I have been using this headset for about five months now. At first I was totally blown away at the total awesomeness of the headset as I had never had a pair of headphones that cost more that $20. Once the initial shock of pure audio bliss wore off I started to see the few faults this headset has. The faults don’t lie in the headset itself, but with the Xbox 360 adapter that comes with it.

I absolutely love the headphones themselves. They have super soft ear pads that are able to gently mold around a pair of eyeglasses, which I do wear. The headset is also very lightweight and I barely notice it is on my head. I also enjoy the fact that the ear pads are cloth as it is softer on the skin around my ears and don’t cause sweating as a pleather material often does. All of these things add up to be an all around very comfortable set of headphones.

The audio quality of these things are also great. I have tested these on pretty much everything in my house that I can plug it in to. My greatest discovery came to me when using the headphones while playing Picross on the DS one day. The game itself has a whole range of sounds that are being made that the DS Lite speakers just aren’t able to produce. I never knew how much detail I had been missing in everything.

Sadly, the 5XB doesn’t function as an Xbox 360 headset as well as it should. All of the problems fall on the shoulders of the AudioMixer. The first minor gripe that I have is that the device just doesn’t fit into the Xbox 360 controller very well. You have to push it in pretty hard to get a solid connection and it always feels like I am going to break something. It is also a bit too thick so it isn’t flush with the controller.

The AudioMixer also introduces some audio issues. First, there is a constant low volume static noise which I believe is due to the USB power. You can’t hear this static while louder audio is coming through but it is noticeable during quieter moments in a game or just in a party chat. One really strange issue that I have also encountered seems to be caused by the vibration of the controller.  Whenever the controller vibrates it sounds like the headphones amplify the sound of the vibration. It is subtle enough that I had been using the headset for month and never noticed it until I was playing the Gears of War 3 beta. I tested back and forth with a standard headset and it was only an issue with the 5XB.

I can’t fail to mention the “LiveMix” feature that lead designer, Kim Rom, calls the “secret sauce”. The two individual audio controls make it easy to find the perfect balance between game and voice chat volume. On top of that the 5XB has an option where it can balance audio levels automatically on the fly. This makes it much easier to hear people talking by lowering the volume of the game audio so they aren’t competing with each other.

I find myself just using the standard Xbox 360 headset about 95% of the time simply because it is more convenient. There are a lot of times when I am playing a game or in a party chat where I get up to grab a quick drink and/or snack or just walk to stretch my legs a bit. It might sound ridiculous by I like the convenience of being able to bring the controller and headset with me to stay in the conversation but the wired connection prevents me from doing this. At the end of the day this is still a quality headset that I would recommend to anybody that isn’t bothered by being tethered to the console. I am personally looking forward to the new wireless version, the Spectrum 7XB.

3 out of 4