Top positive review
65 people found this helpful
Audiophile's perspective
By Anon on Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2022
I've been into Hi-fi headphones for over a decade now. My current collection is: Audeze LCD-2's, Sennheiser HD650's, Sennheiser 558's, and Audio Technica CKM500's. I've also owned Audio Technica ATH-M50's, Audio Technica AD700's, and the first gen Kingston HyperX headset. Most of my music collection is FLAC/lossless running from a Creative Sound Blaster XE-5 as my DAC into a Little Dot MKII tube amplifier using custom made silver coated copper cables throughout. I mostly bought the GAME ONE headset since I started working from home. The short answer is that this a good headset and the kind of quality you'd expect from Sennheiser. A huge step up from my Kingston HyperX's while not costing that much more. You can pay the same price as them if you find them on sale in fact, which is what I did and wish I made this decision a long time ago. Very happy with them and proud to add them to my collection. The long answer? I'll be judging this based off the other headphones I have while keeping the price to performance in mind. Specifically my 558's because of how similar they are. Comfort: 5/5 I have a big head, so comfort is really important to me. Although these don't come close to my LCD-2's, it's a bit unfair to compare $800 headphones to a headset I bought on sale for $65. The construction is extremely similar if not identical to my 558's, which hold a special place in my heart. Overall, while not as pleasant as my LCD-2's, these are in no way bad or uncomfortable. I have no problem keeping these on for hours at a time without my ears getting sore or anything. Sound: 5/5 for gaming and 4/5 for music. I was half expecting these to sound the same as my 558's, but there's more emphasis in the low-end/bass due to these being "gaming" branded and marketed to non-audio enthusiasts. This is a common theme for products advertised to general consumers and from my experience, headphones with an exaggerated bass frequency can be categorized in two ways: fun or obnoxious. By obnoxious, I am talking about Dr Dre Beats or "fashion" headphones that have zero appeal to anyone that actually values sound quality. Fun headphones with an overtuned low-end such as the GAME ONE's as well as a lot of my other headphones can still retain clarity while not sounding like a wet fart blowing into my ears and drown out the mids or highs. The overall sound stage is extremely similar to my 558's, which is excellent and great for gaming as you will be able to pinpoint player positioning in FPS's by sound alone. For music, they are above average and would most likely satisfy your average users' needs. However, if audio quality for music is important to you and would rather just have one setup for everything, then you may want to consider a dedicated set of headphones + external mic as these would be my last pick for "what headphones do I want to listen to music with today?" Speaking of microphone.... Microphone: 5/5 I used a Kingston HyperX Quadcast condenser mic briefly, but to be honest I was never impressed with the sound quality and I didn't want to fiddle with an external mic anymore by constantly having to re-adjust it or worry about it picking up background noise due to it being more sensitive. It's one of those things about headsets I came to appreciate more and you'd probably have to spend upwards of $200-300 to find an external mic or headset that is significantly better than the GAME ONE. Overall, I have gotten no complaints and it sounded great for its intended purpose after doing a few short recordings. Other thoughts: One of the top comments mentions the need for an amplifier to drive these, which I found to be completely unnecessary and untrue as these are low impedance. Impedance for headphones, in layman terms, means how much power they require to reach their true potential. High impedance headphones without an amplifier will have very low volume and sound dull because they're underpowered. The only thing an amplifier will do to the GAME ONE's is cause them to reach loud volumes much, much sooner and could actually risk blowing out the drivers.
Top critical review
3 people found this helpful
Loud Hissing Sound and No Bass, Quality Control Issues, Sound Quality Disappointing
By David on Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2017
There is a very noticeable "hissing" noise that plays whenever there is background noise or music in games. Also, these are not very good for listening to music. The bass sounds extremely distorted, almost a muffled crackling sound because the bass can't keep up with the tracks. I even turned off bass and it sounds very disappointing. I think this is great if all you want to do is play games and you don't care about the in-game music or using this to watch movies/play music on spotify. But that hissing sound is really annoying. Beware of that. EDIT: Quality control issues. First pair, the right earphone blew out in a week. Second pair kept sending feedback through mic when hardware mute feature was used. Friends described it as a crackling hissing noise that was constantly being sent through the mic. Currently on third pair. When you listen to music, you will find some songs where this headset can't handle all the sounds that are meant to be in the song. Prime example: Listen to Tiesto feat. Diplo - C'mon on normal speakers with decent bass, then play them on this headset. Feel free to tweak your sound card settings however you want. You will notice that these speakers cannot play the song. The low rating isn't about the lack of bass. I can handle that. But seeing as how these speakers cannot even play all the sounds on a simple track even with the bass turned down to the lowest setting really makes these useless for enjoying music. Some of the tracks I play literally sound like a different track in a negative way. It doesn't even sound like the same track. I cannot recommend these headphones to an audiophile. I bought these cuz the reviewers screamed this was audiophile quality. I didn't believe them but I didn't expect these to be such bad quality for enjoying music. I don't have the budget for true audiophile set up, but I do have a $2k set up in my living room for movies and music. I do not claim to know a lot of about audio quality, but these headphones will not come close to satisfying even the low-budget audiophiles. Do not buy these for music. For games, these will probably be fine. Edit: ARE YOU SERIOUS?! The left ear now rattles when I play Around the World by Daft Punk. It stops when I push the right earphone to my head, and immediately starts up again when I take my hand off the earphone.
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