[section_title title=”Performance”]
Performance
There are three main areas to address when it comes to a headset, they are Comfort, Audio Quality, and Microphone performance. I’m going to start off with what I consider the most important, and that is comfort.
Comfort
My first reaction when putting the headset on was that it felt a bit naff and that the fabric used felt like the lining of a pair of swimming trunks had been pressed into my ears. However after a couple of minutes the material warmed up with my ears and I got used to it and it actually isn’t that uncomfortable.
I think this is more due to the fact that it is quite a light headset more than anything else because the square pads really aren’t that accommodating for large ears which meant that I found it hard to get the headset sitting just right.
That said I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is an uncomfortable headset because that would be unfair, but it definitely is not as comfortable as it should be for the money due to the strangely shaped ear pads and the only just adequate thickness of said pads.
One thing I will say though is that the ‘athletic mesh’ does indeed help regulate ear temperature which can help comfort in longer sessions of gaming.
Battery Life & Audio Quality
Whilst the headset’s padding material may seem to be designed for long play sessions the headset itself certainly doesn’t appear so as powering this £150 headset are 3 AAA batteries which in my experience lasted around 6 hours of playback.
I cannot understand how this made it past the drawing board, because either you have to buy yourself a charger and some rechargeable batteries (which is not an insignificant amount of money) or you end up shelling out loads of money on batteries over time to keep the thing going.
There’s no way it’s acceptable to have to do either of those with a headset this expensive, it should come with a rechargeable battery pack or play and charge functionality (like most other wireless headsets). As it is the fact you have to put your own batteries in is a massive drawback to this headset.
Happily though the actual sound quality (as you would hope from a company like Kipsch) is pretty good, the different equalizer settings make a noticeable difference and the overall soundscape of the headset is very good thanks to the punchy 40mm drivers.
In music I thought they did particularly well thanks to the punchy bass lending itself well to the kind of mainly electronic music I like to listen to but you can also enjoy more vocal music but shifting the equaliser over to a more subdued setting.
In games the headset was really just about as good as any other higher end stereo headset I’ve used, you can only do so much with two drivers when trying to convey a 3 dimensional sound space but in its more bass heavy modes the KG-300 definitely does pack enough of a punch to keep you immersed.
Microphone
The microphone on the KG-300 does the job perfectly well, it is reasonably clear and drowns out background noise well which is all you can ask of a basic headset boom mic. One feature the headset does have which some users will like is that by default you can hear the mic through the headset which aids in controlling your voice in those late night sessions.
