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At the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show (CES),
Logitech had one of my favorite display booths. I can’t
really even call it a booth as it was much bigger than your
standard, small-time product display cubicle. What I enjoyed
the most about their show floor was the sheer number of products
they showcased, from keyboards/mice to game controllers, speakers,
even web cams… Logitech seems to be continually branching
out.
One of the areas they’ve managed to
grow into is the competitive field of sound hardware. I’ve
recently reviewed, to great acclaim, Logitech’s stunning
Z-5500 5.1 speaker system. Today I’ll be taking a step
in a smaller direction, that is, the headset arena. Their
USB Headset 350 is a welcome addition to a surprisingly small
USB headphone market.
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With normal headphones using the 3.5mm audio
jack, the sound card translates your voice from analog to
digital signals. Because of the varying ways different soundcards
translate these signals, some of the voice information is
lost and can degrade the signal quality for use with speech
recognition software. A USB headset doesn’t use the
soundcard and can interact directly with applications which
can benefit not only speech recognition software, but VOIP
and online gaming as well.
However, these benefits are more prominent
when compared to onboard audio solutions and low-end sound
cards. If you have a high-end soundcard such as the Audigy
2, a good analog headset will deliver better performance and
fidelity, especially for music and movies.
Despite the rather humdrum model name of
USB Headset 350, these are pretty stylish headphones. Extracting
them from their plastic blister-pack casing is an exercise
fit for those of us familiar with finger-wrenching pain.
This is a subjective complaint, but I hate
the impenetrable solid plastic bubble pack with a passion.
One is left with only one recourse in opening these packages,
that being a pocketknife (or the like), and that method requires
a steady hand lest you slice the valuable contents inside,
or better yet, a finger.
Once I successfully extricated the headset
from the plastic, I was able to get a good look and feel for
what these babies are all about. The unit is a nice shade
of charcoal gray with black padded ear cups. Logitech’s
logo tastefully adorns each earpiece as well as the in-line
volume control. The volume control was light and easy to manage,
unlike some others I’ve seen that weigh down the user
with heft akin to one of Mr. T’s gold chains.
To adjust the volume, simply touch the outer
gray ring on the + or -. Depressing the Logitech logo will
mute incoming sound and cause the blue power-up LED to flash.
The ear cups are about 3” in diameter and feature soft
foam coverings on the inner well, while plastic grills cover
the outboard sides. A fold-up microphone boom is mounted to
the right ear cup and slides neatly out of the way. The headset
is definitely a lightweight, tipping the scale at just under
200 grams.
As I mentioned, these headphones are pretty
light, which is mostly attributed to their all-plastic construction.
Slip the USB 350s over your head and you will find that they
rest lightly over your crown. However, there is no method
for adjusting fitment of these headphones other than the traditional
sliding earpieces.
The ear cups don’t rotate very much
at all to accommodate wearers of various ear anatomies. Adjusting
the height setting was easy enough, but the headset felt very
tight on my ears and the solid plastic headband allows for
no width adjustment. The soft ear cups are supple when manipulated
with fingers but offer little comfort on the ears. It was
almost like they weren’t thick enough to offset the
face of the speaker. I felt like the plastic casing was resting
right on my ears. Not off to a good start.
Installation, if you can call it that, is
simple. If you are running Windows XP, 2000, ME, 98ES or OS
X+, your machine should instantly recognize the headset. But
let it be known that USB headsets do not act the same as their
3.5mm input jack brethren. Let’s say, for example, you
are playing music in WinAmp over your desktop speakers and
want to swap quickly to the USB headphones.
You can’t just plug your USB 350s into
a free USB jack and have the music swap from speaker to headphone.
I found that when making a change of this type you need to
stop your music software, install the headset and then re-start
the software. Not very convenient. Of course, this isn’t
such a big deal if you don’t ever plan to use external
speakers. In fact, this headset is really suited more for
the laptop user or Mac Mini enthusiast who has no audio outputs.
To test the musical capacity of these headphones,
I employed my standard run of assay music. Through the speakers
I ran many tracks of punk, ska, country, rock, metal, rap,
techno and more punk. I was not immediately impressed. Right
away I noticed that punk and rock songs really did a number
on the headphones. The heavy, rapid thump of a bass drum coupled
with a rock bass line just destroyed any hope of crisp sound.
The distortion at even medium volumes was instantly noticeable.
Techno inflicted equally as much damage. It
appears the speakers just can’t handle the barrage of
both bass drum and bass guitar. However, when I turned to
my trusty THX Deepest Bass track I was pleasantly surprised.
The sharp, heavy electronic bass wasn’t grossly distorted
until very high volumes were reached. At normal listening
volume the track was clear and even the mids and highs sounded
pretty good.
The gaming portion of testing fared a bit
better than the music side of things. I tested the headset’s
in-game sound quality with a few rounds of Call of Duty, Half-Life
2 and Richard Burns Rally. While playing the games I was also
chatting away with my teammates over the Ventrilo VoIP chat
program. Firstly I will say that all of my teammates reported
they could hear me load and clear. High marks to the microphone.
And, as I mentioned before, the thin microphone
boom tucks neatly away when it’s not in use. The game
sounds didn’t suffer from the same lack of definition
that the musical tracks did. For the most part, the game sounds
were sharp and un-distorted. At loud volumes distortion did
occur, but it also made my ears hurt so I doubt I would be
playing at that volume anyway. I was satisfied with the game
performance of the USB 350s. I’ve heard much better,
but for the size and price point, in-game sound quality was
respectable.
USB
Headset
| How
to choose between computer microphones | Headset
Installation Guide |
Analog
(non-USB) headset microphones | Logitech
USB 350 Headset | Reviews
of Plantronics Headsets
|
