Astro A50 review: "A fantastic and luxurious wireless headset" - bronsonweltand

Our Verdict

A truly excellent wireless gaming headset that simply gets all of the necessary things right.

Pros

Wireless charging
Matchless comfort
Powerful, distinct sound

Cons

Software isn't as luxurious as the hardware
Unclear next-gen compatibility
Poky to guardianship

GamesRadar+ Verdict

A truly excellent radiocommunication gaming headset that simply gets all of the needed things right.

Pros

+
Wireless charging
+
Peerless comfort
+
Powerful, distinct sound

Cons

-
Package isn't as luxurious as the hardware
-
Unclear next-gen compatibility
-
Slow to charge

This reviewer's first experience with Astro headsets came in 2012 when assigned to sit in a hotel room and review a Birdsong Of Duty (can't remember which one, probably gave it an 8). COD's with child and all, but IT's exhausting along the ears. Gunfire and macho grunts in ogdoad-to-ten-time of day shifts, for three solid days. In the wrong circumstances, such a press event could easily be a living hell, but, fortunately, there were pairs of A50s ordered impossible for us all by our tellies. (And yes, they stayed there after we checked prohibited, with great care we're clear.)

Excogitation & Features

Those maxims of comfort and quality are truer than ever with the latest gen of A50, Astro's flagship model. The velour-effect covers more or less each earcup are breathable but wonderfully comfy on the ears, like a duvet that shouts bullet sounds at you. There's a huge amount of rotation (and in point of fact the earcups can atomic number 4 positioned flat for space-saving backpacking) and adjustment from the headband, so there's always a comfortable configuration for you whatever your cranial dimensions.

This being a mellow-end model with a cost to prove it, build quality, and construction materials are impressive everywhere. There is some plastic thereto, but it's shaped and finished to such a pleasing range of rubberised and shiny gloss elements that you could never accuse it of looking anything other than prepare to grace a luxury setup. The design still speaks very much to the gamer, but it's a grown-dormie version. The same goes for its redesigned and shrunken headset viewpoint/wireless charging station, featuring a white LED reveal alike to Steelseries's Arctis Pro station and similarly big you charge dismantle, mode, and surround on/off readouts. Both the headset and stand look adult, non like an Action Man's base of operations as so galore overtly 'gamer' peripherals come.

Carrying into action

If you've ever sampled a set of Astros for yourself, you'll know about the sound. It's powerful. Thriving, tight when it needs to be, and detailed. Certainly not the rather audio footmark you'd habit to mix a phonograph recording in a studio, but the exaggerated lows are brisk in-bet on. All the more impressive is that Astro manages to coax all that low out of a 40mm driver, whereas another manufacturers run to attend a 50mm diameter driver when they're in search of a to a greater extent authoritative low gear-end.

This is the bit where I'd usually say that fantastic courageous sound carries over to music too, and in this case, it's true, yes, but a qualified 'yes'. Personal preference does creep in here: I usually choose to mind to music with as flat an EQ as possible, and I can sure enough take heed that I'm non acquiring a flat response even with Astro Command Center's 'studio apartment' EQ profile (incidentally, the software is still quite barebones, but it does its job without fuss). There are opposite headsets surgery contenders for best headphones I'd use first if I purely desired to enjoy around Thelonius Monk.

Only American Samoa an overall package, the sound present is irresistible. Like a gargantuan, excitable dog, making everything sound sparkly and dramatic whether IT's a Battlefield cutscene operating theater a Windows error sound. This is about as good as the best wireless gaming headsets get, period.

Which stillness leaves room for the A50 to fall short of perfect, of course. Although Astro says the pregnant range of its headsets will be close-gen compatible - throwing its hat in the call up for early contention when IT comes to the best PS5 headsets, for example - it's not quite a clear how matched they'll be, precisely with which consoles, and using which adapters. With that in mind, IT might be waiting to see exactly how information technology works before buying for next-gen consoles right now.

Back in the realm of right now, the only irk comes in charge time. You'll get a commendable 15 hours from one full care, only the clock it takes to reach 100% feels dragging at over three hours. Given that the headset has to constitute placed in the charging base to charge, information technology's impermissible of use for that whole time, which is overnight enough to wonder if the alternative USB transmission line charge method acting ISN't simpler and more practical after all.

Overall - should you buy up information technology?

But let's non dwell on it pocketable downside; let's celebrate what has forever been, and remains, a first-rate and rich wireless headset - one that draws connected all the qualities that being set forth of the Logitech headset family commode allow - that merely gets all the important poppycock right and makes you feel positively pampered while you'Ra using it. Nonpareil of the best play headsets going, and certainly one of the best PC headsets for gaming.

Astro A50

A truly excellent wireless gaming headset that simply gets all of the necessary things right.