Performance
I fired up my trusty decibel meter to test the overall power of the drivers. At max volume I recorded 96 dBa, more than enough to ruin your hearing after a while, so certainly no lack of power here. Whilst wearing the headset I found that only 50 dBa was detected at a range of 3ft. This means that the ear cups do a very good job of minimising noise leak, the headsets closed back design keeps the music in, helps block external noise and can also help improve the bass levels. A similar result at 50% volume, with only 41 dBa noise detected at a range of 3ft.
Firing up a few of my favourite albums proved quite entertaining on this headset. The higher frequencies are nice and clear, there is a little warmth to the mid tones and the bass isn’t to heavy, but it is full of detail. A lot of gaming headsets focus on heavy and somewhat unrealistic bass, but it’s much more toned down here, giving a nice flat response. Anything with a lot of guitars or acoustic instruments sounds superb, but I wouldn’t go buying this as a music only headset; dedicated music headphones of a similar price would still net better results.
The balanced sound is certainly better in gaming. The bright and clear treble is great for picking out details in multiplayer gaming; I’d rather hear my enemies footsteps behind me over the thump of grenades going off in the distance. Gaming on Skyrim was really nice, the fine details like the sound of the environment and weather are really crisp and great for immersion, but there was still enough thump for when the music kicks in pre-battle.
Much like music and gaming, movie performance was superb, clear dialogue and great sounding musical scores. Those who love Michael Bay movies may wish they had even more bass to enjoy the endless explosions, but at least with this headset your ears won’t feel as battered by the end of the movie.
Microphone performance is about what you would expect in this price range. It’s responsive, offering nice and clear audio and it’s pretty good at not picking up too much ambient noise.
