ThunderX3 TH40 Gaming Headset Review

Performance

The headset is plug and play friendly, so if you just need to get it on and working, you’re not going to have any problems. However, if you want to experience everything it has to offer, then you’ll want to download and install the desktop software, which only takes a few minutes to get set up. Once done, you’ll have a nicely laid out bit of software allowing you to configure everything with ease; such as the volume tab below.

The speaker icon in the left can be clicked, opening up a sub-menu with a huge range of audio configuration options available.

The stock sound on the drivers is certainly impressive, with thick and richly detailed bass, as I had suspected the would deliver. The mid-tones and warm and have a good texture to the sound with lots of detail and the treble, while not as finely detailed as similarly priced dedicated headphones, were still crystal clear and sounded on par with other headsets of a similar price. Overall, a very well-rounded sound for movies, music and especially so for gaming. There’s a well-equipped EQ option here, and the drivers hold up well to pushing any extremes on the range here, but I found a slight drop in bass and mids, with a slight boost to the treble really brought out a lot more detail in the drivers performance.

I’ve never been keen on these effects, but they’re here and they work as you would expect, giving you all the ambient echo and reverb you desire.

There’s a well equipped 7.1 virtual surround sound engine here too, and options to adjust the volume and range of each speaker in the simulated setup. The surround sound effect is very convincing, although after many shaky years of poor processing, we’re now seeing many headsets with a much better surround effect and the HS40 is no exception. It really brings out a lot of detail in surround source material, as we found on Interstellar Blu-Ray and a few games of Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Moving onto the microphone effects, you can bring up a menu for volume, sample rate, SingFX and boost on the left side of the software.

There are a few fun voice effects that are quite cool, just keep in mind that your teammates may get tired of them very quickly! The microphone is pretty robust, with a clear sound and a fairly natural tone to it, and most importantly, it doesn’t pick up a lot of unwanted background noise, which is always a welcome bonus.

The LED lighting is seriously cool if a little overbearing at times. It lights up the entire back of each driver, giving you a very nice glow to the headset. Do you need this? No, not really, but it’s still a fun thing to have and you can always turn it off when not needed.