Review: Much as we might try, there is no way to put a positive spin on these less than adequate cans.
ThermalTake’s pretty much hitting the gaming peripheral space like a nade spammer in your FPS of choice. It’s bringing out mice, headsets, keyboards and more to try and position itself as the eSports hardware vendor of choice. Sadly, it’s not quite hit its stride yet, nor quite hit the mark it’s aiming it. The company’s produced some good gear recently, but at the same time it’s made a few mis-steps along the way.
Like these Shock Spin headphones, which are really only a shock in the most negative of terms.
The Shock Spin features a bold, circular design with a swirling plastic cover over each cup, and a so-called self-adjusting headband which does little more than perch the Shock Spin awkwardly on your head. Conspicuously absent, though, is any kind of mic boom – instead, the mic is on a separate cable that plugs into your mic jack and then clips onto your shirt. This is actually one of the better things about the Shock Spin, as you could – if you wanted, and you won’t – use the headphones separately for MP3 player use, without the superfluous microphone.
The ‘phones also feature a separate inline volume box, but this feels cheap and plasticky, and only a heavy gaming session away from falling apart. All the cabling is at least cloth wrapped, and adequately long.
However, it’s in sound quality that we come across the harshest criticism. Despite making bold claims about “50mm bass enhancement” all over the packaging, the Shock Spin is actually remarkably bass-free. Instead, you get a very empty, treble-ey sound quality; music’s even worse, as songs featuring rich and bass-heavy productions come out sounding hissy and flat. Even more curious, the Shock Spin simply refused to work on two out of four systems in the office; we’d normally consider this a fatal flaw, but given the lacking sound quality, we call it small mercy.
Considering you can get the excellent Plantronics GameCon 337 for much less than these ‘phones, there’s just no excuse for this level of poor performance at this price point. Sorry ThermalTake – these just don’t cut it.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012