DecisionalReview.info

Not comfortable for me.

My model had a problem with the USB cable that would cause it to reinstall itself whenever I moved, but ignoring that problem…

The sounds from the headphones are great. The quality of the microphone is also great. I have no complaints on using it to play my games or voice communication. My complaint comes from the comfort and the build quality of the headphones.

1. The cloth padding on the headphones are pretty soft which is good. The problem is after the cloth padding, the actual thing that the sound comes out of is rock hard. So if your ears are touching/rubbing on them, it hurts.

2. The headphones were REALLY tight on my head. It hurt my head after a while. It might loosen up over a lot of usage, but I didn’t want to go through that much pain.

3. The microphone will bend, and is good at angling toward your mouth, but it doesn’t swivel up like other headsets. So if you’re doing things like drinking/eating in front of your computer, the microphone will get in the way. That sucks. I know it’s detachable, but if you’re doing things on the fly, you don’t want to be pulling out the microphone, then taking off the headset, and plugging it back in.

Another thing to note is that these are USB headphones. If you’re a laptop gamer, then I think these would suit you very well. I game on my desktop. When you plug in USB headphones, they are now a new sound device. You can only choose to have windows output to one sound device. So it’s going to be headphones or speakers. Having to configure games and applications everytime I decided to switch from speakers to headphones really sucked.

If you’re a desktop gamer, then I’d recommend just getting the normal analog plugs (headphone/microphone) to have more versatility and easier use if you’re switching from speakers to headphones a lot. If you’re an always headphones guy, then sure the USB would be fine. I also recommend going to the slightly more expensive version which has the swivel microphone.

One last thing to note, the cloth doesn’t do any sound isolation. So that can be good or bad. It was good for me because I could hear my wife when she was calling for me, but it’s bad because it won’t cancel out the sound of her vacuuming.

I would recommend to anyone looking at headsets to get the Turtle Beach Earforce X1. These are a lot more comfortable, and they can work on the PC or the Xbox 360.. and they’re the same price.

Update (2/7/2012): I also found some auctions for this item here.

The featured review for this product, Creative Labs HS-1000 Fatal1ty USB Gaming Headset with Sound Blaster X-Fi Technology Black Electronics, was written by Victor Vuong.

The average rating for this item is 4 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.