17 replies to this topic

[Ollorin]

Well my el cheap-o headset bit the dust so I'm looking to replace it. I'm thinking of biting the bullet and treating myself to a nice quality wireless headset but that not in the budget. So I'm currently looking for a reasonably priced headset in the $20-50 range to make do with for 6-12 months.

After poking around the old interwebz I've come up with the following list of what seem to be my top 5 alternatives:

Creative Fatal1ty - $20
Turtle Beach Ear Force Recon 50 - $40
SteelSeries Siberia v2 or v3 - $45-50
Polk Audio Striker P1 - $50
Logitech G230 - $40

I figure the two safest bets are the Creative and the Logitech since both have been around making gaming devices for pretty much as long as PCs have been on the market. I guess my real question is: Are the other 4 choices actually worth the extra $20-30?

[Steel Raven]

Budget and wireless doesn't always go together well, I would go with Logitech simply because they have the best track record

[p4r4g0n]

I have the Steelseries Siberia V2, it is decent and pretty robust.

Opted for this after experiencing the ear pieces on some other headsets breaking off. Could just be me but something you might want to consider.

Edited by p4r4g0n, 03 March 2016 - 10:18 PM.

[Ollorin]

Steel Raven, on 03 March 2016 - 08:55 PM, said:

Budget and wireless doesn't always go together well, I would go with Logitech simply because they have the best track record

I realize that, which is why I'm not buying wireless. I'm strictly looking at the budget wired options I listed. I plan on picking up some decent wireless down the line after I set aside a bit of cash and do a bit of research.

[xWiredx]

Steelseries has some nice headsets. I'd probably lean toward that myself.

[Sideshow031]

i personally run TB's EarForce P11. its around 45 or 50 bucks online and is one of the most comfortable low end headsets ive worn. ran 17 hours straight around the last tukkayid event with minimal fatigue

advantage of the p11 over the recon is that its USB and headphone jack make it able to divide sound between two channels- half the time with a normal set of ear buds, i cant hear teammates talking over teamspeak, but with the p11 you can set them to separate channels and turn down the explosions in game with minimal issue

however, if youre looking to use the headset with a mobile device, the Recon doesnt require a usb to function, while the p11 does

Edited by Sideshow031, 04 March 2016 - 11:11 AM.

[Ollorin]

Well, I happened across an Ebay listing for some cheap, new old stock, steel series siberia v1. They were asking $30 and negotiated down to $28. Hey $2 is $2, lol. I figure with 2 endorsement for them here, plus the good reviews I've read, I can't go wrong at that price.

Thanks guys.

[Phra]

I've had the Fatal1ty one before my son broke it, its a steal for its price.

Can only recommend it.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

The razer kraken is a good value on the budget end of the spectrum.

You can usually have them for $50 on sale.

Personally I use a tiamat 2.2 that I got for $25 that had a break in the line. Soldered a new jack on and bam good to go. New they're like $100 or so though. Great headset though, very comfy.

Edited by Narcissistic Martyr, 04 March 2016 - 01:43 PM.

[TexAce]

Turtle Beach PX22.

Great headset, exceptional audio and especially mic quality.

Only con I found so far: the cable is very thick and long (doublesided) and has the control unit in a place where I dont prefer it at all.

If you can live with that, I'd totally recommened it.

[Napoleon_Blownapart]

[Zirakss]

First thing is the fitting of the headset on your head. Even the most decent headset is kind of useless when it hurts after an hour. That's why I parted with a good plantronics headset.

The Creative Fatal1ty is not bad for the price, but it has lots and lots of bass and is lacking in the mids. For gaming and skype maybe, for more hifi-like aplications not the right one.

On my gaming rig I use a sennheiser PC350. It has the same speakers as their highend headphones! How do I know? I broke my left one and had to get a replacement part. Its a very comfy headset for my ears and it's fully enclosed. The sound is great and neutral, but you can mod it to have more bass, when that's your thing. It's a bit pricy but it's a quality product and you can even get replacement parts. It took me eight years of use to break it. The PC350 is rereleased as PC350 special edition again. The difference is only optical. That is kind a thing having a product that long on the market.

For my nephew I got a sharkoon rush. I used it for some games and a skype converence to test it and it's a very solid product for the price. As I heard, that thing is still alive what can not be said from a sennheiser PC 3, what he got before. The PC 3 is a good headset for conference but it's an open system with tiny pieces for the ears. So you will be hear a lot from your environment. The sound was kind of lacking in bass and treble but it was good for speech. The rush from sharkoon is shielding outside noise much better and it's sounds well rounded. In my opionion even better then the Fatal1ty.

Before I ordered the replacement part for my sennheiser I tested some other headset in the stores. I just thought a moment about getting something new:

SteelSeries Siberia v2: Sound is OK but the mic is on the cable. A clear no no in my eyes .. eer ears!

Only thing which was in league with that PC350 was a bayerdynamics MMX300. But it had a price tag which was the double of what I paid for my PC350.

I never heard a turtle beach headset. Once upon a time I got a soundcard from them and it was very decent.


My tip: Take your phone or mp3-player with music you know well and visit the stores around you. There you can check three of the four important parts of a headset:

• Wearing comfort - That you have to test yourself. Ears and heads are different. Thank god!
  
• Shielding outside noise. This is kind of a design decision. Open systems let you do not sweat that much under them, but they do not shield you very well. They have a tendency to sound a little bit less good. Closed systems shield better, but you sweat maybe more under them and sometimes they sound better. The stores are noisy and you can jugde how good they do that job.
  
• Sound quality of the speakers. - That too is a more individual thing than you would think. I had some sennheiser in ear phones, which got very decent review but were simply bested by my kind of cheap koss spark plugs.

The fourth part is the mic. Here are the reviews helping. But the last test is on your and some action in team speak.

Edited by Zirakss, 21 March 2016 - 01:21 PM.

[Darth Hotz]

My recommandation is to check ebay for a Sennheiser PC151. Awesome sound, crystal clear mic and you can wear it the whole day long. Best headset I ever bought. I got it on ebay for 1€ (one!). Was the luckiest shoot I ever had on ebay, ran out at 0600 in the morning and noone had a bit on it.

[Catamount]

^There are a lot of reasons to listen to these people. Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll be around if you ever come back with a bigger budget (that "6-12 months" you referred to, OP?).

Most gaming headsets that get heavily marketed are trash. A few manage mediocrity. A tiny few manage to be good, and nearly all of them are like the PC350 above: from actual audio companies with a history of solid headphones (Sennheiser, Audio Technica, etc).

...Turtle Beach is not in that list of the latter, and my various perusals of Headfi et al suggests that that opinion is widely shared. They may seem good if you've never used anything better, which was admittedly me not so many years ago, and they're often the best thing lining the walls of your local Gamestop or Best Buy (which has sadly done away with their good headphone section in many stores), but Turtle Beach headsets, and you can test a good sampling of them at many stores, universally sound terribad (they're muddy... OH GOD ARE THEY MUDDY... STAHP) Ahem.... they're built like tissue paper, they don't feel particularly great on the head, and they really do cost as much as hilariously better stuff. I may not love most gaming headsets, but those things are just junk, and they're really, really, really expensive for what you're getting (upwards of $300! Even the $80 stuff is not worth half what it costs).


It's interesting that you find mic-on-cable so objectionable, Zirakss. I'm not bothered one bit by it in my setup (Audio Technica A900x, Xonar DG, Zalman zm-mic1), nor is anyone on the receiving end. Hell, sometimes I just use the webcam mic on top of my monitor! I care about what I hear a lot. The other end? Meh, as long as I'm reasonably clear and not feeding them background noise, not so much

Edited by Catamount, 21 March 2016 - 01:45 PM.

[Goose]

http://www.cnet.com/...-headphones-be/

[Catamount]

+1 for Monoprice 8323

Sennheiser HD201s aren't bad either in that price range either (or HD202s if you're a bass head)

[Zirakss]

Catamount, on 21 March 2016 - 01:44 PM, said:

It's interesting that you find mic-on-cable so objectionable, Zirakss. I'm not bothered one bit by it in my setup (Audio Technica A900x, Xonar DG, Zalman zm-mic1), nor is anyone on the receiving end. Hell, sometimes I just use the webcam mic on top of my monitor! I care about what I hear a lot. The other end? Meh, as long as I'm reasonably clear and not feeding them background noise, not so much

With an audio technica, well yes. That is a different matter. For all of you, not heard about that brand: Whenever you see people with microphones in a talkshow clipped to their cloth, you have a good chance to see an audio technica.

But I know a lot people with in-ear headsets and some of them are nearly not understandable whenphoning with them. The curse of the smartphone. So it was clear to me, this mic position can work with decent hardware, but has also it problems when your hardware is crap. I once had a mouse from steelseries and it was lacking in some important departments. So I would guess their headsets have maybe not the best mic possible.

The monoprice are sadly real headphones without a mic. But it should ensure you in this: You don't have to spent a fortune to get a useable headset. It maybe not top notch, but you would not spent a tear when it's broken. The sharkoon rush is such a piece. Cheap but it works.

This "gaming" equipment is in most cases only a marketing trick: That steelseries mouse was just such an example. It had a very sturdy look, an impressive light show (which you could turn off) and a dozen bottons. It was a branded WoW mouse and a friend got his from his girlfriend. The mouse was well integrated into the game and he told me great things about it. I needed a new mouse and of that, I heard great things. Well ... I later found out my friend had nothing to compare. He still used all those years the cheap crappy mouse from his very first PC. It looked good, but the finish of the plastic was not that great and began to deteriorate fast. The software was quite horrible for anything else then WoW. But it was gaming mouse and a quit costly one at that.

[Catamount]

Well, the mic is actually a Zalman, but you're right! AT clip-ons are really good mics, and start at decent prices. I plan on getting an ATR3350 later, suits the budget well and sounds good, but haven't gotten around to it.

The A900x are headphones, and damn good ones for gaming. Anything in the $150-$200 range from AT is going to sound good (they're maybe one step up in the lineup from the popular M50s, which seem to run parallel in price to the AD700X/A700X), but the A900x has that rare combination of decent isolation and wide soundstage, and I mean the soundstage on these things is just purely and utterly ridiculous.
I guess the point is that headphones are fine, as long as you buy a passable clip-on, and like you say "gaming headsets" can have such a HUGE markup, that I've found headphones + the cost of a workable mic either gets you the same for less money (monoprice 8323/HD201/Koss UR55 or portapro/etc + $8 mic = $50+ "gaming headset"), or better for the same money (eg my old ATH-M30s+Zalman mic, I think I paid $60 total?).

Some headsets are okay for the fact that they provide onboard virtual surround, something that costs about $30 to do with a sound card equipped with Dolby Headphone or CMSS3D (Razer Surround is an interesting approach, and software will no doubt be able to replace these technologies one day, but it's just not there yet...), but the Corsair H1500 or Kingston Hyper X really don't save much vs $30-$40 headphones and a sound card+mic, sound worse to no better, and really aren't built comparably well (also, that sound processor costs money, so they had to increase price or cut quality somewhere else anyways). I bought my M30s after two Corsair H1500s broke on me (after 3 Razer Carcharias broke on me), and I was flat out astounded by the heft and material quality of Audio Technica's lower end $50 offering there vs $80 headsets.


Year over year I get increasingly frustrated with how expensive the convenience and marketing of gaming headsets is, because the cost of good sound gear comes down year over year, just not on that end (I might except the Plantronics GameCom 780, but its the exception and its refresh, the 788, is still damn near $80), or the partly-opaque places where steep corners get on quality, especially when it comes to build: I truly have yet to come across a gaming headset that even approaches mere midrange headphones for construction, and that means they're going to break more and cost people yet more $$$, but if that's the only thing that lines the walls of gaming stores, how is the consumer to now better? I get even more frustrated by the fact that it's hard to sort out the merely mediocre gaming headset deals from the truly terrible ones without some serious reviewing, and that marketing ends up having a lot of consumers get sucked into really bad decisions there, but I'm ranting and should probably stop

Edited by Catamount, 22 March 2016 - 08:28 PM.