Lynden—May 12, 2022
These are phenomenal. Usually I am very skeptical on anything headphone related when the word gaming is around it. Gaming headsets usually give up a lot of audiophile pros while giving into ease of use, low quality builds, or bad mics. These aren't just gaming headphones. These have the best sound I've found in over the ear headphones. Period. The planar magnetic drivers deliver sounds so crisp and locatable I was taken away. It's INSANELY loud because of the giant drivers too. Footsteps are easy to locate in ear, every sound has its own track so nothing is overlapping and blowing out your earphone. Not to mention the best music listening experience you could put on your head. The lows take on life of their own and don't become too shaky like other bassy headphones but are still so loud with the bass I still have a hard time understanding it. The mids all stay separated, and the highs allow all the crisp symbol sounds to be heard from one another even if it's at the same time. You can hear every instrument by itself and almost point to it. These are just as good sounding as some of those 800$+ wired headphones for audiophiles. Oh yeah it's wireless. Perfectly. Out of box, it connected to both my PC and Xbox series X with the switchable USB dongle. Range tested like 15ish feet going outside through two walls so not bad at all. Worked all inside my house. When I did first turn it on it had mic monitoring auto enabled, but once I used the cord to connect the headset to my PC and got the software audeze provides from their website. It had a firmware update and it corrected the mic monitoring, and was able to turn it on and off normally. The mic sounds great. It's no desk mic of course but for what this mic is, it blows my mind. Reminds me of a blue snowball or low quality yeti sitting there on your headset. It has great sound filtering and even when we tried putting three fans around the mic no one heard it in Xbox party chat, or discord. The comfort is pretty good. But. I have a larger head so it's not particularly easy for my to find headsets that fit well. These have enough give and adjustment that I can wear them for about and hour and then I realize the stress from them, but it could also be from how exceptionally loud these are. I did try a long gaming session of about 5 hours and again I noticed an hour in but after that if I kept wearing it I found the headset took shape to my head and stopped pressing so hard. Awesome headphones. The sound is worth the price. Hard to find a combo of all these features at this price point. Including the planar magnetic drivers. Didn't test bluetooth Read more
John—October 5, 2022
Absolutely amazing sound quality via 2.4GHz wireless to my PC and with my phone via bluetooth. The Round and Muscular Penrose preset from the Audeze website makes music absolute rock. This thing rivals my 5.2.2 sound system - it just doesn't shake the house and annoy the neighbors. You can use the 2.4GHz wireless dongle to connect to the PC and use bluetooth to connect to your phone and have sound input from both simultaneously (including making a phone call) - which is really cool. Now for the not so great parts. I wasn't able to get the aux connection to work with the mic. Also, the Penrose has to be powered on to use aux, so if you're wanting to use this wired only you'll still be battery bound (and apparently without a mic). On that - the battery doesn't last long at 15 hours at the very most, more than likely 13 hours is the best you'll see. The charge time takes around 4 to 6 hours. The mic audio quality isn't quite as good as the HyperX Cloud Alpha wireless (300 hour battery life), but it is slightly better than the Sennheiser GSP 370 (100 hour battery life). The Penrose doesn't support surround sound, so you'll have to use something like Dolby Atmos for headphones or DTS:X for headphones via the windows store. The Audeze HQ windows software doesn't scale to 4K, and it will not control the presets or show battery % unless you are connected to the PC via USB-C - that's correct, it doesn't allow control over the 2.4GHz wireless PC dongle. The Audeze HQ android software can be used to change the presets if connected via bluetooth and you can load presets if they're saved (you can choose aux, 2.4GHz wireless, or 2.4GHz wireless + bluetooth for connectivity via button press on the headset) yet it also will not show the Penrose battery % (nor will the android bluetooth connection as some devices do). If you connect wirelessly to a PC and a bluetooth device like your phone - the volume control is shared between both. Turn down the volume on the phone while paired via bluetooth? The PC volume goes down, and vice versa (windows volume control doesn't change the Penrose volume, but you can change individual audio levels per program via the windows volume mixer). On that note, you can change the volume balance between the bluetooth and wireless - but ONLY when the headset is connected to the PC via USB-C. There is a slight hiss (white noise?) when there is no audio input. The same slight hiss was present with my returned HyperX Cloud Alpha wireless headset, but NOT present with my Sennheiser GSP 370. Also, there is sometimes a soft increasing/decreasing interference-like whine that sometimes happens in-between sound input (it happens with or without USB power plugged in, with the wireless dongle connected directly to the PC or via a powered USB hub). Should you connect via aux and want to keep USB charging connected to the PC (it's fine if connected to a dedicated USB charger), you'll be treated to very loud interference rendering aux unusable. The 2.4GHz wireless dongle range is not good. I lose connectivity 15 feet away with a wall in between. My Sennheiser GSP 370 works just fine in the same places, and even upstairs. TLDR - amazing sound, many, many, many limitations/issues. Is it worth it? Only if you want the best wireless audio quality. UPDATE - after a week of using these, I went back to compare my Sennheiser GSP 370 headset for a single day - and I'm going to have to return the Penrose. The complete lack of that low-level white note/static when no audio is input, no occasional interference squeal (I even tried a 10 foot USB extension cable to rule out my PC), the myriad of nit-picks with the Penrose software (lack of wireless battery % check, for real!), and the gentle caress of the GSP 370s vs the noticeable skull crush of the Penrose - the listening quality increase, while definitely there, just doesn't justify saying that the Penrose is a true upgrade over the GSP 370 headset for gaming or watching movies - at least for me. Read more
Matt—February 16, 2021
As many others have stated about these here, and online, there is a lot of issues with this headset, even with the latest "update". Im on FW 0.1.5 and still have all of the problems. If I were you, I wouldn't waste your $300 dollars on this non-working and problem-ridden set of headphones. Buy something else. I constantly have disconnecting and reconnecting issues. Sometimes 10-15 times in a row and lasts about 60-90 seconds at a time. Ive tried all of my USB ports with the same issue. Super frustrating to hear the "connecting" voice over and over and over and over with no other sound when you rely on communication and sound to effectively play your games. I also have the buzzing, popping, cracking noise that is a big complaint too. Sounds kinda cuts in and out and gets garbled when this happens either with or without the buzzing, popping or cracking. The crappy microphone issue was supposed to be addressed/fixed in the latest update. People tell me my microphone sounds like crap and its cloudy and distorted. The positive - These headphones sound awesome when these issues aren't present, but thats pretty rare. Footsteps for warzone are very accurate and pinpointable. Directional sound is amazing on these, which is exactly what I was looking for in a wireless headset. If these issues were fixed, these headphones would be 10/10 all day. In the end, my advice is to stay far far away from these headphones and get something you know will work. I will update my review if an update comes out that resolves these issues. Read more
