Through its Astro Gaming brand, Logitech has invested into the high-end side of gaming accessories, including controllers, sound mixers and their own headsets series. I was sent the Astro A50 for a review and here are my impressions.
First things first: the Astro A50 is not only a great gaming headset but it also works flawlessly with your PC - and it goes really well with all sorts of content.
The Astro A50 comes with a USB-based wireless station that is also its charging cradle. The station gives you a place to keep your headset, as well as give visual feedback on its battery life, source, Dolby status and current equaliser mode. The wireless base station also has an optical passthrough output and both optical and 3.5" inputs. The wireless range will give you about 15 meters of freedom so you can sit back and relax - very important when playing a game on a console with a large TV.
The headset itself supports Dolby audio out of the box and you get a two-year subscription code to enable Dolby Atmos support (with a small download from the Microsoft Store on both Windows and Xbox platforms. Dolby Audio gives a new dimension to your gaming experience.
The headset is only about 300 g and pretty comfortable. It has a built-in flexible microphone that will turn on automatically when lowered and turn off when parked back. Other controls are pretty intuitive too: an on/off button on top, a button to switch between Dolby audio and source audio, a button to rotate through three user-selectable equaliser settings and a volume control slider.
You can also mix the volume between game chat and game sound/music using the cover of the right cup - pressing on the front will increase game sound volume and pressing on the back will increase voice volume.
Battery life seems to be quite good and you will go through a few rounds before you have to recharge it. While the headset can charge from the wireless base, I found it will charge a lot faster if you plug a fast smartphone charger directly to the handy charging USB port directly on the headset.
The wireless base connects to a PC using USB and is automatically recognised by Windows. From this point you can just select it as any other sound device. For maximum control you should download the Astro Command Center - but be sure to download it from the Microsoft Store. You need to use the Astro Command Center to update the headset's firmware, which is a requirement before you can use it with an Xbox Series S/X and I've found out that using the download from the website didn't update the firmware (the headsets had no sound the first time I plugged it into an Xbox). Only when I used the Astro Command Center from the Microsoft Store was the firmware updated to the correct version.
The Astro Command Center will also give you settings control - you can change equaliser settings and upload to each of the three "slots" available on the headset, you can change the sidetone level and manually set the mix level of audio/chat.
With 40mm neodymium magnet drivers giving you a frequency response between 20Hz - 20,000Hz you get a good range of sound which works well for games, movies but I found a bit less than what is needed for HD audio streaming.
After all is said, the Astro A50 is an excellent gaming headset. It fits extremely comfortably on your head, the ear cushions are very soft and the headband has a soft cover to protect your head. The arms can be extended/retracted easily adapting to any head size. The microphone captures your voice very clearly and can be adjusted to work in noisy environments too. Being wireless gives you just a bit more freedom to move around.
