Review: The Shock One headset from Thermaltake is very well-featured, but lacking in the most important department...
We admit it – we have a large cranium. Hats tend to perch nervously atop our editorial skull, and finding even sunglasses can be a chore. So it’s become quite the habit, when we first try on a new set of headphones, to immediately crank anything adjustable as wide as it can go. We were surprised, then, to discover Thermaltake’s Shock One (gallery here) fell off immediately. It seems to be built for humans on a gigantic scale, and even at its smallest extension it still feels a little large.
Amazing!
Also amazing is the feature set packed into these phones. There’s just about everything you could want in a set of epic cans. Sadly, the one thing that’s really missing is good, gaming-grade sound.
The Shock One headset is great at picking all kinds of subtle sound effects and musical nuances, but it wraps them up in a somewhat echoey overall sound schema. In our testing in Modern Warfare and World of Warcraft, sounds were either muted up close, or hollow and ringing at range. Game music sounds pretty good, but listening to actual tunes delivers that same, big empty room effect.
But like we said, the Shock One’s featured out the wazoo. A ten foot cloth-braided cable means that you can practically go for a jog around the block in between level loads, while you also get spare padded covers and a bag in the packaging. There’s a small in-line control unit that includes a clip to attach to your shirt (or collar, or underwear, or cat), as well as volume controls, a mute for both mic and the phones themselves, a switch for the red lighting, and even a lock to stop accidental muting episodes or volume changes. The mic is the only real let down, feature wise – it folds out of the way but is still a little inconvenient.
If sound quality’s not your first demand in a set of gaming headphones, these are a well-featured option. But if real clarity’s your aim, you’ll want to look elsewhere.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012