The Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 2 costs as little as $42 and offers way more than you'd dare hope for when looking at its price. It's built around a dual headband design with a metal outer headband keeping it together and a suspended inner headband resting on top of your head. The inner headband automatically adjusts to all head shapes and sizes, which means you simply slap the F.R.E.Q. 2 on your head and are good to go without fiddling with its "height" or anything else.

The foam-filled, pleather-covered ear pads and reasonable clamping force do a solid job of ensuring comfort during longer gaming sessions. While you won't forget you're wearing it—it's a fairly bulky headset after all—it won't cause any irritation or pain, either.

The best aspect of this headset is its sound performance. The built-in 40-millimeter speaker drivers have been tuned to provide excellent spatial positioning, which works great in multiplayer shooters, where the ability to hear and locate enemy footsteps and gunfire makes all the difference. Bass reproduction is decent. The low end is definitely present, though without much bite or attack, so bass-heads will likely find it lacking. The mids are pushed forward to help with spatial awareness, and the high-range is toned down to avoid ear fatigue. The F.R.E.Q. 2 generally sounds much better than you'd expect from a $42 gaming headset. It's also worth noting that the built-in speaker drivers respond well to equalization. If your sound card offers an equalizer, you'll be able to improve bass and treble response should you find them lacking.

Microphone quality is acceptable, no more, no less. It's usable for Discord and TeamSpeak communication and unsuitable for anything more demanding. Keeping in mind this is a $42 gaming headset, that's about as much as you can expect.

Overall, considering you're getting quite a bit of bang for your buck, the Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 2 is easy to recommend. It's definitely one of most interesting affordable gaming headsets I had a chance of trying out this year.