- 250 bucks.
That's the minimum for a current gen gaming machine.
And then you need a display
and some games
and maybe an off-brand controller
for your annoying little brother.
- Emotional damage.
- Can I at least skip the gaming headset?
- What?
- Okay. Alright.
Realistically, you guys are right.
Many popular and free games are just plain better
when you can talk and interact with other players.
And realistically all your friends
are hanging out in Discord anyway,
so, alright, peer pressure.
I'm gonna open my wallet one more time,
but what's everybody else buying these days?
The G9000 Pro gaming headset from Bengoo?
I've never even heard of these guys.
And at just $22, they're listing console and PC support,
bass surround, whatever that is,
a dedicated mute switch.
I mean this thing sounds too good to be true.
And looks pretty bad in the pictures.
So just why the (beep)
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is everyone buying this gaming headset?
Maybe so they can use it for this segue
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From the packaging, to the products,
the G9000 Pro could be best described as...
a little basic.
With the box containing no protective foam
and the headset itself being made
of mostly shiny plastic that feels like ABS.
The band is flexible though
and feels like it should be pretty durable,
and there's even a thin metal strip to reinforce it.
The foam is thick enough to keep it
suspended off of your brain case,
though the material choices are decidedly low end.
And that carries over to the ear cups,
both for better and for worse.
Again, the foam is thick but it's quite firm,
which means it could easily create pressure points,
especially because the ear cups themselves
can't be repositioned.
The cover is a synthetic leather material that again,
feels durable enough but isn't breathable at all.
So if you weren't a sweaty gamer already,
you will be now.
The biggest issue for me with the air cups though
is that they're pretty small.
We'll talk about that a little bit more later.
Basically these things feel cheap
but unlike the Tommy Hilfiger headset
that we looked at recently,
it's because they are cheap.
And there's a lot to like about them as well.
The band size adjustment mechanism,
it's a little bit finicky
but once it's in place it doesn't slip.
It's got a flip down, noise isolating microphone
and it features a sleeved cable
with a volume control wheel and mic mute toggle
that terminates in a single four pole gold plated
three and a half millimeter combo jack.
This is super handy for console gamers
who plug into their controllers,
and they also also include a USB port.
Wait, what?
Oh, okay.
Well that's a feature you're never going to use
on your console unless you go to the trouble
of plugging in a USB extension all the way
over next to your TV.
So no, that USB port is not because there's an onboard deck,
that is only for the lighting effects.
Though that's not a huge disappointment for me.
Most of the devices that you'd want to use this on
still do have three and a half millimeter jacks and frankly
the Dak that Bengoo would be including for this price
would probably be terrible anyway.
My only real issue with the USB port then
is that I have to have the stupid plug hanging off it
to power lights that I can't even see
while I'm wearing them.
But hey, they're closer to 20 bucks
than they are to 30 right now.
So unless they sound like absolute garbage,
I can excuse a lot of inconvenience and low end materials.
They're actually not crap.
- [Plouffe] They're not that bad!
- They're not that bad like,
they do suffer in terms of bass response a little bit
but I actually wonder if a big part of that is just
that they don't seal that well.
Like, if you get lucky and you happen to have
a head exactly the shape of the product designer?
I can already see what you're talking
about with the pleather ear cups though.
Your ears are gonna get warm
if you wear these for a long time.
Like, this materials not great.
Unlike the GPU plush from lttstore.com.
Now that's great!
Of course, I don't expect you to just take my word for it.
So we sent the G9000 Pros over to our lab and
it looks like our subjective impressions
were actually pretty close.
They are objectively not awful.
What you're looking at right now
is a frequency response curve.
It represents a headphones ability
to accurately reproduce audio across
the entire range of human hearing.
This dotted white line is
our target frequency response curve.
And while it's obvious that they're trying
to overcompensate for a lack of subbase
and that our upper mids are getting a little lost,
that's probably what makes them sound a little muddy,
they're not that far off.
I mean, here are some much more expensive
and objectively worse ones
from Tommy Hilfiger for comparison.
And what's really shocking is the mic
isn't that terrible either.
While there are some complaints
in the user reviews about it,
we're gonna get to those soon, don't worry,
I didn't even notice when Plouffe was using this
during our weekly writer's meeting.
I mean, is it gonna make you sound
like your favorite podcast host?
Well, no, but my goodness!
Temper your expectations!
It sounds okay.
So then, what's the catch with this thing?
Not much, apparently.
It's got over 96,000 reviews on Amazon,
making it their top seller in the gaming headset category.
And a whopping 82% of those reviews
are either five or four stars.
That is darn impressive.
However, some of the low star ratings
contained some valid and even concerning feedback
that might make you think twice
about supporting this company.
For starters, we found not one,
but two instances of Bengoo trying to pay,
or guilt trip reviewers into upgrading their scores.
And wherever you see one or two people
with the integrity to refuse an offer like this,
there are almost certainly many others who took the bribe.
So who knows then how many of the four star reviews
were actually upgraded after the fact?
Pretty scummy.
So then that raises some questions like,
who exactly is Bengoo?
According to their website they were founded in 2014.
Then again, they're pretty unethical, so who knows?
And the G9000 Pro seems to be
one of their flagship products.
Their mission is to offer customers reliable
and affordable consumer electronics products
and they are apparently a young team.
But then so was OnePlus.
Remember when they definitely weren't owned by BBK
and then they definitely admitted that they were?
I don't know, there's not really much else about them here.
They've got headsets, mice, speakers, keyboards
and even a wireless PS4 controller,
all at pretty attractive prices.
So the company at least appears to be real.
And aside from that one spicy nugget of dirt that we dug up,
complaints in the reviews are mostly stuff we've seen before
and mostly agree with though some people
might have overblown them a bit.
Like some of you absolutely hated the dual cable design.
Others had issues with the mic
or the speakers not working properly.
That's fair enough.
Everyone can get a lemon once in a while.
And several of you hated the build quality.
Things like that they're too rigid,
too tight, too small, et cetera.
But we saw some grousing about the mic that we thought
might actually be user error with people pointing out
that it seems to pick up the entire room.
I mean, it didn't seem that bad to me.
Let's give it a shot here.
I am talking right now into the microphone
and Plouffe is working on cleaning
the row house or whatever.
Maybe he's got a vacuum cleaner.
Hey, there you go. Yeah, woo.
I don't know. I'll let you guys be the judge.
I do think it's possible that buddy
accidentally had their laptop mic active
or something like that.
The two and the three star reviews
are a lot more of the same,
but mostly just from people who aren't
quite as mad about them.
There were some added complaints here though,
about the cable getting wrecked and twisted over time.
The poor quality of the ear cup cushions
and most importantly an issue with
hearing others talking during gameplay.
This last one actually makes a fair bit of sense
considering how bad the top end looks
in our frequency response graph here.
With that being said,
most of the four and the five star reviews
seem to indicate that people can hear clearly.
So this could be a hint that
the performance of the G9000 Pro
varies a fair bit from one unit to the next.
For those of you who are wondering,
we purchased ours from Amazon,
so it's not a golden sampler or anything,
but we did only buy one.
So your mileage may vary.
Moving into the high star reviews,
what most of you seem to love about these things,
aside from of course the incredible value,
is the same stuff that we did.
The volume control, the mic quality,
the durable construction, the sound isolation,
the cable quality, and the comfort.
There are some patterns in the complaints here,
like the ear cups are a little small
and the quality could be better,
but one user put it I think pretty well when they said,
"My seven year old doesn't know any better,
and doesn't need any better."
Yeah, they are a little on the small side
for some adult ears,
that is unless you like on ear headphones.
But for younger gamers,
I think it's fair to say that these are perfectly adequate.
The pinnacle of mediocrity.
Or are they?
A lot of products are perpetually on sale
to make them seem more premium,
and the G 9000 Pro's are no exception.
Thankfully, Bengoo's own website
has them listed for just 29.
Thanks for nothing, Amazon, you deceptive (beep).
And even on Amazon you'll usually find them
for anywhere between 26 and 22, which is what we paid.
And at that price, man, I don't know, it's kind of tough.
Like if you up your budget,
you can pick up these GSP300's from EPOS.
These are currently just $32 and use considerably
more premium materials than the G9000's.
These ones don't really look it,
but that's 'cause they've been daily driven
for about three years and the cups
are finally starting to fall apart.
But from the plastic to the cloth to the pleather,
it's all a pretty significant upgrade for just $10 more.
I mean, there's no cool blue LEDs,
but instead you get volume adjustment
on the side of the ear cup.
The mute mic is on the flip down,
so there's no need for your cable
to look like it swallowed a Hot Wheels car.
And the cups are significantly larger and they swivel a bit
which could be quite a bit more comfortable
depending on your ear size and placement.
Meanwhile, if we go lower in price.
Meanwhile, if we go lower in price,
it's honestly mostly just kind of junk.
These Redragon H 101's are straight up listed at 17 bucks,
so there's no phony baloney regular price,
credit to them for that.
But while they will get the job done,
they sound worse and feel even cheaper
than our Bengoo best seller.
Super light with a plastic only band
and with all the same comfort concerns but even more.
So Bengoo might not be the most reputable company
but at least you know that if you don't like them,
you can probably just write a bad review on Amazon
and get offered freebies or some sort of compensation.
We'll have all these headsets listed down below.
Bottom line then, Bengoo?
Not bad, especially for the price
but if you can afford to save up a little bit more
or you wanna treat yourself or someone you know
to something significantly more premium,
I would recommend grabbing the GSP300 instead.
They have a similarly great rating on Amazon
and come from a much more reputable company.
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- Thanks for watching.
If you like this video, make sure to check
out some of the others in the series.
We looked at a Redragon keyboard last year
that actually really surprised us with its adequateness.