هدست گیمینگ بی سیم Astro مدل A50 Astro Gaming A50 Gaming Wireless Headset

Who is the Astro Gaming A50 Wireless for?

What’s the Astro Gaming A50 Wireless like?

The Astro Gaming A50 Wireless is unmistakably a gaming headset. It’s made primarily from plastic, with big headphones, a hollow plastic band, and an attached flexible microphone. The headphones attach to the band using metal bars, which are also use to adjust the headset’s height and rotate the ear cups. It comes with velour pads, which is great for gamers with glasses. Materials like leatherette offer better isolation overall, but you need something a little softer and more flexible to establish a decent seal around a pair of glasses.

On first use, the headset seems well built. However, even after a just a little while the durability of the band seems pretty suspect. The Astro Gaming A50 Wireless is compatible with Astro’s Mod Kit accessories, which offer leatherette replacements for the band cushion and ear pads, as as such, these parts are easy to remove. The ear pads are held in magnetically, and they’re easier to take off and put on than any gaming headset I’ve ever used. The headband cushion snaps into place, but after taking it out once, it now pops out almost every time I use the headset.

Nothing about the headset is bent or broken, the pad just has a very loose connection. This is, in a word, infuriating. I need to put a rubber band over the cushion to keep it in place. Having easily replaceable parts is a great idea, but here that interchangeability makes using the Astro Gaming A50 Wireless worse. It feels cheap, despite being $300.

Apart from the band issues, using the headset is fine; but it takes a little getting used to. There are all sorts of on-ear controls, and figuring out which button or switch is where takes time. On the back of the right headphone, there’s the volume dial and power switch, as well as buttons for toggling the A50’s Dolby sound and EQ presets. The right ear cup has buttons for adjusting the balance between game and chat audio. On the left ear cup, the microphone mutes when you flip it up.

The included base station is what you use to connect the Astro Gaming A50 Wireless to your PC or console, and using is generally pretty simple—just plug the USB cord in, put the headset in the cradle, and it’s ready to go. Most of the time, there isn’t much issue, but every so often, the base station stops charging the headset. On PC, I only ever have to unplug it for a second to fix it, but on PlayStation 4 I run into issues much more frequently, and it isn’t always just charging—sometimes the headset doesn’t connect at all.

Connecting a headset that employs an optical cord to a PlayStation 4 is always a little more complicated than plug-and-play headsets. However, even with all the correct steps followed, it’s a little inconsistent.

The Astro Gaming A50 Wireless actually comes with quite a bit in the box. On top of the headset itself, you get the included wireless base station, micro USB cord for connecting it to your platform of choice, and an optical cable for playing on the PlayStation 4. The micro USB also works for directly charging the headset.

How do you connect the Astro Gaming A50?

The Astro Gaming A50 Wireless connects to your console or PC using a USB cord connected to its included base station and charging cradle. The base station connects to the headset using a 2.4GHz RF signal, which is lag free and great for gaming. Astro claims the A50 Wireless can maintain a steady connection up to 30 feet, which feels pretty accurate—I don’t drop connection to the base station even on the other side of my apartment behind a few closed doors.

How good is the battery life?

Astro claims the A50 Wireless can last over 15 hours on a single charge, and while that’s very possible, we can’t actually tell for sure. The headset features a baked in battery saving “feature” that can’t turned off and puts the headset to sleep after not moving for around a half hour. This means we can’t conduct our typical full battery test, barring us placing the battery testing rig on top of a running washing machine for 16 plus hours. But from what results we can get by poking the headset every so often and checking the battery percentage: we’d estimate around 16 hours of playback time.

The headset automatically shuts off after 30 minutes of inactivity.

This standby feature means if you forget to shut off your headset and go to sleep, it won’t lose much charge when you next pick it up. However, it also means if you’re prone to laying down as you play or watch movies or what have you, you might run into it going to sleep while you’re using it. As long as you move your head at least every few minutes it shouldn’t be an issue.

Gaming with the Astro Gaming A50 Wireless

Despite the issues I have generally with using the Astro Gaming A50 Wireless, gaming with it is a completely fine experience. Playing games like Overwatch, Risk of Rain 2, and Doom Eternal on PC is great. The heavy metal soundtrack of Doom sounds great, but never overshadows all the different snaps, pops, and booms that make the game’s combat such a satisfying audio experience.

This headset offers Dolby Audio surround sound for gaming on both the PlayStation 4 and PC, and while it works well enough, the directional effect is definitely a little on the light side. I have trouble distinguishing it from the regular stereo sound sometimes, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Gaming headsets often try to offer a pretty wide soundstage, so even a stereo signal sounds accurate enough. Surround sound is nice to have, but it’s not going to make most people any better at video games.