Asus CineVibe Gaming Headset

Asus sent us this regular-looking CineVibe headphones and I’ve been using it for a week now while playing Starcraft 2. Nothing too fancy — just your regular headset, although this one hooks up via the USB port and not the 3.5mm headphone port.

Installation was quick and easy you can say it’s practically plug-and-play. The USB connection means you can only use this with a PC and not your usual MP3 player.

The headphones is pretty neatly built, with the combination of the black with red accents made it look a bit stylish. It also comes with a microphone which can be used for chatting with team-mates while playing a game. It’s got a fairly small form-factor with the leather-covered soft pads just covering enough of the ear but not entirely (sits on top of the ears, not around it).

At first, I didn’t notice anything spectacular — good audio quality and very decent volume range. The in-line control is attached on the thick cord midway and contains adjustment for volume, microphone mute and a slider to activate the Rumble Feedback.

Once turned on, the bass becomes more prominent and ambient sound effects are much more noticeable (again, I was playing Starcraft 2 while using this headset so you can just imagine the type of cinematic soundtracks used here). It definitely adds more umph to the whole gaming experience. There’s really a huge difference between the rumble feedback turned on and off though sometimes it seems a bit noisy.

I’m not big on headsets so I cannot say that I like using one of these while playing games. It’s a decent pair of headsets but it’s something I don’t think I’d pick off the store shelves. Besides, the retail price of around Php2,800 seems a bit too step for me.