Cooler Master MasterPulse Over-Ear With Bass FX Review

Performance

The headset comes hard-wired with a very nice quality flat red cable, which has a rubberized anti-tangle and protective coating. There’s a small in-line controller built-in, as well as a durable and gold-plated 3.5mm jack.

The in-line controller is pretty basic, with just a volume wheel and microphone mute switch, but that’s really all you need anyway and it’s a very welcome addition to any headset.

The MasterPulse is one seriously cool looking headset, with an aluminium frame that has a sandblasted finish, giving it a gorgeous look and feel, as well as keeping the weight down, it’s also fairly lightweight for a headset of this size.

To keep the design rigid, the headband is fixed in place and uses a secondary interior headband mounted on springs to auto-adjust to your head size. This means you can easily get the right fit every time, even if the headset is being used by multiple people.

The design is really slick, mixing a angular shapes with rolled edges, giving it a sleek look that is complimented well by the darkened finish and striking red highlights of the cable. You would be proud to be seen with a headset like this on your head, it just oozes quality.

The exposed bolts on the side are a nice touch, obviously they serve a practical purpose of keeping the headset together, but they give it a more industrial appearance that I definitely like.

The ear cups are quite large, with 44mm drivers on the interior and are designed to sit around the ear, giving you more padding for added comfort during those long gaming sessions, as well as providing a closer fit to your head to keep noise both in and out.

The headset feels quite rigid at first, so I was a little sceptical that it would be particularly comfortable. Of course, since the interior headband is flexible and very nicely padded, it really takes the strain off and provides a balance and secure fit.

There’s soft leather padding on the ear cups, which is great for blocking out ambient noise.

Each ear cup can pivot on a horizontal axis.

This extra movement will help ensure a more clean fit around your ear, regardless of your head size/shape.

While this is the first in the MasterPulse Over-Ear range, it’s actually designed as the bottom model, so I must admit I wasn’t expecting big performance; I was wrong. The drivers in this headset are simply stunning, they pack a mighty punch to them and even when pushed beyond their usual maximum via an amp, they didn’t distort one bit; the clarity is virtually unmatched in this price range.

The Bass-FX is something I’m always a little sceptical about, but it really does deliver on its promise. With the backplates in place, the sound is clear, with mild bass, and a really balanced sound overall. Picking out enemy footsteps while gaming, listening to dialogue in a movie, or using voice chat, this is the way to go. If you’re rocking out to your favourite music, or watching an action movie, playing a single player action game, then flip those covers off and without losing any of the clarity, you’ll find the bottom end really thickens up, giving you some low end that would have you thinking there was a subwoofer nearby, very impressed with this feature!

I thought that by opening up the backs of the drivers the level of noise leaking from the headset would increase by a large amount, but that simply wasn’t the case at all. The headset keeps noise in and out exceptionally well, even with the covers removed there’s barely a difference at all to what those nearby will hear; almost nothing at all.

The microphone works well enough, it’s nothing amazing, but for a pin-hole microphone tucked in the base of the ear cup, it’s surprisingly clear. It lacks a big dynamic range, but for team chat or a few phone calls, it’s more than up to the job.