- This is the new 720H gaming headset from Alienware.
We've been talking a lot about Alienware these days,
mostly because they have been putting out
some of the best monitors that money can buy for gaming,
like real, real bangers.
However, their headphones.
let's just say they're not exactly
as talked about for those.
Alienware also has a bit of a reputation
for being hit or miss
when it comes to a lot of different products.
They have a long history,
they've been around for a long time.
Come back here, look at that.
We got...
Oh, I kind of like it.
There's a little embossed alien logo, kind of subtle.
There's also what looks to be
like a bunch of the components, just kind...
Of the headset,
like that looks like the microphone.
It's kind of neat.
Promises 30 hours of battery life with an asterisk.
It has Dolby Atmos Support
and it has it's High-Res Audio Certified.
High-Res Audio Certification is kind of meaningless.
Don't ever let this influence your purchasing decision.
It doesn't mean that it sounds good.
It's a badge that you can pay Sony to give.
They call this a dual mode headset,
which they mean it can run wired
or it can take advantage of 2.4 gigahertz wireless
with a dongle adapter.
They also claim to have AI noise-canceling microphones,
a fast charge,
15 minutes of charge for up to six hours of use.
That's actually pretty nice.
What else do we got for specs?
40 millimeter High-Res drivers,
Dolby Atmos, star star.
But, note it can only do Dolby Atmos
through the digital connection,
which is the USB-C wireless connection.
Basically, that's because the digital sound processing
either happens in the dongle or the headphone.
So, if you don't have something,
a source that supports Dolby Atmos,
then it won't be able to send it.
And, this must just be doing an analog signal
over the 3.5 millimeter connector,
'cause it's just going into your computer.
Sound pressure level 105dB,
impedance 32 ohms, and weight of 348 grams,
and they got a microphone.
But, all those numbers don't really matter
if the thing doesn't sound good,
and if it ain't worth the money,
but what do they add in as value adds
to make it worth the money?
Let's find out.
We got, oh, a very nice feeling braided cable.
I believe this is only for charging
as the headset has a 3.5 millimeter jack on it,
which I imagine that's how you get wired play through.
Ooh, a Alienware sticker.
Oh, I guess this was under the booklets.
I missed this.
Alright, we also have a combo jack cable
with a mute switch on the cable.
That's pretty nice as well as there's a microphone.
A very similar braided cable to the USB cable.
This is actually pretty interesting
that they give you this microphone as well,
'cause that means that there's a headset on the microphone
as well as right here.
They thoughtfully include a USB-A to C adapter.
Oh, boy, let's look at this stuff.
For onboard controls on the headphone,
we have a volume dial, a power button,
a audio selector.
So, I guess that's if you wanna hear game audio
or you want to hear your chat audio,
which one do you wanna prioritize?
We have a mute button, and we have a 3.5 millimeter jack,
and here is the microphone,
which come out like that.
Considering that there's a mute button right here,
this microphone doesn't have like a tilt to mute.
I really hope that if we push it in,
that makes it mute automatically as well.
I do appreciate that this can kind of be stowed away.
This makes these more versatile.
However, since they don't have Bluetooth,
it kind of makes them hard to do double duty
as both a commuter and a gaming headset.
Do the ear cups come off?
They don't come off in a way that makes me feel like
I'm not about to break them,
but you never know.
Sometimes you gotta break stuff to find out.
Well, I don't know if the ear cups come off,
but the ear cups themselves are made of a nylon material.
They have a good depth in them.
You can see on the insides there,
there is the right and the left ear markers.
And, then the head band is adjustable like five levels,
and it uses a tension band...
And, it uses a tension band support
just like a Steel Series headset,
or there's quite a few headsets these days
where you can use it.
It doesn't like to stay in place very well,
this tension mechanism,
but it could fit a wide amount of heads.
But, how does it fit mine?
I have a hat on so that's gonna add a little bit
to the size of my head.
They're comfortable for me.
On the inside, my ears are touching the inside of the cup,
which can be really annoying for some people.
This is quite a soft memory foam
that's inside of this ear cushion
and it really doesn't put up much resistance
against the general clamping force of this headset.
Maybe, if I make it a little bit bigger it'll be better,
but, oh, do you see that?
I was just adjusting it, like now it feels too loose.
It takes a little fiddling with to get right,
but once you get it on there,
I guess it's okay.
In terms of like flex on the headband,
it's kind of hard to tell,
but what this is is you can tell
it's two pieces of plastic around here
with a very slight frame in between.
Seems like it's very, very focused on saving weight.
Like I can kind of poke through here,
like hard,
but then here's, eh?
Eh.
The fabric itself is...
Feels pretty nice though.
And, in terms of just general fit and finish,
while it is very plasticy,
lines and like materials are minimized,
this is rubber for some reason.
There's no twist.
There is tilt.
There is no swivel.
You can't adjust.
Like you, really,
you're just bending the headsets.
Now, I just want to bring attention
to where they put the USB-C port on here.
It's right...
It's right here,
which really makes me think
we must not be able to listen,
'cause are they really gonna have it coming out like this,
while it's on your freaking head?
I look like a fool, an absolute idiot.
So, apparently some headphones
like the Sony XM5's don't work while you're charging them.
I very, very, very much hope
that that's not the case with this,
because it is...
I don't care about how fast your quick charging is,
If I'm in the game, and my headset dies,
I can't wait 15 minutes for a charge,
so I can play for a decent amount of time again.
I want to be able to just pull out a cable
and keep clicking heads, keep winning those games, keep...
My MMR, come on.
My MMR.
But, what really matters is how they sound.
And, you know what sounds really good to me?
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Game time, let's go.
So, I turn it on.
I hold that down the...
It's not working, Bell.
Luckily, we got the fast charging, but also plugged.
So, I don't...
My MMR.
Now, I'm gaming.
It appears that this is only a charging cable,
which is kind of a bummer.
I prefer to have as many connection options as possible.
This is the mic test.
Give me the gift of the grip top sock.
A drip drape shape shape tiptop sock.
Not your spin slick slapstick slip slop sock,
but a plastic elastic grip top sock.
Not a spot speckled frog freckled cheap shake sock.
But, a hodge...
Oh, (censored).
The sounds like a gaming headset mic,
which is famously not very good.
You can say words on it.
It doesn't really sound particularly like your voice.
Maybe it all can be redeemed if with some good old audio.
So, let's take a listen to some music.
I've just been informed that this comes in two colors,
Lunar Light and Dark Side of the Moon,
which means we gotta listen to some Floyd.
These sound terrible.
I'm so sorry.
These...
These don't sound very good.
If you're looking for a music headphone,
you should look pretty much anywhere else.
This took all of the detail
out of a beautifully produced album,
over bloated the bass, loses the detail.
It's, yeah, but that's just my opinion.
What do the graphs say?
Well, they say they sound like (censored).
As you can see,
the bass is massively over pronounced in the bass region.
So, it's not a rumble like with the sub-base region,
it's a boominess that destroys all details.
You basically lose out a lot of the stuff in the lower mids.
So, it makes most of your base notes up feel bloated.
The mids are kind of a mess
where you have strange peakiness,
probably not that bad
if we're talking about like right around the 800 range,
but this massive dip in the upper mids,
around the 300 kilohertz,
just kind of adds this hollowness
that then is made up by just sheer sparkle
that can be kind of fatiguing.
Really though, it's the base and the low mid mess up
that just ruins the sound of these.
And, then this little dip up here.
But, the microphone, how does the mic measure?
And, as you can see on the mic curve,
what's supposed to be a flat line is very not flat.
It's not a terrible job.
It...
Like, it doesn't do a terrible job of hitting the target.
But, you can see in the upper,
in the very high highs,
you just kind of lose detail,
and there's an over pronounced bit in the lower parts,
and way down in the bottom,
it might look a little bad,
but that's kind of beneath where the human voice lies.
So, the only concern would be,
if you have some sort of low rumbling in the background
that this might pick it up.
However, maybe that's something they can fix
with their AI noise canceling.
We are yet to get that software installed,
because it took a dog's age to download.
I...
This is the worst part about gaming headsets
is that every single time you get one,
you have to do some sort of stupid song and dance.
We have to install an application to your computer
that you definitely don't want to have.
It takes forever.
This Command Center Software from Alienware is 1.1 gigabytes
as a download,
that's not after install.
It's super annoying.
Dell even screwed this up.
You go to this URL
and it sends you to their documents page,
not their driver download page.
You go to this URL
and it sends you to every single driver for Dell products.
Then, you have to search,
and then you find out that there's a support assist software
that you're not allowed to use,
because you don't have a Dell computer.
Thank God you don't have a Dell computer,
'cause then you'd have to use it.
I finally have it downloaded,
but every single short circuit we do on gaming headsets
that have some sort of (censored) proprietary
dumb (censored) software
take like an hour and a half longer than they need to,
because we're always fumbling around
with this extra bull (censored)
that provides the consumer nothing in return,
other than what?
You can make your pretty lights good?
How hard is that to do?
How hard is it to make good software
that makes your lights go good?
I really don't know.
I'm not a software developer.
Maybe, it's really, really, really, really, really hard.
So, maybe I just sound like an (censored) right now.
But, it's just so frustrating that, as a consumer,
I have to have this heavyweight thing
that wants to know about my games.
It wants me to launch my games from it.
I'm not gonna do that.
I already have Epic game store,
I already have Steam,
I already have all these other dumb utilities.
My GPU drivers want to launch my games too.
Leave me alone.
- [Bell] Whoa, sorry.
- [Sven] John Dell says he's sorry.
- And, this might be another...
This is another problem
is that now that we have all these proprietary standards
for spatial surround,
is Windows expected to support all of those natively
or am I gonna have to constantly be downloading apps?
Windows does have a spatial sound thing.
It's not very good.
So, like I'm all for trying to have better standards,
but, currently, I've been waiting for about 30 seconds
for this Dolby Access App to finish
doing its little loading animation.
And, I don't know if it's...
If it's just...
If it's doing anything.
I'm yet to really be blown away by surround sound
in a headset.
There's literally just limitations
that you can't overcome in a headset,
because the speakers are right by your ears.
Surround sound becomes more impactful
when the speakers are placed further away from you,
because then you can hear reflections in your environment,
as well as there's stuff like
the head related transfer function,
which is like when sound goes through your head,
and then you actually hear it in this ear
that you don't get with a headphone,
because there's not as much force.
Yeah, Dell does a terrible job.
The fact that I can't Google
AW AlienWare 720H headphone drivers
and just get to the webpage is very bad.
There, that loaded immediately.
Once I did it the normal way,
and not through Dell software,
that worked great.
Okay, we're doing Dolby Atmos, boys.
Here we go.
So, Dolby Atmos on top of it
gives you a bunch of equalizers
as well as music customization.
There's movie profiles, game profiles,
so like the game profile prioritizes accuracy,
positional accuracy for competitive gaming.
So, it might be a little bit overbearing.
It's funny, the, Dolby Access App has a little...
There's a little section that says,
"professionally tuned for Republic of Gamers".
- [Bell] Yo.
- Get wrecked.
Still not really blown away by Dolby Atmos,
but maybe it'll be better in a game.
Okay, we're gonna play Melatonin.
Check out the latency on this bad boy.
Oh, yeah, the latency is actually pretty good on it.
There's like not really a noticeable delay.
I don't even know how to do the AI noise canceling.
Is that just like default always on?
To be clear, that's microphone noise canceling.
That's not active noise canceling in the headphones.
I can't really play this on a track pad.
Here we go.
You know, it's good.
The spacial audio's good,
but, again, I'm not very blown away.
Oh, my God, this track pad.
I will say that they're very isolating.
I can't hear my computer at all,
and I'm not very playing the audio very loud,
and I, maybe,
the guys on set can attest to it,
because they've been yelling at me so many times
to get my attention.
When you run over people, there's a good crunch under...
I don't know if Dolby was on,
I think it may have crashed.
There's some sort of like interference happening.
Maybe, it's...
I don't know.
There's interference happening right now.
I hear little clickies and clackies.
Maybe, it's my phone too close.
My phone's not very close.
Yeah, I don't know if it's a connection issue or something,
but there's something that's like crackling.
I don't know if Atmos screwed it up.
I don't know if there's...
If it maybe it's low battery.
We didn't...
They were dead.
We didn't charge 'em for that long.
(engine revving)
(car horn honking)
(sporadic gunfire)
(people screaming)
Okay, yeah.
How much are these?
- [Bell] 160 US dollars.
- Not worth it.
Not worth...
160 US dollars?
They're not worth it.
- [Bell] It's on sale.
- What's the normal price?
That's the sale price?
- [Bell] It's on sale now, for 130 USD.
- Not worth it.
Dell didn't do a very good job.
I wouldn't...
I wouldn't buy these.
I would stick with pretty much
any of the other obvious go-tos
of like the HyperX Clouds
and the Steel Series Arctis 5's or whatever.
Those are gonna be a better experience.
The versatility of these
is undermined by the fact that, can you use...
Like you can use this with PlayStation?
- [Bell] Yeah.
- And, the Logitech G Pro X.
That's also a good one.
I haven't looked at those personally,
but I've heard lots of good things about them.
So, I don't know.
If you're gonna be buying a game in headset,
don't go with the ones that they send you
with your Dell computer.
Maybe, look at the at ATH M50X STS.
I know.
They're like $70 more expensive,
but they're like,
you're getting just so much more quality for that product.
Yeah, avoid these.
Sorry, Dell.