Part of that comes down to its surprisingly short adjustable arm. The microphone itself is functional, though not anything special. Thankfully that’s not a big issue as there’s a mic monitoring feature that should keep you from shouting at the top of your lungs – at least, not when it isn’t necessary. The headband and the earpieces are cushioned by leatherette-covered foam which helps to disperse the weight, though it’s worth noting that if you’re the sort to wear your headset over one ear, I did find the headband can dig into your head at an offset angle. It feels and looks well made, and it’s light enough not to cause you any discomfort over long gaming sessions. There’s a pleasing amount of solidity to the headset. You might detect a little bit of creaking from the headband as you twist it in your hands, but that’s where any concerns will stop. Just as with Lucidsound’s similar setup, it’s incredibly intuitive and user-friendly.Īs you’d probably expect some small concession has had to be made to bring the Wireless Headset in at £90/$100, and they’ve saved some money with the largely plastic build. Volume is controlled by spinning the outside of the right earpiece, while the chat/game mix live is on the left hand side. If you need a headset that you can crank past the ringing of your tinnitus, to the point that you’ll completely forget about the deafness you’ll suffer from in later life, then Microsoft has done you proud. The Wireless Headset is also capable of an intense amount of output.
Dolby Atmos for headphones is a separate purchase of £11/$15 on Xbox – the Dolby Access app will give you six months of Dolby Atmos free if it detects the headset before September 2021 – but you always have the (somewhat less impressive) Windows Sonic as a free built-in spatial audio option. It remains my favourite virtual surround sound solution of the moment, and the Wireless Headset sells it, benefitting from the expanded soundstage across games, music and movies. Part of their impressive audio output is thanks to the Xbox family of consoles’ integration of Dolby Atmos. While they’re not direct competitors, they also offer a comprehensively better experience than Sony’s 3D Pulse, and that’s a huge credit to them. I really don’t think I was expecting them to sound as good as they do, and at £90 Microsoft have just thrown down a gauntlet to Turtle Beach, Steelseries and everyone else in the headset space right now.
The first time you pop the Wireless Headset on you’re going to be blown away by the audio.
It’s utterly painless – a feeling that’s amplified by it immediately grabbing an update and sorting itself out without any cables being put anywhere near a USB socket.
There’s no dongles here or ungainly Bluetooth pairing protocols, the headset is already in pairing mode when you lift it out of the box and it’s simply a case of hitting the pairing button on your Xbox console, just as you would to sync up a controller. Your journey to Xbox Wireless Headset heaven begins with seamless connection out of the box.
There is, of course, slightly more to it than that. Sure, this might be the daydream of a brain that’s not been outdoors enough in the last twelve months, but with the release of the Xbox Wireless Headset there really is the sense that they saw Sony’s Pulse 3D headset and decided to do one of their own. I imagine there’s a poster hanging in Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters that reads “Anything Sony can do, Microsoft can do better”.