Perched atop a wooden crate inside a small cave you wait holding a sniper, watching through the scope for the enemy's head to line up with the crosshair. While you are trying hard to concentrate, the enemy actually sneaks up on you and swiftly pushes a knife through your body thereby causing instant death. How many times has this happened to you while playing your favourite first-person multi-player shooter?
Ideally, all gamers would want to avoid such embarrassing situations. Hence, investing in a pair of good quality gaming headphones might make sense for any compulsive gamer. Asus, a prominent motherboard manufacturer, has been making gaming headsets for sometime now. It recently launched the Strix series of gaming headsets in India and we have with us the Asus Strix Pro, which features 60mm drivers and a detachable microphone.
Design and specifications
The Strix Pro is a behemoth of a gaming headset. It looked odd even on this reviewer's big head. Having said that, it does look rather fancy; like something straight out of a sci-fi movie set in the future. The predominantly black headset has orange accents at multiple places and this colour combination looks striking.
The headset is made entirely of plastic. Under the headband, lies a foam padding that is adjustable and provides comfort for long listening sessions. Also, the foam padding on the earcups are wide enough to accommodate even the largest of ear sizes. We found them to be rather comfortable for long listening sessions. This might come as a surprising assessment, since the Strix Pro might look heavy at first but at 320g it actually isn't. The earcup can also fold 90 degrees thus making it easy to carry for LAN tournaments. Although, we would have liked it if Asus bundled some sort of carry case in the large box.
Along with the headset, Asus bundles a detachable microphone that is quite flexible. We think this is a great idea because sometimes microphones can be an annoyance in the heat of a single-player gaming session where there is no need to chat with another player. Asus also bundles a control box with a 3.5mm audio/ mic and USB audio connectors and two mobile adapters. The control box has a sticky material at the bottom which aids in staying glued to any surface, a super-sensitive analogue volume dial, a mic mute toggle switch and an environment noise cancellation switch for the microphone. It is attached to a 1.5M braided cable that looks pretty sturdy.
Like we mentioned earlier, the Strix Pro has two 60mm drivers. It has a frequency response of 20Hz to 20KHz and an impedance of 32 ohms. The impedance rating might seem to be on the higher side but we noticed that even smartphones managed to power it without any hassles. Talking about smartphones, Asus' official communication states that it supports tablets, PCs, Macs and Sony PS4.
Performance
We tested the Strix Pro across a variety of devices like the Apple iPhone 5c, iPad Air, Sony Playstation Vita, Macbook Air and a PC. Before we get into the minute details of the sound quality for gaming, music and movies, we want to state that the Strix Pro performs admirably in the lower end of the frequency spectrum. Especially in first-person shooters like N.O.V.A. 3 and Bioshock Infinite, where the aural space is filled with a lot of rumble sounds (sub-bass sounds), the Strix Pro showed its prowess. Sounds of heavy machine guns against the backdrop of collapsing environments sounded tight. Similarly, EDM and bass guitar portions of rock songs also sounded really good.
What works in the favour of the Strix Pro's stellar bass performance is the wide soundstage as it doesn't interfere other frequencies when they kick in. However, this also helped us identify that the mid-range is quite subdued and doesn't peak as much as we would have liked. As a result, games with a focus on stellar voice-overs like Thomas Was Alone and Bastion sounded flat most of the times, which was pretty disappointing. Even music and movies with an emphasis on vocals sounded flat on the Strix Pro. In Fireflies by Owl City we noticed that the headphones started shrieking a bit at really high frequencies. Also, in comparison with the balanced and punchy quality of the bass, the treble sounds slightly too excited.
We used the microphone in a game of Borderlands 2 co-op multi-player and our partner constantly complained about a crackling sound. We couldn't nail down the source of this problem. This persisted despite environment noise cancellation being turned on.
Verdict
The Asus Strix Pro gaming headset is a really good buy for gamers who play a lot of AAA shooters and games with bombastic set-piece action sequences. The asking price of Rs. 5,999 is not too expensive either. However, this headset may not be best suited for music and movies. If you want a well-rounded headset that works as an all purpose solution, take a look at the Kingston HyperX Cloud gaming headset instead.
Price: Rs. 5,999
Pros
Cons
Ratings (Out of 5)
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