Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Steve from gamers Nexus dotnet and I am kind of sick right now so you're gonna have to deal with my voice as it were we are reviewing the Plantronics new game comm 788 headset today this is a refresher on their 780 headset which I've been recommending for a couple years now and not much has changed which is really that's okay it doesn't have to change if it works and the 780 I've been recommending as one of the best value headsets in the $60 range for the last few years you can almost always find it fifty to eighty dollars tends to be lower and the 788 and 780 have identical specifications beyond a few things and those few things include the colors which don't really impact performance too much so colors have changed a little bit it's using more orange on the seven eighty eight whereas the 780 was a bit more of a dark red they changed the driver support so the 7 88 introduced Windows 8 and 8.1 driver support officially this was adopted by all other modern Plantronics products as well so the 780 should also be compatible with Windows 8 at this point and 8.1 and that's all they're all that's changed so if you already have a 780 and it works well I would say just before we even talk about audio quality you don't need to get the 788 if you don't yet have the 780 and you need a headset of some kind my recommendation going forward is going to shift to the 788 as it is the refresher and let's run through the audio specs really quickly the 780 and 788 chip with a 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz speaker driver frequency response which is pretty standard really and the driver size is 40 millimeters again not not too off the path that's fairly standard a couple higher-end headsets will do 50 millimeters though the microphone frequency response is 100 Hertz day out of 8 rather kilohertz not 800 Gillard's that would be that would be like husky Starcraft levels of high voice 100 Hertz 10 kilohertz on the mic 6.5 feet on the cable length uses USB and of course does not use a sound card as a result it has its own processing going on and is compatible with Windows and Mac it's got a one-year service warranty pretty standard stuff really there are a couple buttons on the earpiece you can control the mic mute and unmute the volume and then you can also press a button that enables Dobey digital headphone technologies and the the drivers themselves there are only two drivers and then they simulate 7.1 channels using digital means which is pretty standard these days in the headset so it's not true quote-unquote 7.1 audio but it's pretty damn close and games that support it the dhobi technology that I mentioned can actually it does a few things so what it really tries to do is make the sound more rich and it does that by sort of surrounding your head and audio it almost feels like sound is coming from all sides rather than just the earphones are just sort of an interesting experience it kind of resembles an auditorium in that way but there are a couple downsides to this and all and there are a few upsides as well it just kind of depends on the user the the downsides you lose a lot of the highs in music I found that cymbals were kind of lost the higher cymbals Alexisonfire uses a lot of these in their music you kind of lose some of that vocals if there's any like post-hardcore screaming type of stuff you're going to lose some of the higher grittiness and it's it's kind of brought down a level in terms of tone and that's just because of how the dhobi technology is making everything sound like it resonates more with in the headphones rather than just hit your ear directly so again sort of an idiosyncratic thing but it can sound cool for explosions and big boomy bassy things I like that a lot unfortunately it's really not usable at all for a competitive gaming that that makes use of a directional audio and counter-strike go it's going to get you murdered if you use that Dolby sound but that's okay because you can disable it and the reason it'll get you murdered is because it actually will take the sound and sort of equalize the channels so if you've got sound that's supposed to only come in through the right channel or the right year excuse me the right year having this technology enabled we'll send it to both ears and then you don't know if the guys on your right or your left or above you or whatever if you disable it the headset does use as I said 7.1 digital simulation of surround so you can actually pinpoint sort of left right up down diagonally up down back forward it's very cool it works better in games like Battlefield that fully support this type of audio a lot of games don't do more than 5.1 very well counter-strike included but if you're playing something like Battlefield it's great for that you're playing something like Skyrim you can get kind of a more immersive experience in this regard especially if you do want to try dialing with Adobe technology because Skyrim isn't really as dependent upon directional audio so that's sort of how I feel about the headset it's it's fairly comfortable it is very tight when you first get it but that just means that it's going to loosen up as use it give it about a week I found that's all it took for mine to loosen up and no longer apply pressure anywhere your the earphones are Square and don't touch my ears almost at all and that's a good thing because there's no awkward pressure or anything like that going on while you're using it so everything fits pretty well it's fairly comfortable produces an immersive experience and has good directional audio I would recommend playing around with Dolby Surround seeing what you think of it my personal choice is to leave it disabled because I don't like it but it's up to you so that's the Plantronics game comm 780 hit the link of the description below for a far more in-depth review this kind of gives you a quick overview of everything you may want to read the review if you're considering the purchase and of course I have links to the product on that page as well and that is all for now I will see you all next time peace