Audio FX Pro 5+1 Gaming Headset

Leatherette and Comfort

Of course, just because a headset is loud enough to rival Disaster Area doesn’t mean that it is necessarily bad. If anything, it means that there’s a high degree of scalability in the Audio FX Pro 5.1.

If you like your games and tunes to be rendered at spectacle-shatteringly high volumes then you’ll be well catered for here.

In fact, the only real problem is that the extra features of the headset are only unlocked at dangerous volumes. That includes both the force feedback and the LEDs on the ear cups.

The LEDs are a fairly useless addition to the case, but they sure are pretty. Appearing on each ear cup, the LEDs flash up and down in concordance with the bass and the volume – but, again, you have to increase the volume for it to be noticeable. Whether the LEDs are worth the threat of ruptured ear drums or not is up to you – but we’d say no because the idea of bulbous, flashing red ears just doesn’t do it for us.

Fortunately, the headset makes up for it in other regards.

For one, the cable is really long and the bulbous dongle is easy to get a hold of when you want it. The dongle has a super-bright LED that flashes orange and red just to let you know that you are wearing headphones. It also has volume control and force feedback toggles on it too, which is handy if you decide the whole vibrating head thing isn’t for you.



Comfort-wise, the Audio FX Pro 5+1 didn’t impress me too much to start with. When I was wearing glasses it pressed very hard on them and became quite painful, but if I took my glasses off then it pressed on my jaw and hurt there too.

Thankfully, it didn’t stay that way and the headset soon loosened up and was a lot more comfortable. The ‘leatherette’ effect on the ear cups isn’t as lush as it may look, but it still forms a tight seal around the ear and sits comfortably enough. The bracket also has measurements marked on it too so that you can see how far each earpiece is lowered by – handy for avoiding lopsided headset syndrome.

The microphone is a tiny bit of a problem unfortunately. I took the headset home one night and tested it with some Team Fortress 2 and the mic was easy for me to use and for others to understand. However, the shape of it also meant that the left-hand ear cup couldn’t pivot as much as the other one, occasionally catching a little bit.

Conclusions

The Audio FX Pro 5+1 isn’t the best headset we’ve ever used and, because Ben Heck himself has pinned his name on it, that comes as a bit of a disappointment. On the other hand though, it isn’t the worst headset we’ve ever used either – it’s somewhere in between.

The Audio FX Pro 5+1 ‘Heckset’ – a joke I’m making again in case you’re one of those annoying people who skips straight to the conclusion and missed my previous witticisms – seems to tick and skip all the boxes arbitrarily.

It has good sound performance, but you often need to push the volume too high to make the best of it. It has funky extra features, but they don’t really add anything new. It’s got a cool oversized design but…well, actually the overall aesthetic is one thing we can’t begrudge. The headset may look a little contrived to some, but personally we kind of like the whole faux leather, old-school look.

Price-wise it treads the line too. You can pick up headsets much cheaper but, considering the versatility and bragging rights, the price point is also justified. In the end the Audio FX Pro 5+1 isn’t going to blow you away – but it shouldn’t disappoint you either, so it’s a safe enough option for anyone in the market.

• Build Quality
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• 9/10

• Features
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• -
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• 8/10

• Performance
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• -
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• 7/10

• Value
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• -
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• 7/10

• Overall
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• -
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• 7/10

What do these scores mean?