Astro A50 Review

Overview:

The Astro A50s come packaged in a nice urban stylized box.  Inside the box you receive the wireless headset, mix amp, head phone and mix amp stand.  Also included is the power cable, charging cable, Xbox 360 chat cable and a digital audio cable.  Featuring a built in rechargeable battery.  The headset is very solid feeling.  It is a cross of metal and plastic with the hinges being metal and the headband of plastic.  The ear pads have a felt material covering a memory foam type of material.  On the head set you have built in mix amp controls.  The left ear cup has a no removable microphone that mutes when pushed into the upright position.  Also it has the mini USB used for charging and a auxiliary port for Xbox chat.  The right ear cup has a 3 way switch for eq settings, a master volume, and a game volume and chat volume mixer.

Sound:

The A50s have a 3 position switch for eq settings; Flat, Media, and Astro.  For gaming and most of my use I used the Astro setting.  The sound coming through this headset is massive.  Bass response is great and booms with every explosion and engine roar.  The passive noise isolation works great for making the world around you disappear into the audio bliss.  Also sound leakage is kept at a minimal, so you are not disturbing those around you.  Footsteps are clearly heard and the 5.1 audio does a great job of letting you know where they are coming from.  Overall sound quality is excellent and works for any genre of game.  The roar of the engines in Forza Horizion sounded life like and powerful.  The firefights and explosions in Halo 4 were pulse pounding.   The Mixer works well for balancing game audio and voice audio.  You can adjust this on the fly via the right ear cup.  The A50s are great for listening to music also.  The flat eq setting is great for providing clear warm audio with ample bass without distorting the music.   It’s worth noting that the Turtle Beach xp500 have better positional audio Technology even though it makes everything else sound artificial (in case you are comparing.)   Outside of that this is the supreme sounding headset for gaming and is also great for media also.

Comfort:

This headset is the most comfortable gaming headset I have even used.  I owned the Trittion 720, Turtle Beach PX3, Sony Pulse and the Turtle Beach xp500.  The A50s blow the competition away in comfort in my opinion.  In my opinion the Sony Pulse was a very comfy set and the T.B.s  have never passed average for me.  The only hindrance to comfort is the A50s are on the heavy side and after about 3 hours cause some slight fatigue.  The ear cups are large and cushy providing ours of comfort.

Conclusion:

Coming in at $300, this is a pricey headset.  In return for the price you get the BEST gaming headset on the market (or at least that I have used).  Comfort is a step beyond the competition providing hours on end of sublime gaming comfort.  Sound quality overall is best in class (outside of positional audio.)

Score:  9.7/10 Phenomenal

Pros:  Excellent sound quality, Solid build design, Extremely comfortable, Rechargeable battery with 8 hr + life.

Cons:  They are a little heavy, Firmware update needed for audio quality, Short recharge cable, Costly.