Official Xbox One Stereo Headphones Impressions

Got the new Official headphones that came out yesterday, thought I'd share some impressions about them. I already have 7.1 Surround Turtle Beaches that I used for the 360, and I needed the new Mic adapter so I could use their mic function(before the adapter came out, I could only use Kinect as a Mic while using the Turtel Beaches). I noticed the new MS Stereo Headphones come with the new Mic adapter as well, so rather than buying the adapter seperately(30$ value), I figured I would buy the Headphones (80$ total cdn) , this way I would have backup headphones in case the other ones broke, and also I was curious to see how official ones performed on the X1....hoepfully this doesn't sound too confusing lol...

The Headphones are suprinsingly high-quality build considering their value(50$), and the ear pieces felt better and more tight than my Turtle Beaches. The sound quality is superb, with a deep overall bass , of course they are only stereo and not surround, but it didn't feel like a huge difference with that repect(I may need more time with them with respect to that....but its my impression so far).

They have 1 wire that plugs directly into your controler(via new mic adapter), and they don't need batteries, they appear to draw power from the controller it seems. The Mic piece is built in and you can move it up and down and fold it back into the headphones.....overall design is pretty sleek.

They appear to be wireless, in the sense that they get their music signals wirelessly, so it seems if you have too much wireless signals in your home, you might get slight intereference.....what happened to me is once in a while I could hear the sound cut out a bit, but overall the quality was great and this was not really an issue compared to my Turtle Beaches, who also had that issue sometimes.

What I really liked was that the new Mic adapter has 2 extra buttons on the left that allow you to change game music/sounds versus mic chat voice levels balance, allowing you to get that perfect balance so you could hear the game music and the other people talking with their mics.....this felt like a nice improvement over the 360 experience, as I could hear the others very well even though I was using headphones. Furthermore, some people I was playing Forza 5 online with mentioned to me how clear my voice sounded. Also, it's nice that the volume control is on the mic adapter iteself, so you don't need to move your hand up to the headphones to change volume.

Bear in mind these are my impressions from using them a few hours, some of the things , like no batteries required, I had to figure out on my own, as the heaphones come with minimal instructions....so not everything I said here is necessarily 100% accurate, if I notice new things I will update the thread.

Bottom line: They are not the most incredible headphones on the market, but if you are on a budget, these are great for the price (80$ CDN), and already come with the new Mic adapter(30$ value on its own), so for many I suspect they will fit the bill.

I want it for the simple reason that they just plug right into your controller (with adapter of course) nice and simple. It's $100AU here and you can't argue for that price, considering some headphones go upwards of $200.

@BattleSpectre:

Yeah the convenience and the price are big positives here. I switched back to my 240$ Turtle Beaches and although I may need more playtime to come to a conculsion, right now I'd be hard pressed to say that they are significantly better than the X1 Stereo ones.

Also I want to add one detail I noticed yesterday. The standalone Mic adapter package comes with a 2.5mm to 3.5mm wire converter, somehting that I need to be able to plug my Turtle Beaches to the new mic adapter. However, this 2.5mm-3.5mm wire does not come with the Stereo Headphones package(since you dont need it really to plug the headphones, they are 3.5mm),,,,,so basically it's just to say there is a minor difference on buying the Mic adapter on its own as opposed to getting it with the Stereo Headphones package.

its called the mic adapter?

I thought it was the stereo headset adapter.

Does that mean we dont need it for any headset for the system?

Yes, it's called the stereo headset adapter. If you want to use your favourite old headset now you can.

Yeah that is the correct name I believe, sorry I just referred to it as the MIC adapter. Yes you do need it for your old headphones to fully work, depends on which kind though.... For example, I could use my old 360 Turtle beaches on the Xbox one , on day 1, however the MIC wire would not plug into the bottom of the controller, I had to use Kinect for a MIC. Now, with the adapter, I can also use the built-in MIC from the turtle beaches if I want, which makes it much easier to hear people than just Kinect.

@Alucard_Prime: oh thats ok no worries.

I have the xo sevens and it sounds like I probably would have been better off with the microsoft headset. I misjudged and thought xo seven would emulate surround sound, so for a stereo headset probably would have been better off saving and went with microsoft set.

I'm back to my tritton set with audio optic but I need a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable so I can enable chat.