Astro Xbox One Headphones Review

Those who are into this kind of gadgets will surely want to find out everything about them. Check out the Astro Xbox One headphones review and decide for yourself.

Until recently, if you wanted a pair of gaming headphones you had to buy a set of purpose made cans. Gladly, thanks to the way the PlayStation 4’s and Xbox One’s controllers are created, that isn’t an issue anymore.

To use your favourite headphones with Xbox, all you need is a $35 adapter.

But how does Astro compete, a company known for its luxury gaming headsets?

The $200 A40 Xbox One Edition headsets is way better than its competitors, but encountered serious competition from an unexpected area: other headphones made by Astro.
Astro products have always been pretty expensive, but the trick with them is that they are an investment, not just any purchase. But, since the release of Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the company has released just a handful of models.

Rather than becoming out dated like many other headsets, with the release of PS4 and Xbox One, Astro instead created updates to make the wireless MixAmp modules and the A50 match the new system.

What does the A40s has to offer that the old ones don’t?

One of its biggest extensions is the M80 MixAmp that can be plugged in directly into the controller of Xbox One. It stands as a replacer for the console’s previous mentioned adapter, but mainly it performs the same duties: voice/game audio balance and a single button muting.

The difference stands in the different EQ settings offered by the M80,meaning no bass, medium bass and lots of bass and the 3.55mm headphone input has been replaced with an approximately 4 foot linguini cable and a 3.5 mm headphone jack that can be plugged into the bottom of the left ear cup.

Another quality is that the mute button/volume know combo is very big and is very easy to reach even when not looking at the controller. The setup is a piece of cake as well, all you have to do is to plug the M80 into the controller and the cable into the headphones and all is set. One single wire and no frustrations.

Reviews of the MLG edition A40s headphones have given very high rates. The headphones sound great for practically anything, even voice transcription and some consider it the top of the top. They are unpretentious, very comfortable to wear for long periods of time and very easy to use.

The new model of A40s are different on that matter, but only from a superficial point of view. Instead of an all black design, they are light grey with baby blue accents. This design should be a total success for the Detroit Lions fans, but others might not find their looks so appealing.

Functionally speaking, not many things have changed. You can still switch the boom mic from one earcup to another and the magnetic earcup covers*named officially “speaker tags”) can be removed and customized however you wish too.
When it comes to the audio quality, the headphones deliver the clear earcup vibration expected to hear from Astro gear.
No matter what choosing to listen with these headphones, the sound provided is to die for.

Frankly, they kind of betray the stereo only nature of any audio output by the Xbox One controller. When plugging the A40s into the official headset adapter of the Xbox One, the comparison is useless. The sound was fuller, and felt like the sound was traveling all around the back of the head, as opposed to being heard exclusively on the side of each ear.

A pleasant surprise was how the different EQ modes applied when having incoming voice chat. It was very easy to create a serious mix between game and chat audio and even manage to adjust the sound mode settings without looking away from the TV.

This is another aspect, Astro has always been very good at compared to others who didn’t manage to reach expectations, as they tried to pack to many buttons into a small area. In that sense, it is much easier to use, than Microsoft’s adapter.

If we were to look for a downside, that would be that the M80 sucks dry you controller’s battery life., as it is taking its power from the gamepad itself, which makes the Xbox One controller power use to be a complete turn off.

With a fresh set of AAs, after 12 hours of use and three gaming session, the battery warned to be low.
When analysing all of these criteria, we cannot help but ask ourselves if investing $200 in it would worth it, taking into consideration that you already own other Astro headsets.

This matter is slightly relative as it all depends on what your priorities are. You could purchase a pair of A50s and dispose of 7.1 audio and wireless chat for the amount of $100 extra. On the other hand, with $250 you could get a set of classic A40s, the wireless MixAmp Pro(which has 7.1 surround and Dolby Digital audio), but for chat you would require a wire. With this, you get stereo and a built-in am all in a discreet packaging.

Astro says that if the Xbox One would ever start to output two channel virtual surround with the help of the controller, the M80 can deliver that. Even so, this is limited to analog sound, which is not just as accurate as digital sound.
Bottom line, the A40s is a good recommendation, but the price gets a lot harder to justify when looking at the rest of the company’s line of products, especially if owning more than just the Xbox One.

Its would be advisable that, if you cat spare the $50, save some money for a bit more time, and buy the vanilla A40s.
Image Source: Best stuff, OXCGNs, GAMEZONE

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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.