Sound Performance

Performance with this headset was measured using the Command & Conquer 3 demo as there are a lot of sounds during the game. The movie Chronicles of Riddick was used for the movie tests, as it includes lots of deep, low level sounds as well as a lot of sound effects and speech. To measure performance of music, various audio files and a Audio CD were used. Even though the sound performance is included as such here, the results reflect our objective but still personal opinion.

Gaming Performance

As mentioned before Command & Conquer 3 was played to examine the gaming performance. Without the use of the SRS unit, the GH50 are actually very quiet and cannot be differentiated from any other, even very cheap headphones. As soon as the SRS unit was turned on mid game, my first impression was "Wow - where did this 1337 bass come from?". In other words, the headset performs incredible with low frequencies just as it does in the high end of the spectrum. While the low end is somewhat drowning, the high tones are clear and well balanced. Due to these prominent features, mid tones seem to be overpowered by these somewhat. The difference between SRS and no such addition is amazing. You may also control the level of "surround" on the silver device itself. In a game like Command & Conquer, you should definitely turn it up all the way, as it simply sounds amazing. Now that I have given you all the positive aspects, there is a simple but rather annoying negative feature. As soon as the SRS feature is turned on, a very noticeable hiss can be heard. This cannot be removed by raising or lowering the volume. It is simply there. Luckily it does not become louder as the volume is increased, which means you can simply down it out, by turning the GH50 up a bit.

Movie & Music Performance

Next the Chronicles of Riddick DVD was inserted and even though the headsets are not true 5.1 surround sound, the SRS sounds so great, that it should be turned on all the time for any type of movie. The technology completes the sound stage, even though only two speakers are used. Suddenly explosions sound menacing and engulf the viewer and screams, high notes and other sudden noises may even get you twitching a bit if you are not watching out for it. These headsets should make action movies more dramatic and horror movies a lot scarier to watch.

Audio does benefit a bit from the filled sound stage, but not nearly as much as games and movies. While the low and high frequencies do perform just as good, they feel a bit out of place. We are simply to used to the way certain songs sound, that any change takes a while getting used to.

Comfort

The Saitek GH50 is incredibly light and does not put any strain on the wearer at all. These are by far the lightest headphones I had the pleasure to try. Any other headsets from manufacturers like AKG, Sennheiser, Sony, Philips, Logitech or Speed-Link have been much heavier. The cups are shaped in an "O" form and do fit quite nicely. Most of the surrounding noise cannot be heard, but this is partly due to the SRS technology.

Durability

The one thing of concern here is the use of plastic construction. The weak links here are the inner head strap and the sound cups mountings. These are most likely the first to suffer after extended period of use. Nonetheless, overall construction is quite solid, but I would have expected a bit more for the price paid. The SRS unit does feel a bit cheap as well.