[section_title title=Performance and Testing]
Performance and Testing
We will now look a little deeper into the performance and additional factors of the headset to see what we think of them. For a mid level price tag, we are expecting a fairly moderate level of performance, especially with the 60mm Neodymium-magnet strapped to each side of our head!
So, after a consistent 5 hours long session and a total of 20 hours use, we have put these headphones through some rough testing. A variation of bass, treble, volume increments in both increase and decrease stages were used as well as a variation of all to check for any fluctuation in performance or any black areas that suggest to us that the headset could not withstand what we threw at it. The headset and microphone were tested on multiple platforms too in order to see if the multi-platform compatibility was up to scratch.
Comfort
The STRIX 2.0 offers a luxurious amount of comfort and is a need for gaming with such a large headset as the STRIX is. The main areas of contact for this and most headsets is the earphones and headband, of which are both made from a foam filled leather like material. The headband is elasticated both sides so the headset can be well balanced on the user’s head. The earphones are a little restrictive and cause your ears to sweat a small amount with heavy use, but this is a factor that can be applied to most headsets out on the market. We were surprised at how light, once on the head, the STRIX is and that makes for easy use for prolonged spells. The size does seem to suddenly dawn on you once putting on or removing it but while in use, you have nothing to fear as overall the headset is a comfortable piece of kit.
Sound Quality
Testing was on a variety of high quality.WAV,MP4 and other HRA files as well as a variation of platforms, from smartphones to PC’s. Specification wise, the STRIX 2.0 is fairly impressive for a stereo based headset. 60 mm Neodymium magnet drivers are strapped to either side of a comfortable headset, producing an impedance of 32Ohm, frequency response of 20 – 20,000Hz and headphone sensitivity of 98dB. But, what does that mean in the real world? It should mean the headset is a fairly good piece of kit, but we have to say, the STRIX 2.0 does perform except when the bass is introduced and the stereo feature lacks behind headsets half of its price.
To elaborate, the headset is a stereo based platform and it is expected that factors like bass and treble could be lacking but after testing for hours, it seems to be lacking all together. Headsets half the price offer much more on the sound quality front as a whole, not just bass and treble, so don’t expect professional studio quality audio to come pouring from the drivers while playing high-quality tracks. Having said that, the quality is very much suitable for gaming and as it is the intended use, we won’t be marking this headset down too much due to the lack of said features.
Microphone Quality
The boom microphone provided with the STRIX 2.0 headset is the primary out of the two readily available, it operated once plugged into the headset and performs very well. Featuring a uni-directional pickup pattern, -40db sensitivity and 50 – 12,000Hz frequency, you can’t ask for more when it comes to performance microphones in a gaming headset of this price range. Communication was almost crisp, detectability of microphone usage when using software like Teamspeak and in game pick ups was on the dot and noticeably professional.
The in-line microphone, playing as a secondary and backup mic, was a good contender but due to the compact size it meant it was not as superior in performance to the larger boom microphone provided with the headset. Having said that, performance was still very acceptable for Skype and Teamspeak sessions along with use in game, making for a great compact alternative to its bigger brother.
General Gaming
We focused more on general gaming use for this headset as of its aim being more of a gaming headset than a typical set of walking headphones or earphones to be used while out and about. Collating a selection of the above 3 aspects, we will take into careful consideration the price and performance of the headset, plus discuss some points about the headset. For gaming use, we tested the headset on a variety of games and software most commonly used with games, like Steam Chat, Skype and Teamspeak. We found the boom microphone to be a shining article here and performed very well on all platforms that we threw at it. The backup in-line was a good alternative that is very convenient if you intend on removing the boom microphone while gaming. The audio was the key point here and we did feel a little disappointed with its performance. Having mentioned earlier, for playing games it sufficed and was a good platform. However if you intend on getting into competitive gaming, playing games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive were listening to footsteps and small noises is a big thing, then you may want to opt for something a little more upline or possibly dig around for a golden headset to suit those needs. For regular and laid back gamers, this would be a great platform to use and will meet all your requirements with ease.
