ASTRO Gaming A50 Wireless Headset + Base Station Gen 4 - Compatible with Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, Mac - Black/Gold

Let me first start out by saying I am a casual gamer. I've been playing Xbox One for the last few years and decided to get this head set for that particular gaming system. This is a great gaming headset! I upgraded from my Turtle Beach headset that served me very well for many years. Here is what I liked and did not like about the Astro A50.Pros:Great sound: Customizable pre-sets and default presets make this headset ideal for those that want to tweak their headset settings. You can easily adjust settings on this headset by using the free Astro app on any Windows PC or Apple OS computer. You can also select one of three headsets loaded on the headset by simply pushing the preset button. This cycles through three presets on the headset (1-3).Great feel: This headset is lightweight. You can easily wear this for 8+ hours during those long gaming sessions and still not get fatigued by wearing it. While the headset is lightweight it is still built very very well and feel solid. You won't feel like you can easily break this headset which for the price point is a good thing. The headset also does not pinch or make my head uncomfortable in anyway and if measured out I have a large head.Wireless: The headset is 100% wireless. The only time you will need to have the headset docked is for charging. There is no cables to get in the way between you and the gaming controller or the gaming console. The freedom is nice. With the wireless capabilities also comes outstanding range. When wearing the headset I can literally go to any area of my apartment and still hear voice and game sounds. It's also nice not being tethered to your controller or console. If you've never experience true wireless gaming this will be mind blowing for you--it was for me.Mic: While some reviews have posted complaints about the mic quality I have had really no issues with the mic. I am careful with it and raise and lower it with ease as to not damage the mechanism. The mic is turned on and off by raising and lowering. Up is in the off/mute position and down is in the on/voice position. No complaints from anyone in my gaming party on not being able to hear me either. You may need to carefully bend the end of the mic inward to your face a bit for best results. Keep in mind that if you do this the mic will hit the headset in the off/mute position so be careful not to damage it. While it would be nice to have a switch to tap to turn the mic on or off it is also nice to have the mic up out of the way for those solo gaming sessions or if you don't feel like being social during a particular gaming session.Cons:Adjusting in game and voice chat volume: While there is a "rocker switch" to adjust game and voice chat sound it is often confusing and I find myself constantly looking to see which way I should push the switch to adjust either the game volume or voice chat volume. This is especially true if I don't use the headset for several weeks between gaming sessions. Again, I am a casual gamer so this is my experience. Opinions on this will vary!Overall volume: It is nice to be able to easily raise or lower overall sound volume. This is game volume and voice chat volume. The downside to the particular way this headset's volume control works is that it's on a round dial. This dial is too easily manipulated especially if you are resting in a reclined position. I find myself inadvertently lowering the volume in the middle of a gaming session and then I need to remove one hand from the gaming controller to re-adjust the volume control. This is a drawback to the design but not a deal breaker. If you never game in a reclined position you very well may never experience an issue with this!Overall this is light years ahead of any basic headset and even more advanced in many ways over the competitors top end headset models. If you are a serious or casual gamer this is a headset that you should check-out and you'll probably realize that this is the route to go.Thanks for reading!

I was so very excited to try these, but WOW what a huge disappointment. First let me tell you the good things. The Dolby sound is great. That's it. And since the Dolby messes with game audio that isn't really great for a gaming headset.Now the rest of the story. The Astro app that you use to change/customize audio presets is absolutely horrible. It barely functions on console so you have to take the whole headset and base station to your computer in order to use it properly. Also the included cables are cheap poor quality and short- very short. Next up- occasionally the headset will unpair from the base station and you have to hard reset to get it working again. Additionally they would intermittently completely lose audio signal which can really ruin gaming. Then, after only a few gentle hours of use- the headband came apart and would not clip back together, rendering them unbearable. Again, this happened mid game with no warning.But by far the worst thing is the completely non existent support from Astro. I spent days trying to reach someone at the company both through their website and their Reddit forum with no response whatsoever. When I contacted Amazon, they offered me a 20% discount to keep the broken headset. No thank you I've returned them for a full refund.Regardless of what you've heard elsewhere, Astro A50 and Astro as a company are trash and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. Beware the positive reviews you see online, I now strongly suspect that those people are all paid for those comments or they were before things went downhill at the company.When the nicest thing about a gaming headset of this high price is the box it comes in- stay away. I don't care what other brand you buy but save yourself the hassle and DONT buy these!

I bought this headset to replace my Turtle Beach Elite 800x headset mostly hoping it wouldn’t make my ears hurt so much after a long gaming session. I’m happy to say these are extremely comfortable headsets and I’m very pleased with them overall. They sound good. I think they get plenty loud - I usually have them set about halfway. They were easy to setup. I love the look and the customization with the command center. They get excellent battery life, I've never dropped below 50% charge even after gaming most of the day away. And again, I can’t stress how comfortable these things are.-- Below is the original story --This is a great headset and I will give it 5 stars once a very simple problem is fixed.The headset will not be recognized by Xbox after the Xbox is turned on. To get the headset to be recognized you have to either unplug and re-plugin the base station or switch the mode switch to PC and back to Xbox. Unfortunately I see forum posts about this going all the way back to the gen3 version in 2016 so I decided to leave a 1-star review in the hopes it might actually motivate ASTRO to finally fix it.Update 8/21/19:I reached out to customer support. They said that they are currently working on a fix for the connection issue but there is no estimate when the update would be released. They at least seemed to know exactly what problem I was referring to so hopefully it’s resolves in not too long.Update 11/23/19Customer support ended in a dead end. The Xbox connection issue still persists. I've been trying every so often to check if there's a firmware update but there never is. It seems that support for this brand new product is already discontinued.Final Update 12/7/19I reached out to customer support again and was given a version of firmware to install manually on my headset. I did as instructed and the problem is now resolved. I have not had any more issues with needing to reset the headset to get it to connect to Xbox. It's unclear if this update is published publicly yet (I never got any prompt to update through the command center) so if you're having this issue reach out to their customer support.