Closer Examination, Build Quality, and Comfort

In an ocean of clones, the AQIRYS Alnair stands out with its unusual design. From its cloth-covered headband to futuristic markings on the ear cups, the Alnair doesn't look like any other headset I've seen to date. It's available in matte black or matte white, with both options using plastic on all visible contact areas. The inner headband is made of metal.


Like most other modern gaming headsets, the Alnair offers a RGB lighting system, consisting of two LED strips on each ear cup. You can use the accompanying button, found on the right ear cup, to switch between effects (rainbow, static, breathing) and colors. Pressing and holding the aforementioned button turns the RGB lights off, which is the smartest course of action, as that way you save on battery life and realistically lose nothing – you can't see the shiny LEDs while wearing the headset anyway.


The headband is extremely flexible, which you'll learn to appreciate any time you drop the headset. From my experience, flexibility translates to drop resistance; a rigid frame is much more prone to snapping after a nasty fall.


The inner side of the headband is padded unevenly. There's noticeably more padding on its flanks than center, which is an odd design choice, as the most padded areas of the headband didn't even come into contact with my head.


The pleather ear pads are large, thick and fairly soft. However, the lateral clamping force is higher than expected, so if your head is on the larger side like mine is, you could have issues with wearing comfort of the AQIRYS Alnair. For me, this was never one of those headsets I could forget I'm wearing, or even wear for multiple hours with no breaks. Don't count on it loosening up after a couple of days either; the clamping force stayed pretty much consistent for the duration of my time with the Alnair. For normal-sized or smaller heads, I don't expect comfort to be an issue.


The height of the ear cups can be adjusted by sliding them up and down the metal headband. The mechanism isn't particularly refined, but they do stay in place, so once you find an optimal height, you'll be all set.


Both ear cups have controls and ports assigned to them. On the left one, you'll find a volume dial, two buttons (ANC/Transparency mode toggle and microphone mute), a 3.5-millimeter 4-pole (TRRS) audio port, and a microphone connector. Muting the microphone is accompanied by a voice notification, but there's no LED indication to tell you that it currently isn't recording audio. The volume adjustment on the AQIRYS Alnair behaves strangely – it reacts with a slight delay, so the selected volume level is reached after half of a second rather than instantly. I found this quite annoying, but there's no way around it, as the same delay is present when the volume is adjusted via the Windows volume slider.


On the right ear cup, you'll find a power button, a button to activate, deactivate, and cycle between lighting effects, and a USB-C charging port. The power button is also used to initiate Bluetooth pairing. When a Bluetooth connection is established, you can use it to play and pause music, skip songs, and answer phone calls. If you're wondering why RGB effects are controlled via a dedicated button, that's because the AQIRYS Alnair has no accompanying software driver. While I'm certainly not a fan of having to install dedicated software for every device I own, headsets are an exception, because software usually gives us useful features such as a system-wide equalizer. With that in mind, I see this as a drawback of the Alnair.


The detachable microphone has a rubberized arm, which has no trouble staying in a desired position relative to the mouth. Its capsule offers an omnidirectional pickup pattern and is covered with a pop filter.


It's nice that the supplied audio cable, needed to use the Alnair as an analog headset, includes an in-line remote control with volume control and a microphone. Thanks to that, you can use the Alnair for phone calls even when you're using it in wired mode. Connecting the wire automatically disables all wireless functionality of the headset – including 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.


Another unusual part of the bundle are the rubber cat ears, which you can attach to the headband if that's the look you're going for.