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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Tritton Warhead 7.1 Wireless Surround Headset Review

The Tritton Warheads may be the best wireless Xbox headsets on the market. They are comfortable, clear-sounding - and best of all - they are truly wireless, not requiring any dongles or cords to be plugged into your Xbox to voice chat over Xbox Live.

Sure, the Turtle Beach XP500's only require a small dongle and the Astro A50s are wireless for everything except Xbox, but with the Tritton Warheads, there's absolutely nothing plugged in to your controller, and due to an ingenious battery charging station, your headset never needs to be plugged into anything at all. Of course, there's a base station that plugs into your Xbox, but it's sleek and unimposing, and all the way across the room.

So the question is, how much is a truly wireless Xbox headset worth to you?

If your answer is "a lot" then you're, well, in luck, I guess. At $300, the Warheads are competing with the top of the line gaming headsets on the market. While sound quality is astounding on all of these flagship headsets, they still have their major differences. With the Warheads you'll sacrifice the great design and comfort provided by Astro A50s, and you'll pay $40 more than the XP500s - and then there's always that slight possibility that these won't work as intended with the next-generation Xbox.

But even then, there are more than a few reasons to draw you to the Trittons, besides the dongle-free voice chat. For one, their battery situation is perfect. The Warheads come with two batteries. One sits inside the base station charging while you game. When your headphones die, you can quickly snap the magnetic cover off, and switch your batteries. This is quick and painless, and beats the heck out of sending in your headphones for repair.

Even better, the Warhead's battery life is absolutely unparalleled, lasting for well over 12 hours.

The Xbox licensing partnership is a great thing for Tritton, and it allows the Warheads to do a number of things other headphones can't, like send additional information to the console, like the headset's battery power, which shows up onscreen when you hit the Xbox guide button.

But here's the problem - and it's a biggy. As Xbox-certified headphones, the Tritton Warhead's only really work with your Xbox. That means spending $300 for something that is locked down to a single console. Sure, you can plug your TOSLINK into a PS3, but you won't be able to voice chat at all. For all intents and purposes, these are Xbox-only headsets, and at $300 it might be hard to justify something that can't be your all-in-one audio solution.

The other problems with the Tritton's are less consequential and more subjective. They don't offer the same quick and dirty voice and audio mixing the Astros do, and this is a bit of a bummer, especially as your own voice is always a bit loud in the monitor.

They also don't look like a product that costs $300, and if you're spending that much on headphones, you'll probably want them too. The Trittons are just a bit gamey for our liking - featuring a high-gloss finish, enormous cans, and a detachable boom mic. But the base station is awesomely Xbox-ified; the Trittons licensing agreement allows them to use the Xbox Ring in their product and it looks fantastic, especially when next to the Xbox 360 Slim, which has that same black, high-gloss finish.

Closing Comments

What the Trittons do right, they do very right and there's just no denying that. They sound fantastic in any of their EQ settings, they create a snug fit that blocks outside audio and doesn't hurt even the largest of craniums (take my word for it). Like any headphone worth their salt, they can blast out decibels that are far, far louder than any human should listen to.

The Warheads are great headphones that offer a completely unique wireless experience. For Xbox fans, the Warheads should be infinitely appealing. If you're a hardcore multi-console gamer, you'll probably be better served by a different setup. Whether that makes them worth the extra dough or not, is a question of both means and taste.


Source : ign[dot]com

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