much drag when you’re walking around.

The jack comes with a 4-pole 3.5mm gold-plated head, as well as a slim yet durable housing that makes it unobtrusive when connected to a phone or tablet.

The pin-hole microphone is fairly standard stuff in terms of design but offers up a good level of sensitivity to make it viable for hands-free calls. We tested it outside and found it didn’t pick up much wind noise, and managed to dull out a lot of traffic noise too, all while keeping vocals nice and clear; pretty much all you could ask for from a small microphone really. There’s a small control switch here too, handy for answering calls, pausing or playing music, etc, while you’re out and about.

The driver design of the MasterPulse is what really gets our attention, as each features a mechanical dial on the back for the Bass FX tuning; we’ll get to that in a moment. The housing on each driver is metal on the exterior but comes with a durable rubber/plastic ring that supports the mount for the cable on the base of each.

The left and right driver are colour coded, with a blue or red ring at the back, matching up with the blue and red dial marking on the Bass FX tuner on the rear. As we said before, the mid-sized ear buds come pre-installed, and they sit fairly flush to the housing, meaning you shouldn’t have any trouble getting them fit snug in your ears.

The overall build quality is certainly impressive here, and the little touches of colour are a nice complement to the brushed metal finish of the drivers.

With 8mm drivers, the MasterPulse pack a heck of a punch, giving a powerful and detailed sound at low and high volumes, and I’m happy to report that they don’t distort when maxed out either. Music lovers will definitely be happy with the sound, and thanks to the close fit, they do a great job of blocking out a huge amount of ambient noise and don’t leak too much noise pollution outwards either, making them well suited for use on the bus/train/plane.

With the Bass FX dialed down, you get a fairly flat response that’s great for pretty much everything, there’s still a good level of detail in the bass, well-rounded mids and crystal clear treble, so it’s likely most people will leave the setting here. However, give that dial a spin on the back of each driver and the bass really thickens up, giving you huge bass response without compromising the rest of the sound. If you listen to a lot of heavier music, then you’re going to love the extra “wow” factor this gives you. It’s not like a digital EQ where the results are programmed either, you’re physically changing the layout of the drivers to change the acoustic properties, and the results are certainly impressive.

Overall, a great sounding headset for any scenario, be that movies, music, games, or hands-free phone calls on your mobile device, the MasterPulse is ticking all the right boxes for a great set of headphones.