Well hello all, and welcome to another G3 Hardware Review. Today I’ve got a pair of headphones for you, designed by Tritton specifically for the Xbox 360, the Tritton Detonator headphones.
Right off the bat they let it be known that this is an Xbox 360 gaming headset. Not only the box branding by Microsoft but also the white and green color scheme which is identical to the one used for marketing Xbox 360 products. Oh yeah, you can also see the headphones…
The back of the box is really broken into two different halves. The first half breaks down some of the specs of the cans themselves, such as.
- 50MM Drivers
- SVM (A toggle button on the In Line box lets’ you toggle if you want to be able to hear yourself via the drivers)
- MP3-Phone (informing you that when not plugged into the In Line box you can plug the 3.5mm plug into your MP3 Player or Phone for sound)
- Adapter Included (self explanatory)
The other side of the box tells you more about the In Line box.
- Game Mute Button (To mute the Input audio from the Xbox 360)
- Mic Mute Button (Mutes the Microphone so that people don’t hear you screaming profanities at a 13 year old noob-tuber in Modern Warfare 3)
- Separate Game and Voice Volume Controls (Allows you to adjust the volume of the microphone and headphones separately)
- Back Lit button when enabled so that you can easily distinguish whether they’re on or not
- Removable Microphone
A look at the front of the headphones instantly gives you that recognizable style choice that Tritton is known for, mostly the oddly shaped ear cups. The headphones consist of plastic with either pleather or leather for the ear cups, and then cloth over the drivers inside. The padding on the hop of the headphones is, at first, extremely uncomfortable. I slid these over my head and instantly thought “ow, these are pressing hard.” Luckily after a few hours of gaming the padding on the top started to soften and the headphones grew increasingly more comfortable. Definitely not the most comfortable headset I’ve ever worn, but far from the worse. (My Sony’s come to mind)
Here on the side you can see the odd shaped Ear Cups I spoke of earlier, as well as the Tritton branding and the silver Tritton logo. On top you can see where this headset has been branded “Xbox 360″.
Now that we’ve taken a peak at the headphones themselves, let’s tear into all the goodies inside the package. Once inside we see there is a box full of cables, two bags with two different adapter cables, as well as a little baggy full of all the different manuals from what to do if you have a faulty product (return to Mad Catz, not the store) all the way to a product catalogue.
What’s inside the box you ask? I’ll show you! A whole bunch of different cables. The first one here is to power the microphone. It goes from a 3.5MM plug that goes into the In Line box to the dedicated plug type for the Xbox 360 controller (I believe a 2.5mm)
Next up we have the USB that goes into a free USB port on your 360 to the two RCA splitters. (more on all of these later) And here we have the In Line box I’ve been telling you all about. You can see it has three dedicated buttons as previously stated, it’s completely black and seems to be built quite sturdily.
Now what is this cable??? This is for those of you who use HDMI for your Xbox 360. This plugs into the other video slot on the 360. This little cutie here is the microphone Tritton has provided. It’s quite sturdy, malleable, and has very good sound quality, plus an added bonus, it’s detachable. Everything you want out of a Microphone.
It saddens me a bit. I wanted to find a consistent way to test headsets so that you, the reader, would have a comparison base to work with. Sadly that is not possible with a console headset like this. First off all, I cannot test Blu Ray sound playback due to the 360 not supporting Blu Ray, second of all I cannot test the same PC games either since this headset is not PC compatible (unless you go straight 3.5mm into the PC, but the cable is way to short for that)
Setting these headphones up can seem like a daunting task, but fear not for I am here to help. How you do this is quite simple, if using RCA or
Component for you 360 Video then the process is this.
- Plug 3.5MM into In-Line Box
- Plug USB into a Free Port on 360
- Take the Red and White Audio RCA’s from the 360 and plug them into the female ends on the USB to RCA cable
- Take the newly powered RCA’s and plug them back into your TV (If you want to be able to have both TV and Headset Audio)
- If you want the Microphone on first insert the microphone firmly into the opening on the left ear cup, next simply plug the 3.5mm into the appointed Microphone jack on the In-Line box, take the other end and plug it into the bottom of your Xbox 360 Controller.
If you are using HDMI for Video:
- Follow Steps 1 & 2 above
- Insert the Video Adapter into the proper plug on the back of the Xbox 360 Console
- Run a pair of RCA cables from the female plugs on the newly installed adapter into the male/female rca plugs on the USB to RCA cable, and insert into correct television input.
So to test the quality of this headset, I did the only thing I really could do. I just played a bunch of Xbox 360 games.
First up is The Darkness. I chose this game for two reasons; one, because it’s one of my all-time favorite games and two because it has a very well done soundtrack, voice acting, and just overall sound design. From the utterly disturbing voice of the Darkness itself, down to the cute voices of the minions you spawn up from the spawn holes. Everything is handled quite well. Although I did find that certain parts of the game produced the sound in a rather tinny fashion. Almost as if I was shooting in an extremely large auditorium or something. Whether this is the headset or the level itself I do not know. One thing that did stand out to me though is the fact that I had never heard the sound the darkness makes while it absorbs the darkness around you until I wore these headphones.
The second game I spent quite a bit of time playing with this headset was Halo Reach. While playing Halo, my overall playing experience seemed to increase. The immersion factor went up tenfold and increased my K:D ratio by at least 5-6 points. The Tritton Detonator headphones really do immerse you in the sound extremely well.
Overall these are marketed as an entry level headset into the new Xbox 360 line of headphones by Tritton. And on that note they perform extremely well. I did run into some design flaws, like the fact that the day after I did most of my testing I put them on and the right-side band for adjusting the headset wont click into place so the right ear cup keep sliding up and down, (which isn’t a problem when they’re on your head) and they did take awhile to get comfortable.
In reality for an entry level headset they have very good sound, semi-comfortable design, and a very well done microphone. But there is also the hassle of all the cables (price you pay to save money) and some questionable craftsmanship with the band adjuster.
On a side note, the SVM feature is an absolute godsend when playing competitively online.
Pros:
- Pretty Comfortable
- Very Good Sound
- Microphone is malleable and sounds very clear
- Decent Price for Quality
Cons:
- Some Design Flaws
- An enormous amount of cables
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If you would like to purchase set of these great Xbox 360 Licensed Heaphones, you may do so here.
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Though I did run into some design flaws, the sound quality and mic quality that you receive in this price range make the Tritton Detonators’ still equal out as a good Price-to-Performance product as well as elevate the Tritton Detonator’s to a Great Product.
