If you didn’t know already, Xbox released a wireless gaming headset last week. And this is it, it looks good, feels good, and if you choose the correct settings, sounds pretty good too.
But there’s some good and bad news. The bad news is out of the box they don’t sound great, but the good news is this can be improved but it might cost you more.
So if you’re wondering if it’s worth the £90 / $100 price tag, I’ll give these a quick unboxing, overview, mic test, sound settings and my overall opinion.
Unboxing
First up, the unboxing. Inside we’ve got the headset, then under the plastic mould we’ve got the USB charging cable, this is USB C and measures 14 inches. We’ve got the setup instructions too, which I actually had to use, which is rare.
And that’s it. You’ll notice there’s no USB dongle. As the Xbox doesn’t need it due it being a bluetooth headset, and connects in the same way as the controllers do.
Look and feel
First impressions when picking this headset up, it feels nicely made. It’s pretty light but solid feeling, and it doesn’t feel flimsy which was something I was kind of expecting at this price point.
As for the overall style and design, I like it. It clearly looks on brand with the Xbox, in fact it looks like it was made for the Series X with the similar colour theme. We’ve got the black frame with green highlights on both ear cups. Even one of the buttons are green, I’ll cover this in a minute, as the controls on this headset are impressive.
The branding is nice on the side, there’s a small Xbox logo on the right earcup which is a clean and understated design. You can just about see it here.
The frame itself, the top headband, is a hard plastic similar to the outer earcups. It’s a matte finish to it’ll probably pick up finger prints easily overtime, but it looks good. The earcups look like they are made from black leather, but they are actually polyurethane, but they feel really soft to the touch with a foam cushion inside. Here you’ve also got the letter L and R to indicate which way you should be wearing these.
Then there’s the microphone here, which is pretty small actually. But it tucks away when you’re not using it, and it’s got an LED on it to indicated if it’s on or off. I’ll do a mic test and explain more about this later.
Comfort
Talking about the overall comfort of the Xbox headset, it feels OK. So it’s got an over ear design, which means your ears will sit inside the earcups, rather than being pinned by them.
As mentioned before, the earcups are made from a fake leather which feel soft, and inside is a foam cushion, so it feels nice.
The headband although it’s got a metal frame, it’s wrapped in this foam padding, so it actually feels really comfy on the top of your head. You just pull or push the headband to the desired size you need. It’s quite stiff, but it means it’s not going to slide when it’s on your head either. Zero issues with comfort with the band.
However, one complaint I have with these, especially after wearing them for about 2-3 hours at a time, is that they feel tight. Now I don’t have a big head, contrary to what people say, but they feel too tight on my ears. Even with the padding and the foam inside, it feels uncomfortable after about 2 hours.
It feels like the band is probably slightly too firm across the top so they are pinching more than they should. But that’s my personal opinion and experience so far.
Buttons
Moving onto the buttons and controls. So the overall design of the buttons is pretty clean, everything kind of just works.
On the left cup there’s this green button, and this acts as both the power button and the sync button to get setup. So if you press and hold the button for about 1 second it’ll power the headset on. When you turn it on, this is what it sounds like.
Then if you press and hold the green button for 4 seconds, it will go into the sync or pairing mode.
Now this is a really cool design, I like this, so the left earcup, this outer piece is your voice and game volume balance. Just turn it like a dial, and you can adjust the balance of what you’re hearing between your party chat and the ingame sounds. This is a really nice feature, it’s made changing this in game so much easier than a normal dial or onscreen settings.
Then on the mic itself there’s a mute button, tapping it will swap between muted and being able to chat. Now there is a small LED light on the mic too, so you can see whether you’re muted or not, but as the mic is so short, it’s actually quite difficult to see whether it’s on or off anyway.
If you saw my Arctis 7P review last week, you’ll see how that mic also had an LED indicator, but as the mic arm was longer you could easily see whether it was on or off.
Then on the right cup there’s the same rotating earcup feature, amd this time it’s for the overall headset volume, so spin it to increase or decrease the sound.
It’s awesome to see we’ve got a USB C charging port, this should be standard really, so this is great.
Sound
Right, so this is why you’re here, what do they sound like. Are they any good? What settings do we have to play around with?
OK, so the bad news is, out of the box they sound muffled and are quite bass heavy. To the point that they are not enjoyable and within 5 minutes of using them I was ready to box them up and send them back.
But the good news is, this can be improved quite easily.
So fortunately with the Xbox headphones you have the ability to adjust the EQ in the main settings. This inbuilt equaliser is actually incredible, so you can either use the presets that are here already, or you can go ahead and tweak and customise your own.
For me, I found that reducing the bass was key. I’ve not found a single reason to use the bass boost option, there’s no need for it yet.
But, even after messing around in the settings, I just couldn’t get these sounding great, everything sounded muffled. I even went and compared them to the Astro A10s, A20s and Arctis 7Ps, which overall sounded better.
Dolby Atmos
But, there is a way to get these sounding better. So if you didn’t know already, this headset supports Dolby Atmos. And I bet it’s a feature that most people, you know people who will just buy the headset, turn it on and use it, will miss and overlook. But in order to get this to work and get the most out of them, you first need to download and install the Dolby Access app from the store.
But there’s a catch here, it’s only free for the first 6 months. Then if you like it, you can buy it for £14.24 or $14.99.Once downloaded it will let you enable the Dolby option on the headset. Within the Dolby app you can also play some demo clips to get a feel for what it’s capable of, there are some trailers and random clips in here. As soon as I heard these, I knew this was going to be better.
But anyway, the sound difference is night and day. Seriously. No one should overlook this feature.
I was playing some games over the last week, and during the gameplay I would pause it, swap the sound settings and compare the Dolby on and off. And wow, it honestly made a huge difference. Forza for me was the most notable, it just sounded fuller. Going back to the default sound actually made it sound comically bad.
Then I jumped on Warzone and tried the directional sound, to get an idea on how good it is at picking up footsteps and gun fire from certain directions, and again I was really impressed with this. You’ve got to remember the price point of these.
So what this showed me was that the headset itself was very capable of creating very good sound, and out of the box they just sounded OK, but with Dolby on they sounded decent.
I just wanted to point out that not all games support Dolby Atmos yet, but the games I played on that did, included Warzone, Forza, Ori and the Will of the Whisps and Gears 5. All made a massive difference.
Another awesome feature, if you enable this in the settings, is the option to use the auto mic mute, so when you’re not talking it will mute itself. Kind of like a noise gate. So that’s cool.
Microphone
Talking about the microphone, this is really short, and it doesn’t extend or pull out at all. It’s got plenty of movement though and when you’re not using it you can fold it out of the way.
The ideal location for the mic is basically pointing it straight ahead and towards the side of your mouth. This seems to pick up the best level of my voice during my testing so far.
Then there’s the mute button on the side, which is quite easy to use. But as mentioned it’s difficult to see on the mic itself.
Setup
Setting up for the first time, or anytime you swap consoles or devices, is pretty easy. As mentioned there are no dongles here as it uses bluetooth.
Simply turn the headset on by pressing the green power button for about a second, and then once on, press and hold the same green button for about 4 seconds. This is now ready for pairing.
If you’re connecting it to the Xbox just press and hold the sync button on the console, and within a few seconds it’ll connect. That’s it. The first time you connect it’ll likely need to download an update, but that won’t take long.
Once setup, you can actually turn the Xbox on by turning the headset on first, the same way you do with a controller. So that’s cool.
One issue I had was, when I wanted to turn the headset off I would press and hold the power button, like you would with most things, expecting it to turn off. But once you get to 4 seconds it starts the syncing and paring routine instead. I reckon some will do this and think they are having connection issues, but the key here is to just press and hold for 1 second and let go, then it’ll turn off.
Wired / Wireless
If you want to pair it with other devices you can. So using bluetooth I paired it with my iPhone and it worked as you’d expect. Just by pressing the sync button on the headset and then on my iPhone going into the bluetooth settings and pairing it from there.
I just wanted to point out that this is a wireless only headset, it cannot be used wired. There’s no 3.5mm jack on this, so you couldn’t use it plugged into your controller as a backup option unfortunately.
But the fact it’s bluetooth, you can use it with any device that supports it.
Charging
When it comes to using the headset, you’ll get around 15 hours of battery out of it. So that’s not too bad, and it’ll take around 3 hours to fully charge it. But if you need a quick charge as you’ve forgotten about a gaming session you had planned and it’s flat, a quick 30 minutes will give you 4 hours of use.
As mentioned before, it comes with a USB C charging port and cable, so that’s good. I just plug it into the front on the Xbox when I need as the cable is really short. When it’s charging a little orange light will show on the headset.
You’ll also be able to see the battery percentage on screen, the same as you do with your Xbox controllers.
Recommend?
So would I recommend the new Xbox wireless headset, especially for the £90 or $100 price point? I think for the price it’s actually pretty good when Dolby Atmos is enabled. Comparing it to the Pulse 3Ds, which I know are for the PS5, I’d say the Xbox headset with Dolby enabled are better.
The sound quality and the mic quality is better, plus you don’t need a dongle and it’ll work with your mobile, table or PC via bluetooth. Also the dials being on the side of the earcups is brilliant, I love this feature.
But with that said, they cannot be used wired at all, you’ll need that $15 Dolby Access app, and for me they are uncomfortable on my ears after a few hours of use.
But if your budget is under $100 and the comfort side of things isn’t an issue, I’d give these a go. You won’t be disappointed, after all these are only $100 and are probably better than the A10s and A20s, but not as good as the Arctis 7X.