Premium Listening

In the last Tech Tuesday hardware review we ran (we missed a week last week), for the Turtle Beach Ear Force Recon 320 headset, I mentioned that I’d played with a lot of different headsets over the last year. While some stand out above others, the Astro A50 headset is, without a doubt, the greatest all-rounder headset I’ve ever had the pleasure of placing on my head.

They’re the most comfortable headset to ever grace my ears, which made for comfortable use, whether listening to music during a mammoth writing session, movie playback, or through the dozens of gaming hours I spent play-testing these beauties. The lack of ear-bleeding volume concerns I’ve had with the recently reviewed Turtle Beach headsets most certainly doesn’t apply to the A50s, with a satisfying volume range that covers everything from whisper quiet to deafeningly loud and in between.



It’s worth noting that the louder you push the volume, the more sound bleeds out of the A50s, as Astro has clearly opted for supreme comfort over noise-cancelling design. The only other cons I can level against the A50s is that my grubby little fingers noticeably (and easily) marked the black headset frame, while the micro-USB charging cable is short, which makes charge-and-play impossible out of the box without a USB extender.

That being said, the claim of 12-ish hours of battery life proved true during my tests, so I learnt that a little pre-charging discipline went a long way when getting the best uninterrupted wireless results out of the A50s. As for those results, if you love your first-person shooters, or any game that has audio design as a bragging point, the Astro A50 headset delivers the goods.

Such was the audio quality, I gained a whole new appreciation for the sound design in titles such as Company of Heroes 2 and Battlefield 4, with a noticeably boosted soundscape and fantastic Dolby Surround 7.1-powered sound accuracy that made for an impressive competitive edge. There were no complaints from my friends during my in-game/Skype tests, and playback trials reaped clear voice results from the noise-cancelling microphone.

Muting your outgoing voice communication is as simple as folding up the microphone arm, while other playback controls are intuitively positioned on the right headphone. A master volume dial is intuitively placed beneath the right cup, while adjusting the balance between incoming chat audio and game audio is as simple as clicking on the front or rear of the right cup to find the perfect mix.

There’s an included permanent-assembly stand for keeping the headset and amp out of the way, and this particular model of the A50s is compatible with PC, Mac, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 out of the box.

The steep $349.95RRP is a worthy investment in pristine performance, especially if you’re looking for a headset solution across PC and PlayStation platforms. If, however, you’re looking for a new PC-exclusive headset upgrade, consider the Astro A50s firmly in the ‘Purists only’ category, given the high asking price. That being said, if audio is important to you and you love your shooters, the Astro A50 wireless headset is worth the cost.

Tech Tuesday Rating

Not recommended / Take it or leave it / Worthy purchase / Purists only / Essential kit