Closer Examination

I'm not going to lie, the first thought that crossed my mind when I pulled the Rosewill RGH-3300 out of its box was that this isn't a pretty headset. The pleather-covered headband and outer side of the ear cups, covered in matte black plastic, do look fine, but the silver details and glossy black plastic covering the parts where the headband connects to the ear cups aren't all that nice to look at. They also get dirty practically the very instant you touch them. An all-matte black design would go a long way in making the RGH-3300 more pleasing visually, at least in my opinion.


The ear cushions are fairly large and quite soft to the touch, which is due to them being made out of memory foam covered with pleather. They will surround your ears completely, which means we're talking about a proper over-ear design. The ear cups can also be rotated by 90° (or swiveled if that makes more sense to you), which makes it easier to put flat on a table or around your neck, with the swiveled ear cups softly resting on your chest.


The microphone is completely rubberized and permanently attached to the left ear cup. It can be pivoted freely. You can keep it in an upward position and simply pull it down when you want to use it. The mechanism that connects it to the ear cup is stiff enough to prevent the microphone from falling down or moving at all when it shouldn't, which is nice! The microphone doesn't automatically turn off when you put it into its upward position. You'll have to look at a higher price bracket for a feature like that.


The microphone can be folded, which would allow you to place it closer to your mouth, but it never really stays in its set position for long. I stopped playing around with that option since it pretty much sounded the same regardless of whether I brought it extremely close to my mouth or kept it in its default position. You can simply pull it down and start talking right away without having to worry about its exact position.


The cutouts on both sides of the plastic headband look like they have some sort of a cooling purpose, but they don't - they're merely there for aesthetics. A touch of aggressiveness, if you will. I'm not a fan of such details, but who knows, perhaps you are.


The cable that comes out of the left ear cup is completely flat and covered in rubber. It looks sturdy, and I never managed to get it tangled, even though I had the headset in my crammed backpack on a daily basis. Lovely!


The first part of the cable is 1.3 meters long and terminates with a 3.5-millimeter TRRS connector. This is a practical solution as you'll use the TRRS connector to connect the headset to your mobile devices or console gamepads, and you won't need it to be any longer than it is if you do.


The second part of the cable, the one that serves as the Y-splitter, is 1.1 meters long. Like I've already mentioned, this is the part you'll need to be able to use the headset with your PC and external sound card with a separate audio in and out, or similar devices. It's also flat and made exactly in the same way as the first part of the cable.

At this point, you might be wondering where the in-line remote, the module that would allow you to control the volume and mute the microphone with a button is. Bad news: There isn't one. You'll be forced to control the volume via the operating system and cover the microphone with your hand when you don't want your teammates to hear your surroundings.


This won't be much of a problem if you own a keyboard with volume controls. If you don't, do what I did - download an application that's going to enable you to remap your keyboard, such as SharpKeys, which I've been using for the past couple years. Find a pair of keys you don't use much - for me, those would be PageUp and PageDown - and simply bind Media: Volume Down and Media: Volume Up to them. Click on Write to Registry and you're done - you now have global keyboard volume controls you can use to adjust the volume in any application or game. You can do the same for Next Track and Previous Track, by the way.