EPOS GAME ONE Review

Comfort

The velvet-padded headband on the GAME ONE is quite nice, holding the headset very comfortably on your head, while also preventing any wobbling. Additionally, our testers who wore glasses didn't experience any unpleasant pressure points.

The ear cup padding is covered in velvet and is a bit on the firmer side, but the vast majority of our judging panel was more than happy to wear the GAME ONE for extended periods of time — even for upwards of 10 hours.

We found the ear cups to be plenty spacious, measuring a little over 1.25" across and about 2.6" tall.

We liked that the open ear cup design kept you from getting overly sweaty when wearing them for long periods of time.

Audio

Moving on to how the GAME ONE actually sounds, it did alright with positional sound that was originating in front of us or to the sides, but it can get a little muddled when the sound was behind us. A handful of testers incorrectly identified the location of the sound.

Voice from other players comes across exceptionally loud and clear, though the deeper tones sounded slightly more muted. However, the open back design on this headset makes them abysmal at blocking out any external noise, allowing you to hear every side conversation or noises like fans or music playing in the same room you are playing in.

This headset also provides great sound when listening to the soundtracks or music, delivering well-balanced sound with only a slight emphasis on the mid-range tones. It has a slightly airy sound due to its open back, but provides an immersive experience, especially when playing games with a rich, orchestral soundtrack.

The GAME ONE didn't do the best when the bass was boosted to the max, failing to display any parasitic buzz, instead actually rattling the headset around. The frequencies both sounded extremely centered in the driver matching test, and all of our judges were usually able to identify the location of the sounds in the binaural test, again, much more accurately when the sounds were in front of them, rather than behind.

Microphone

Moving on to the microphone quality, the GAME ONE again scored very well, putting it right at the top of the group in this metric.

When listening to recordings taken with the GAME ONE mic, almost all of our judges thought it sounded great. Only a few judges noticed a tiny amount of buzzing, and one noted that the recorded voice sounded slightly flatter than it did in real life. There was only a small amount of feedback when the microphone was tapped, and it doesn't overemphasize “T” or “S” sounds.

The microphone also does a solid job of only picking up your voice and filtering out external noises. While it will pick up sounds of you eating or a background fan, you can type away on a mechanical keyboard without issue. There is only a slight amount of noise on the other end when you mute the mic, and while it will pick up the sounds of other people talking in the room with you, the side conversations are transmitted at a much lower level and won't overpower the sounds of the game you are playing.

Ease of Use

This headset has onboard controls right on the headphones, allowing you to adjust the volume and mute the mic by simply lifting the mic up and out of the way. The cord on this product is plenty long, measuring 9.65 feet, and is detachable. However, the mic is not detachable, and it doesn't have the ability to enable a mic sidetone, but we never really found this to be a problem with the open-back design.

Value

While this is a good headset, it isn't the best value option because it pairs high performance with a high price.

Conclusion