Gadgetory

in the turtlebeach booth they're very proud of the 7-series headset that they have just released here at the show is that correct we announced this headset actually at e3 2012 but it's been designed in conjunction with major league gaming so after we initially announced it we shopped it around to some pro gamers got their feedback on it we've made a few changes to the product and now we're relaunching it here at CES 2013 for a release later this month okay so I think we can both agree that a gaming headset is totally worthless if it's not comfortable is that correct absolutely so let's talk durability and comfort these are these are memory foam I can tell you guys right now that it's very comfortable this is some of the softest padding that I have encountered on the ears themselves check this out it takes this thing like a good couple steamboats to retract to its original position which means it's gonna mold itself it's not gonna put a lot of pressure on your ears and on the side of your head when you have even memory foam that that rebounds very very quickly it can actually put added pressure versus this softer denser memory foam so that's not that's something that I noticed immediately tell us what you guys have done sort of that I didn't notice the comfort so there's a few things here number one and this is actually some of the feedback that we got from from our pro gamers that we talked to so the angle of this yoke here is incredibly important to how well a headset fits on somebody and so we made sure that we took a bunch of head measurements we did a bunch of research to make sure that this would fit as many people as you know is possibly could obviously it's a headset you can't make it fit everyone perfectly but um that's one of the big things that we did the other thing is the position of the microphone on this headset it's designed to naturally come into front of your mouth where it's supposed to go it stays in place so you're not fighting with it all the time but its position here on the earcup is great the wire itself also is designed to be positioned back further on the headset so it's not going to interfere with the mic you're not going to get any sort of a does not come out does not come out the other very cool to show you guys that does come out yes the mic comes out just like that which is pretty handy so you can actually as Lynas here was saying it does connect why don't show them and you can see why the mic coming out matters alright guys so there's a few versions of this guy so there we're looking at the XP here which is hooked up to a console but there's a PC version that also comes with this particularly cool doodad and then there's a mobile version that does not include a microphone and doesn't come with this one so Jeff tell us what exactly this capacitive touch panel thing here does with all these different buttons and dials and spaceship so this is our audio control unit for the seven series basically it is the brains of the operation what it does is processes all of the sound so the headset disconnects right here and this becomes a mobile headset so it's a passive headset that you can plug into your smart phone your tablet your mobile gaming console whatever you have and connect it back here to the audio control unit so the audio control unit is where the surround sound magic happens number one it's also fully programmable so what happens is we have a tool that's called the advanced sound editor that you can download from our website load it up on your PC and get full control over exactly how the audio on the headset is processed when you do this you can actually do things like turn up the sound of footsteps turn up the sound of reloads turn down the sound of tanks if you're playing a sports game you can turn off the crowd noise lots of really cool features and all of that is accessed via the audio control unit and can I change that around on the fly while I'm actually in the middle of the game so the way that it works is you're allowed to load up eight individual presets when you're editing numbers one through eight you set it you set it into reset mode here and when you pushed all the buttons on it when when you touch the numbers on it it switches among the different presets that are loaded on to it when you're editing a preset you do hear the sounds on the fly change so you can hear the edits as you make them very cool now you guys have another little input here that looks like it's got kind of a phone phone next to it what does this guy do that input is another stereo 4-pole connection you can connect either an mp3 player or another smartphone to it when you do that then you can actually mix in your own music from your external device and/or take phone calls directly through the headset so while you're gaming with your friends you can actually have a phone call as well so if I take a phone call I mean everyone that I'm on skype with or Ben Trillo or whatever they're gonna hear me my mom you know calling me my nickname from when I was a kid right nope definitely not with it this is a mom nickname safe headset alright so it automatically is going to mix that out for me so they're not going to hear any of that very very cool stuff so we've got some other oh yeah great thing one more thing on this there's more but wait there's more right so the seven series we know that a lot of pro gamers are in clans they're in gills they do a lot of things and they might want to customize the look of this product so the plates on the outside of this headset are actually designed to pop off and we're working on a system that will allow gamers to upload their own images and create designs so that they can customize the look of their seven headset to suit their needs and if you want to play with your clan and you go to an event or something like that you can all have matching plates it's pretty cool stuff so you made a very bold claim when I first walked up to the booth where you said something along the lines of this is the best gaming headset FR with an a it is this is the most powerful and I'm gonna I'm gonna crush this is one thing wired because we have wireless products that do the same stuff so in the world of wired headsets this is absolutely the most powerful most capable gaming headset that your money can buy awesome let's move on to the next product probably now we're showing you something that may not be as exciting from a huge amazing feature standpoint although he's keeping a couple things away from me that he hasn't told me yet so this is a lower-priced headset than the seven but what does this do that makes it special and is a first for PC gaming he wouldn't tell me so this is the Z 300 and it does bring a few cool features that PC gamers are unused to having I think in headsets so number one the connection on this thing is very simple it's got a USB thumb stick type device you plug it in and by the time you're done crawling around under your desk plugging it in get back up into your chair it's done and your heads that's ready to go it's a driverless plug-and-play installation it works on Windows Mac and Linux for all of the seven or eight games that are still coming they're coming out but it's a rechargeable battery it's a 15 hour rechargeable battery you can also play it you're charging so if you decide you want to go on like a 27-hour bender of Team Fortress 2 you can do that and you can play it while you're charging it's extremely comfortable it's got a dual pairing stereo bluetooth in it as well so once again you can mix in your own music you can take phone calls over the Bluetooth while you're gaming if you wanted to pair the Bluetooth to the Bluetooth in your PC you could also do that it's also designed to have two audio inputs into the headset over that USB so if you're using Ventrilo or Skype or mumble what you can do is go into your programs audio preferences set up the output for the chat channel and then you actually have Hardware level chat control here so you don't have to tab out of your game to adjust the chat volume then you've got game volume control which is your master system volume on the back of this ear cup right here so you don't ever have to tab out of your game to adjust both your chat or your game volume to really sweet features this also runs on what we call our dual band Wi-Fi system which means it will have absolutely interference free connection dual band Wi-Fi is a Wi-Fi certified protocol it operates anywhere between 2.4 and 5 gigahertz when that transmitter fires itself up it's going to take a survey of the wireless networks around it it handshakes and negotiates with those networks creates an open pathway for itself and make sure that it doesn't interfere with anything else so you won't get lag on the router or anything else like that tell me about the mode and the limiter buttons on this side on this ear cup okay so the limiter is is one of the cooler features on this headset I've got to say basically if you're if you're playing a game and you're listening for a quiet sound like a footstep or something like that chances are you're probably gonna be turning up the volume a little bit higher and then somebody is 100% gonna drop a grenade right beside your foot it's gonna make it go deaf so with the limiter does is it limits the maximum volume so you can crank the volume to listen for those quieter sounds and then you can have have the assurance that you're not going to blow out your eardrums the mode button actually addresses this plug down here so we recognize that gamers don't stay at home and game all the time I mean sometimes we go out to the store to buy a new game right and and what that's all changing with Steam so what you can do with that plug actually is it comes to the cable you can plug that into your smart phone and you've got a wired connection for listening to music so if you're on an airplane this is a mobile headphone you know they make you turn off the Bluetooth devices so you can use that for that as well sounds great thank you so much you've actually been a been a great interviewee for us so thank you guys don't miss any of the Lynas tech tips coverage from CES 2013 make sure that you are subscribed click the button it's not that hard you