The Astro A 40 Gaming Headset

The Astro A40 gaming headset is a pair of headphones, a microphone, and a sound mixer. Intended for video game enthusiasts, this headset and sound mixer combination is supposed to give the user the greatest sound quality for their entertainment needs. These tend to be used in action intense game series such as Call of Duty and Halo. The sound quality in a video game can be used to both immerse the player as well as give a tactical advantage in the game. This tactical advantage can be through working cooperatively, talking privately with a small team, or hearing the footsteps of an enemy team member start to run towards you. The Astro series headsets were created in competition with other companies such as Turtle Beach, Kraken, and Plantronics.

The A40 headset design is very stylized, with a the majority of it in a grey scale color scheme which creates a sharp contrast with the bright orange highlights of the spring-like structures within the headset’s adjustable speakers. The outside of the speakers contain plates which are attached by magnets, these plates cover the inputs for the microphone. The plates are removable and the microphone itself is able to also be removed and swapped to either side of the headset. The magnetic plates are also swappable with other stylized designed plates which can be found on the Astro website. This gives the user a great amount of diversity in terms of preferred play style and color.

The sound mixer also uses the same color palette of the headset. It’s very small and compact. The shape, button, and dial placement on the mixer give the appearance of it being a very professional piece of equipment. The dials for the main volume, game and voice chat are very smooth and feel great to control.

Compared to a similarly designed headset, the Plantronics Rig Xbox Headset (white), the A40 headset and mixer are vastly superior. With the Plantronics headset, you’re able to take phone calls or listen to music through your mobile device while simultaneously playing a video game. Although this functioned somewhat well, the master volume controls had to be constantly adjusted due to the huge imbalance and poor audio quality. The four wires that the Plantronics headset came with, also including the extra microphone wire, felt very flimsy and the entire setup was a huge mess. The Astro A40’s on the other hand, even with the four wires and compacted sound mixer takes up less time to set up and it doesn’t seem nearly as flimsy or messy. The overall sound quality of the A40 is way better than the Plantronics headset, even when used on the computer without the sound mixer.

The only real flaw with the A40 model headset is that it requires the purchase of an extra specialized chord in order for it to be hooked up to the Xbox One which you can get exclusively at the Astro website. Although it’s a cheap price for the wire, it would’ve been best if Astro had just thrown it in the initial package. There is an Astro A40 model available specifically suited for the Xbox One console that comes with a built in controller headset adapter attached to the end of the headset. However buying an A40 model with a sound mixer and specialized chord allows for a greater variety of use for multiple consoles.

There are four models of Astro gaming headsets, the A30, the A38, the A40, and the A50. The A38 model is a Blue tooth, wireless headset made for PC, mobile devices, and tablets. It’s also built to cancel any background noise and fit on the ear. The A30 also fits on the ears and has a removable microphone with Dolby 7.1 sound quality. The A40 model fits over the ears, has the same audio quality, and is compatible with current and previous generation game consoles. It also has a removable and swappable microphone. The A50 model fits over the ears, is wireless with the same audio quality, and is automatically muted when positioned vertically on the headset. The microphone is not removable however. Overall these models have very different purposes. The A38 model is intended to be used for people who tend to travel due to it being exclusive to mobile devices. The A30 is a cheaper, basic yet versatile video game headset. The A40 model is a more professional version of the A30 with a bigger emphasis on live streaming game play and audio balance. The A50 model is essentially a wireless version of the A40 with a permanent microphone, this gives a less is more approach of design. It’s able to be used for a total of five hours on a charge, which is decent for gaming and allows the player to decide to take a break in between charging.