Shogun Bros Ensense Commander Series Review
Peter Donnell / 10 years ago
Final Thoughts
Price
The Shogun Bros Ensense Pro Headset is available on pre-order for £59.99 (silicongaming.co.uk). This puts them along side some tough competition from the likes of SteelSeries, TteSports and Razer to name but a few, who all have great headsets for this price range, but in terms of aesthetics and features, the Ensense is ahead of the pack and it’s not until you increase your budget by another £10 do you start to see headsets with competing feature sets, making the Ensense great value for money.
Overview
I had high expectation for the new Shogun Bros Ensense headset, not only because their last product the Ballista MK1 mouse was great, but also because anything less than exceptional is unacceptable at this time. The gaming peripherals market is fierce with competition, you’ll have a really hard time throwing £60 down on a headset and coming away with something rubbish, so Shogun Bros really had their work cut out for them to compete and fortunately, they pulled it off. Not only that, but as a relatively new brand on the market they need to set a good pace and standard early on or they’ll just fall into obscurity like many of the newcomers to the market.
The headset exceeded my high expectations, I was expecting it to be good, but not this good. For £59.99 it out paces virtually everything in its class in terms of features, its build quality is on par with the best in its class and the design is unique and the sound quality is superb. The real bonus here is the vibrational drivers and the EQ customisation, they stand out from the crowd for me as I’m often disappointed by lack of bass customisation, which the vibrational drivers are perfect for and as a music lover I like to tune my sound just to my liking , yet many headsets don’t offer much in the way of EQ and even when they do you find the sound is quickly distorted after minor adjustments, where the Ensense allows for quite an extensive amount of tweaking.
The microphone is great and while I wouldn’t say it’s better than anything else in this price range, it does a great job and also benefits from a stealth foldaway design when not in use. The in-line controller is one of the best designed I’ve seen, the buttons are easy to find due to the LED back lighting and clear layout, plus it comes with the added bonus of a light switch for those times you want to dim the lights and enjoy a movie.
“Shogun Bros needed an award winner with the Ensense and that is exactly what they’ve got. This headset is yet another milestone for the company and while they may be fairly new to the market, they’ve got a great future ahead of them if they keep making great products for competitive prices.”
Pros
- Durable build quality
- Bright, colourful and unique design
- Comfortable fit
- Loads of sound customisation options
- Good quality microphone
- Competitive price
- Powerful sound
Cons
- Ear cups could do with a rotating mount to provide an even better fit
- A shirt clip on the back of the in-line controller would be nice
Thank you Shogun Bros for providing us with this sample.