Hello, and welcome all to an extremely overdue Go! Gaming Giant Hardware Review.. Some of you are thinking right now, “how is this overdue?” It’s overdue because I’ve had the Tritton Ghost Recon 7.1 Headset for several months now, and getting the testing done was awfully hard when my Xbox 360 Red Ringed on me a few days later.. The irony, I know..
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Unboxing
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Getting started we can see that Tritton went with a rather fetching box design, including a metallic blue color theme and showing us the Ghost Recon emblem in the middle, symbolizing that this is the Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Headset (if it telling you in the upper right hand corner didn’t give it away), a few features that the front reveals:
- 3D Audio
- 40MM Speakers
- SVM Support (more on that later)
- Dolby Digital Technology (Dolby PLIIx, Dolby Headphones, and Dolby Digital)
Opening up the front flap gives us an in-depth breakdown on several key features of the headset, as well as providing us with our first look of the headset and decoder box.
Breaking down the features of the front-panel reveals that the Ghost Recon Headset is:
- Officially Licensed With Ghost Recon: Future Soldier artwork
- LED Lighting In The Center Of the Ear-Cups
- Precision-balanced 40mm Speakers
- A Durable, Detachable Microphone
- An Extremely Rigid Braided Cable
- Selectable Voice Monitoring (SVM. It means you can choose whether you want to hear yourself speak or not when using the microphone)
- Separate Game and Voice Volume Controls (Extremely Handy)
Moving over to the other side we can see the Headset, along with the decoder box with all the controls, and the microphone in the back behind the headset.
The back of the box has information on a bevy of different features, but none that we haven’t already covered, so let’s keep moving.
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The Goods
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Well, well, well.. What have we here? A large assortment of different cables and adapters is what we have here… Bundled with the Tritton Ghost Recon Headset are the following cables:
- S/PDIF Cable (3ft Long, extremely thin)
- Legacy Adapter For Xbox 360 (Usable with Legacy 360′s that support HDMI. Use HDMI for Video and then plug this adapter into the dedicated video port, plug the S/PDIF into the other end)
- 360 Microphone Cable (plugs in underneath controller, runs into the control box)
- USB Power Cable (self-explanatory)
- And last but not least, the super-long, super-rigid Headset cable.. This baby runs into the dedicated port on the control box, and has female jacks for the headphones themselves to plug into)
A more in-depth look at the In-Line Control shows us that it has a Mic Mute switch, Voice Volume, a 360 Microphone Jack, and Game Volume. The two 1/8″ female jacks you see here is where the headphones plug in. The quality of the box feels great. It’s not to light, but it also doesn’t feel cheap. The cable is like 10ft long at the minimum and is the thickest cable I’ve ever seen braided. The plug on the other end of the cable is a dedicated plug specifically designed to plug into the Decoder Box.
What’s this? More goodies! Included also with the Tritton Ghost Recon Headset are an extra headband and a stand to dock the Control Box on, if you want it to stand vertically. Note that the stand does have a little nub on the side of it which will lock into the box when installed, this will keep the box from falling out of the dock, especially with the rubber strips on the bottom of it.. However something that it doesn’t protect from, is the control box being way to top heavy. Once you have the headset plugged in to the box and have it installed on the stand — the whole thing will topple over with just a small bit of tug on the Headset Cable — so be weary of that. I pulled it over 3-4 times just by trying to move the headphone cable. No, I don’t have dementia.. I do see the added ear-cups in the picture, these are cloth ones for those of you who don’t like pleather ear-cups.. I didn’t mention them because after reading the manual, it seems to me that these are not actually included in the box regularly.. Nice to have either way though, and installing either the headrest or ear-cups is extremely easy.
Whew, all we have left for packaging (besides the good stuff) is the different assortment of guides that are included with the headset. We’ve got our standard; STOP! Don’t Return To Retailer Slip, Quick Start Guide for the AX 720 Headset, and a Mad Catz Product Guide. The other manual we got, which feels more like a small book, is the guide to the Tritton Ghost Recon 7.1 Headset itself. I highly recommend giving this a read through, because although setting up and using the headset is really straight forward, it never hurts to be fully informed on what it is you’re using.
What a cute little microphone. One of my main complaints with the Tritton Detonator headset was that the mic felt loose. Well lucky for us Tritton has heard us and fixed the issue by installing a locking mechanism for the microphone. What they did is rather ingenious for how simple it is. The microphone only installs one way, and once you’ve swiveled it around to the front of your face, there is a ridge that it gets hung up on — just like twisting the bottle cap onto your water!
Not only is installing and uninstalling the mic extremely easy, but also the mic happens to be of extremely high quality. While gaming with it, I received praise from my buddies about how clean the mic came through on there end, and with SVM enabled, I definitely agree with them. Although I prefer to game with SVM turned off, I can see how it has its’ uses in Online Gaming, and commend Tritton for implementing the feature.
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Decoder Box First Impressions
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“Hello gorgeous.” That was the first thing that crossed my mind when I handled the Decoder Box for the Tritton Ghost Recon Headset. The box has a glossy black finish with blue trim all the way around it. It also boasts the Tritton “T” logo in the middle which is also done in the same blue trim. Plus for good measure they threw in a little more product branding (might as well, you pay a fortune to brand the product). Jumping to the front of the box, Tritton keeps it extremely simple. From left to right we have the; Power Button (which doubles as a volume wheel), the Dolby Headphones button which when pressed cycles through all the different Dolby options, as well as the two built-in Equalizers, and the dedicated port for the headphones to plug into. On the back you get an Optical Port and a USB Port. Way to keep it simple Tritton!
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The Headset First Impressions
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We’ve finally made it! The Tritton Ghost Recon headset is finally in my hands. Starting off with a frontal view, the Ghost Recon headset has pleather ear-cups, a pleather headband, and is constructed of sturdy plastic.
On the ear cups there is the Ghost Recon logo, which lights up bright white when the headset is powered (I actually love the way this headset looks lit up, although at night it’s like wearing LED flashlights on your head), and the Tritton brand name running vertically up the headband. Swinging inside the cup is the Pleather ring with a blue cloth material on the inside, hiding the 40mm drivers that Tritton has installed underneath.
The top of the Ghost Recon headset is a bit tacky I’ll admit. But the branding is not over the top, and at least they used the same color blue, which keeps the color scheme flowing nicely.. I just don’t understand product branding on the top of headphones, you can’t see it while you’re gaming, or when it’s sitting on top of the Decoder Box (at least in my case).
This here is the two 1/8″ male jacks I spoke of earlier. These are hardwired to the left ear-cup of the Ghost Recon headset, and they plug into the small in-line controller we covered earlier. The connection is quite snug, and they only fit in one way, so you don’t have to worry about plugging it in backwards.
Well.. That was quite the unboxing if I do say so myself.. Which I did. Here is a shot of the headset all setup (without being hooked up to a TV of course). As you can see, it’s an extremely clean setup, even if the headset cable is like 10ft long.
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Thanks for reading. Please click here for Part Two of the Tritton Ghost Recon: Future Soldier 7.1 Gaming Headset Review. In Part Two we will be covering Xbox 360, Playstation 3 Performance, as well the Conclusion.
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