No less than as soon as per 12 months we’re handled to incremental upgrades in headset designs from producers like Razer, Steelseries, and HyperX. These enhancements sometimes contact on a number of the extra goal factors of their peripherals, like audio high quality and battery life. Nevertheless, the most recent headset mannequin from Logitech, the Astro A50X, is providing one thing a bit extra drastic.
Along with the identical excellent audio high quality we’ve come to count on from Logitech headsets, the docking station for the A50X successfully serves as an HDMI change, which not solely makes the headset universally suitable, however lets you shortly swap between HDMI inputs with a devoted button on the headset. However, at an eye-watering $379.99, it’s troublesome to advocate this headset to all however essentially the most frequent of customers.
The docking station is fitted with a pair of HDMI and USB-C inputs that can be utilized with PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles. You’ll additionally discover one other USB-C port that gives energy and may join the dock to your PC. The only HDMI 2.1 output is able to full 4K 120Hz passthrough to your most well-liked display screen.
Organising the complete system and getting its myriad cables organized required important time funding, however I finally felt that was a small value to pay for a single unified headset that additionally allowed me to swap between the inputs on my TV. It is a fairly neat trick — nevertheless, the console will have to be powered on by way of its respective controller earlier than you make the change, to ensure that this to work correctly.
In fact, in case you’d choose to skip the docking station solely, you can even pair the A50X together with your cellphone, Change, or PlayStation by way of Bluetooth as a substitute. You received’t be capable of swap inputs, although.
The sound high quality of the Astro A50X is superb no matter which platform you’re taking part in on, with no noticeable latency when working on 2.4 Ghz wi-fi. I examined the A50X with a pair of rhythm video games which have wonderful soundtracks, Hello-Fi Rush and Metallic: Hellsinger, on each PC and Xbox. The A50X had no points matching the gameplay beat for beat, which is one thing my dependable noise-canceling earbuds simply couldn’t match. The default sound profile is slightly bass-heavy, however you possibly can fine-tune every thing from the Logitech G app in your cellphone or PC.
The match and end of the Astro A50X will probably be acquainted to anybody who’s used a headset from the Astro A50 or A40 sequence. The ear cushions and headband function plush cloth, and the headset can lay flat round your neck when not in use. The floor of the correct earcup lets you modify the steadiness between recreation and chat quantity. Across the again of the correct earcup, you’ll discover a quantity wheel, energy and enter switches, and a Bluetooth pairing button.
The aesthetics of the A50X aren’t fairly as offensive as some extra gamer-centric designs, however it nonetheless isn’t what I’d name a handsome headset. A bit much less plastic within the general construct, and the flexibility to take away the growth mic would’ve been welcome. Usually, these are annoyances that I’m prepared to miss, however for $380, I do count on extra.
Whereas Logitech’s designers have clearly gone to nice lengths to develop the performance of this headset, they haven’t completed a lot to enhance the match and end, which is disappointing given the huge price ticket. At $380, small points just like the plastic-heavy design, and the way the headset doesn’t all the time need to seat itself within the dock appropriately, really feel extra obtrusive.
I applaud Logitech for producing a headset with options that genuinely enhance consumer expertise, however its excessive value and restricted attraction make it extraordinarily troublesome to advocate. For a choose subset of people that play video games and chat repeatedly throughout a number of platforms that share the identical display screen, the A50X represents a sound funding, however for everybody else, a headset that prices a 3rd of the value will do exactly fantastic.