Gaming...er...Hands-On Testing
Gaming devices like the Everglide s-500 Professional Gaming Headphones should be testing in a gaming situation to prove their worth. Gaming imparts extra stress on a device, because gamers are hard on their equipment. Keyboards get bashed, mice get thrown, and if your head is about to swell up and explode with rage, gaming headphones might just become uncomfortable. Before jumping into the LAN test though, I asked Chris try them out (figures 9 through 11) by playing the Half Life 2 modified game called "Gary's Mod" for a few hours. Chris wrote down a few comments during this early test phase, as follows:
(1) The clarity of sound beats the Logitech speakers hooked up to this Big Al's Computer.
(2) Wearing the Everglide s-500 Professional Gaming Headphones permits a more consuming game playing experience.
(3) Even with glasses and hair, the headphones are comfortable.
(click to enlarge) | | Figure 9 Chris wears glasses, and the Everglide s-500 Gaming Headphones adjust for that. |
(click to enlarge) | | Figure 10 Chris downs a few drinks while Gary's Mod loads up on the "printer-to-computer-deja-vu" machine. |
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(click to enlarge) | | Figure 11 Here we are 2 hours later. Chris is still digg'in the 'phones! |
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So having a few products from Everglide to review gave me the excuse to host a LAN party. More specifically, a Call of Duty 2 LAN party. Gameday was set to start at 8PM on a Saturday night, and the guys started showing up early. There wasn't any pizza this time, but my wife Sandra did serve up a nice pasta dish. It was consumed in a matter of minutes. I'm lucky I was around to hear "Dinner's ready!" from the kitchen.
Anyway, we found a good on-line server, capable of hosting 50 players and it had a low ping. Let the gaming...er...testing begin!
(click to enlarge) | | Figure 12 James is going for another weapon in COD2. He's using other Everglide devices - see my next review! |
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(click to enlarge) | | Figure 13 An hour later - he's loving every minute os it! |
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(click to enlarge) | | Figure 14 Irtiza (Tiz for short) really likes the 'phones. |
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(click to enlarge) | | Figure 15 Tiz rates the sound quality "really high". |
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After a few hours of gaming, I made the boys switch computers so several gamers could try out the Everglide s-500 Professional Gaming Headphones. James liked the 'phones (figures 12 and 13), and rated the quality as "high", with the sound as "good" and the comfort level as "no problem". James doesn't wear glasses, so I kind of expected the comfort issue to be no problem for him. Tiz rated the 'phones (figures 14 and 15) quality level one step up to "really high", and the sound at the same "good" level. Tiz did drop the comfort rating down one notch from "no problem" to "ok". The next level would have been "hurts". Tiz wears glasses, so a downgrade in comfort from a gamer that doesn't wear glasses is to be expected. Looking back at what Chris had to say about comfort (basically "no problem"), it might depend on what you are used to. None of these guys use gaming headphones in day-to-day gaming, but Chris does like to listen to his MP3 player with those headphones that sit in your outer ear. He probably likes the comfort level of the Everglide s-500 Professional Gaming Headphones more compared to those "in your ear" headphones.
Now I did use the 'phones a bit too you see. There's no picture of me wearing them at the LAN party because all those guys were too busy gaming. I thought the comfort level was "ok", but I wear glasses too. Let's face it. Anything on your head that goes over the ears where you have the frames of your glasses sitting nearby is going to have some affect. I can certainly live with the Everglide s-500 Professional Gaming Headphones on my head for several hours before I want to take them off. The sound is actually quite good too. I tried them in several of my Big Al's Computers machines, including ones that have built-in sound on the motherboard, and ones that have Santa Cruz and Soundblaster sound cards. The 'phones sound best on the Soundblaster card machine, and although the bass is a little high for normal music listening, it's great for gaming. Ambient noise is kept out of your gaming enjoyment by the soft cushion that fits around each ear. The padding on the top helps those of us that don't have much hair up there. Hmmmm. I wonder who that could be?
One thing I could not do is accurately measure the frequency response of the headphones. As I said on the Introduction page, Everglide did not specify the - 3dB point when stating that the s-500 Professional Gaming Heaphones had a frequency range of 20 - 20k Hz. Based on my past experience of graphing individual speakers (drivers in the audio field) at James B. Lansing Sound (JBL) with B&K spectrum analyzers, I would bet at least 25 cents that the frequency range of these 'phones doesn't cover the 20 to 20kHz frequency range at + / - 3 dB. However, they do sound fine, even to my ear. So you could say that they are "Big Al Approved". Hey, I like how that sounds.
Ok, let's draw up some conclusions here....
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