A Closer Look
The S28 Elite comes hard-wired and ready to use. It features a long flat rubber coated cable design, making them tangle free, and also giving them a funky two-tone black and blue theme which I rather like.
On one end, there’s a 4-pole 3.5mm jack with a low-profile L-shaped header, which should allow the plug to sit flush in the top or side of your mobile device.
Further down the cable, you’ll find this compact in-line controller. It features a slider for the master volume control, which is fantastic as it means you won’t be reaching into your pocket for your mobile device every time you want to tweak the volume a little. While there are two basic controls that you can use to pause/play, answer calls, mute the microphone, etc. As if that wasn’t enough, this little section also houses the pin-hole microphone, which is ideal for hands-free calls, or even in-game chat if your game supports it.
The drivers are massive, no doubt about that, but they’re nicely weighted so they’re unlikely to slip from your ears anytime soon. The fit on them is very good, and with three sets of ear buds included, you can ensure you get the best fit possible, which helps ensure they stay in place, while also blocking more ambient noise, and giving you the best possible sound.
The driver housing looks really cool, with an almost burnt-copper aesthetic. The mounts for the cable wrap around the metal housing, which looks pretty cool and hides the actual join between the housing and the cable. Those 9mm drives are pretty huge, and KWorld promises they’ll deliver a big sound with BASS ULTRA BASS. I’m happy to report they weren’t lying, the S28 Elite have some serious grunt to them, with a max volume that’s just past the borderline of comfortable. I’m not saying by a headset because it’s loud enough to make you go deaf, but it’s nice to have that power and range, especially if you’re dealing with a quiet audio source that can benefit from the boost.
The bass is very powerful, but the rest of the range is hardly lacking too. They give a lot of “wow” factor to gaming and music, and it’s a much bigger sound that you would typically expect from an in-ear set of drivers. The clarity is very good too, and even at high volume there is no sign of distortion, although pushing extreme volumes with frantic death metal playing will lose some of the range, but that’s true of almost all smaller drivers, and it’s far from a problem as it’s so loud you wouldn’t want to have the S28 Elite near your eardrums.
The build quality is certainly impressive at this price range, and that no doubt plays a big part in the sound quality. I would be happy to throw these in my bag when I’m done with them and I know they’ll come out looking and sounding great regardless.
The drivers do like up the promise of ULTRA BASS, and they have the chops for mid and treble reproduction too. From movies, music, or gaming on your mobile device, I really can’t find a fault with the sound quality, at least not for any headset in this price range.
You can remove the rear drive plate and fit the other ones, but the difference in sound is very small, gain or lose a little bass to suit your taste. However, they do give you a little bit of choice of visual customisation too, which isn’t such a bad thing to have either.
