Astro Gaming A50 (Gen2)

For $300, the Astro A50 earns elevation marks for sound, comfort and multi-platform versatility merely remains securely marred by buggy firmware.

$299 on Amazon

Comfort

The A50'south ear cushions were the nearly comfortable in this comparison. Like the G930, they are soft, spacious and deep. Eschewing false-leather, Astro opted for a less sweaty felt-like material. It's a synthetic fiber and the cushions are dumbo and so information technology still gets pretty hot, but information technology was nonetheless less sweaty. Keeping them pristine looking may crave a lint roller. Also, unlike leatherish materials, textile allows for increased sound venting which can be an issue for listening loudly in quiet spaces. The A50 seemed to handle this pretty well though. The headband adjusts to my large head with a little room to spare, so chances are it will fit your cranium likewise.

Audio

Out of the box with no EQ tweaks, subjectively, I felt the A50 delivered ameliorate audio than the SteelSeries H Wireless. That's a good thing for Astro considering the A50 but has three possible EQ presets. By comparison, the H Wireless sports a 5-ring blaster which allows y'all to punch in the sound you like. Because input into your A50 will likely come up from a secondary analog or optical source (i.e. your sound carte du jour), y'all do have the choice of using external EQ controls to fine melody your game or music sound. Surprisingly, half of the headsets had a problem producing bass. Not the A50. Astro's entry produced tight bass but also retained its clarity. If you want your audio to thump, the A50 is a safety bet.

Wireless

Astro likes to tout KleerNet, an SMSC radio technology standard which delivers uncompressed "lag free" audio. KleerNet is tri-band, operating on 2.4GHz, five.2GHz and 5.8GHz frequencies. SMSC says the 5.2GHz spectrum is utilized for surround sound, which theoretically gives the A50 an edge in bandwidth over its closest competitor, the SteelSeries H Wireless. As with all dual-band entries, the A50 didn't skip a vanquish when attempting to have it downwards with purposefully generated interference. Latency, which was measured by monitoring the circular-trip time it took for mic input to attain the ear, was less than 100ms and identical to the H Wireless. They both tied for the fastest headset. The distance at which the A50 operated immune me to visit adjacent rooms, faring just slightly amend than the H Wireless. Just single-band 2.4Ghz headsets, namely the Logitech G930 and Corsair H2100, could venture farther out than the A50.

Microphone

The A50s mic is possibly the all-time in this roundup. Subjectively, information technology produced the most natural and clearest sounding input. The A50 employs dual-mic dissonance cancellation, a characteristic found on many headsets just somehow non the H Wireless. Theoretically, this helps isolate your voice and ignore unwanted groundwork sounds. Every bit with most headsets though, though the results are subtle and minimally effective. Wind noise was only an issue while walking directly under or in front of a fan prepare to an aggressive speed. The A50 handled wind far better than the H Wireless, but less well than virtually other headsets.

Features and Value

It is easy to fault the "value" of any $300 headset. When compared to its equally expensive high-end peers though, the A50 didn't fall brusk at delivering core features: sound quality, reliability and basic headset controls.

The important stuff makes it to the headset here: volume roller, chat mix aligning (game versus voice volume), three EQ settings and a enhance-to-mute mic. Surround sound is on the transmitter. Y'all'll find firmware updates for both the transmitter and headset, tri-band wireless and what was subjectively the all-time vii.one surround of all of our contenders. I believe the spacious earcups helped here, adding perceivable depth to already neat sounding headphones. The A50 is multi-platform, suitable for both PCs and consoles. The base station or "MixAmp" as well serves as a basic mixer, sporting a 3.5mm auxiliary jack, optical SPDIF in and SPDIF out. The headset itself too has a 2.5mm jack, something console gamers will find useful but not an aspect I tested.

Battery Life

The battery lasted about half dozen.5 hours under the synthetic test which keeps the earphones and microphone continually busy. With this in listen, the A50 had the weakest battery life simply still provides ample time for most gamers. If the bombardment runs out, the headset tin be charged while in apply. However, the supplied USB cable is a mere ii feet in length, and then a longer cable may be in guild if y'all discover yourself in this situation.

Overall Quality and Impressions

For $300, it is no surprise the Astro A50 ships in an impressive box. Included are the few cables you'll demand and one of the most well-designed set of instructions I've seen. This is a very sturdy headset with definite gamer appeal in terms of both mode and features. The stand is a bit cheesy (the instructions even state it is designed to be put together in one case and only once) but perfectly functional. This is actually the only headset to come with a stand up so it'due south really just a bargain sweetener. The package includes a few cables and SPDIF optical to coax adapter which make its connectivity second only to the H Wireless.

The A50 came dangerously shut to being my perfect choice except for ane matter: ridiculous firmware issues. Trying every permutation of recent firmwares for both the transmitter and headset together, I could non find a combination that did not have at to the lowest degree one issue.

The commencement issue I run across was audio notifications beingness conspicuously audible to friends. Whenever the bombardment is low or a setting is changed, the A50 provides its wearer with audible cues. These sounds were transmitted at full volume even with the mic in the mute position. Thankfully, rolling back to the last available firmware release fixed the sound notification issue. However, the older firmware introduced two new issues: five-minute machine shut off even while listening to music and a quiet only periodic buzz/hum in the right ear cup.

For the auto close off issue, I had temporarily set the A50'southward USB transmitter as the default playback device. Although this was fine on the latest firmware, the older firmware didn't consider sound fed through USB playback every bit "in employ" and would power downwards the headset within v minutes of turning it on. Switching back to SPDIF (or aux) input for playback solved information technology, which is necessary anyway for conversation mix to piece of work.

The periodic buzzing in the right ear was stock-still by upgrading the headset firmware once more, but keeping the transmitter firmware downgraded. This also solved the automobile shut off issues, but the audio notification problem returned. There was also now a very faint hum in both ears. To make things more complicated, I could barely hear myself speak as the mic monitor book inexplicably lowered to inaudible levels. This setting is not user adjustable. If all of that wasn't bad enough, on at least one of the firmwares I was unable to control the volume on the mic via Windows -- it only ignored volume controls. Wow. Really, Astro?

Highly-seasoned to back up was useless equally well. Astro always replied promptly, but the responses were always canned. The customs forum also has many complaints about the same bug I experienced higher up. One time over again, there are prompt replies simply no official solutions and even some "user mistake" mental attitude. Unfortunately, Astro appears to be apathetic to its customers.