So after doing a bit of digging around we decided to opt for the Fatal1ty gaming headset, which as the name suggest is part of pro gamer Johnathan Wendels gaming series of accessories.

Well we thought if it is good enough for him, then it’s good enough for us surely?

Box Contents

Inside the box you get a detachable microphone, the headset with a mic on/off switch and volume control on the lead, a leather carrying pouch and a small warranty leaflet.

Design

The first thing you will notice about the gaming headset - as per the images in the gallery - is that it features a detachable microphone, this is a great touch as we could then use the headphones more comfortably when using our mp3 player or playing a single player game.

Secondly the headset has been designed to be as comfortable as possible - well in theory that is - at the top of the headband you get a spongy pad for keeping your headphones stable and for preventing the headband from cutting into your head (more of an issue for skinheads).

The earphones also have velvet padding, which does provide comfort if you have small enough ears, as they are maybe a bit narrow for those blessed with larger or stick-out ears.

However the headphones do have a swivel base which means you can adjust them to get the optimum comfort levels and the headset side arms can be raised and lowered to suite your head size.

As you know we required the headset to suite people who wear glasses and for the most part they do the job, but they do need a few weeks of wearing in to become comfortable for gaming periods over an hour.

We also found that wearing glasses with thinner arms took us longer to get comfortable, as the headphones tended to push the arms into the side of our head after an hour, for thicker arms this was not that much of an issue.

A good tip that we found helped speed up the comfort process was to find a cardboard box that is roughly the same size and shape of your head and then position this over the said box for about a day or two, this certainly helped to stretch the headset and made it much more comfortable to wear in the process.

If you don’t have glasses then you will find them comfortable for long periods of gaming and they certainly keep your ears warm.

For the lead this uses a 3.5mm headphone jack and a 3.5mm microphone jack, which is a lot better than a USB connection as it allows you to use your internal sound card to control the sound. The lead is also really long, which helped us reach from our PC to our back light switch without having to unplug the headset.

Finally the lead also has a volume control wheel and a microphone on/off switch for quickly cancelling out your microphone - useful if you want to talk to your real life friends at a LAN party for example.

Johnathan has even signed the headset, but thankfully the signature is small enough not to annoy you.

Build Quality

For the relative low price the headset does not feel that cheap and it feels light but also with a bit of weight behind it as well. The plastic feels like it could take the odd drop or two and the headphone velvet and headband sponge look like they will last the pace for several years to come.

The detachable microphone is sturdy and can be rotated to suite different mouth positions as well.

In Use

Sound quality from the headset is really good, with base and treble being well balanced.

We also found that we could become more aware of what was around us, its hard to explain but we could hear suitable rustling noises in our online multiplayer test game (BF2) which alerted us to an enemies location and you do get to feel the explosions/gun noises during the games, but nothing is done over the top.

The detachable microphone is a real benefit if you just wanted to listen to music or play a single player game. Plus it was great to be able to drink a cup of tea or eat a snack and not have to worry about swallowing the microphone bud.

As for the microphone quality this features noise cancellation technology, which does work. For testing we used Teamspeak and no distortion was reported by our recipients. (Subsequent testing in a local environment also proved this).

Here are the specs if you want to know the techie bits....

Specs

• Driver Units: 40mm Neodymium magnet
• Frequency response: 20Hz - 20Khz
• Impendance: 32ohms
• Sensitivity (1khz): 105db/mW

Microphone

• noise-cancelling condenser
• Frequency response: 100Hz - 18kHz
• Impendence: <2.2ohms
• Sensitivity (1khz): -39dBV/Pa
• Cord length: 8 foot / 2.5m
• Oxygen-Free Copper cable
• Input/Output plugs: 1/8" / 3.5mm gold plated stereo miniplugs
• Net weight: 7oz /200g