Astro A50 review: Still king of wireless headsets, still expensive - tayloragpich

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Loud, clear microphone
Phenomenal audio, correctly out of the box

Cons

Usurious price—you could get audiophile-grade headphones for this
Velvety earcups get sweaty, pick up lint

Our Finding of fact

The Astro A50 packs phenomenal valid and wireless convenience, if you're willing to hurl down $300.

The A50 is famous for a reason: It's i of the best gaming-oriented headsets connected the market, if not the best. The 2022 edition retains that mantle. Forget the A38—this is Astro's rightful baby.

The A50 is a wireless version of Astro's even-known A40 headset. Comparable the A40, it's an over-ear headset with a boom out mike.

It's an extremely durable headset, with bimetallic accents complementing some hefty plastic bits. The left ear features a MicroUSB jack for charging and an audio-unstylish for Xbox Unmatchable chat, while the right ear has a volume roller, power switch, and stacked-in equalizer. The headset's a trifle heavier than I prefer, especially in the ears (where the transmitter, battery, et cetera are kept), but the headband is padded plenty that I ne'er experienced a good deal irritation.

This review is part of our roundupof best gaming headsets . Go in that location for details happening competing products and how we tested them.

The ears are as wel generously padded and are covered in some sort of felt corporeal, which feels voluptuous simply unfortunately tends to brand my ears sweaty and hot a lot faster than faux-leather or mesh. It also picks up hairs easily, which is annoying if you'atomic number 75 trying to keep your stigma recently headset looking good.

Information technology's a gorgeous conception overall though, with earcups that rotate to lay matte, brilliant use of negative infinite, and groovy use of colours that fall outside the usual industriousness fallbacks. Even with the enormous boom mic strapped to the side the A50s are glossy and beautiful.

And they've got a speech sound to peer. The A40 and A50 are a standby for a list of tournament players and broadcasters, and for good reason. The A50 isn't deflated answer. It's bass-boosted like any other gaming headset. However, the mids and highs cut through happening the A50 better than any past headset we're reviewing Hera this year. There's still an enormous amount of low-pitched, regardless of which of the cardinal built-in Equivalent settings you pick out, but the rest of the mix doesn't suffer as very much like IT does happening competing devices.

In part that's because of the shape of the earcups. They're larger-than-life decent you commence a gumption of place, which helps detached outer the different sound sources you're hearing. It's lul "7.1 Border in a Headset," which means it's not really surround sound, but the A50 does impart a good feeling of presence.

The microphone is similarly fantastic. This is one of the loudest, clearest microphones I've ever had the pleasure of victimization on a headset. The quality is unreal. The only issue is that the automatic resound-gating is sometimes a bit overzealous, squelching my voice if I don't speak clamorously enough, but it's impressive the difference between the A50 and the average headset microphone. The microphone also mutes when flipped up, which is a favorite sport of mine.

The built-in Equivalent weight settings…well, you probably won't notice any difference flipping between the three. The base station is nice and compact, with USB sound, aux-in, and optical-in capabilities. I got about baseball club hours on a charge and the headset kept in contact end-to-end my apartment (about cardinal feet range).

There's also the built-in mixamp. Astro lets you balance how a great deal you'ray hearing the spirited itself and how much you're hearing confab from the other players. That way if early players are excessively quiet you rear boost the chatter volume just by tapping the right earcup (though in singleplayer games you'll obviously want to keep it amply set connected halt audio).

All-in-all it's a fantastic software system. You even get a little mean the A50 to sit on! Just one caution: It costs $300. For a gambling headset. Cue spit up-take.

Tail end strain

Secure, the A50 is fantastic. It's definitely the Charles Herbert Best radio gaming headset, and it's awake thither with the best headsets overall. Merely is it $300 ace? The HyperX Becloud features some cracking audio and a decent enough microphone for just $80. The A40 is arguably as bang-up or better than the A50 and it's $150 cheaper (though it doesn't derive with a mixamp). And that's to state nothing of the audiophile-grade headphones you could buy for $300.

The A50's an amazing headset—ane of my favorites—but before you plop belt down $300 maybe you should front into the alternatives.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/430782/astro-a50-review.html

Posted by: tayloragpich.blogspot.com