Hardware Review: Tritton Detonator Headset [Xbox 360]
If there’s been one sly dog lurking in the corner as games have developed over the years, other than the inevitable Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and the need of a good Toy Story game, it’s been sound quality. I know that might sound pretty self explanatory since in the early nineties you got better sound quality out of a microwave than a video game but that’s not the point – with the likes of Battlefield 3 making you wet yourself whenever an RPG whizzes past your ear like an irritating wasp on a Summer’s day, or the noises in Slenderman making you wet yourself so much that you deserve your own advert for an ultra absorbant tissue, sound quality has become a key part of game development. In the same way that if you try and play Crysis on an old black and white TV not even your Grandmother would use; you lose the effect of the graphics, if you use bad speakers or headsets then the audio quality is lost entirely as well. This is where the Tritton Detonator delivers high quality audio, for a reasonable price.
To start off with there’s the obvious and unique aesthetic; I mean look at it – it looks like something out of an Iron Man movie; the only thing that could make it look any better is if it had lava flowing out of the sides and a stripper pole. This is going to be especially important as this gaming headset also doubles and headphones for your MP3 player. You can simply unplug the headphones and you now have your very own space-age dubstep destroyers and to be honest, I’ll give a bacon sandwich to anyone who offers me an alternative to the overpriced, irritating Dr. Dre Beats that seem to have sweeped the public like some kind of virally transmitted disease. These on the other hand actually deliver sound quality, unlike the heathen Beats, and don’t look like you’re simply trying to wear a price tag around your neck. This is further emphasised by the fact that you can unplug the microphone; meaning you don’t look like ‘that guy’ who walks around with his BlueTooth headset, telling Siri to call home fifty times before the damn thing works. To put it bluntly, or simply without analogies, you can use them with your MP3 player and still look respectable therefore they’re infinitely better than anything else out there on the shelves right now.
Now I know a lot of you will say that looks isn’t everything so here’s some facts; it has 50mm speakers with Neodymium magnets, an SVM function allowing you to hear your own voice through the headset when you speak as to not deafen your friends and therefore rapidly lose them, a backlit control box (which is made out of good quality plastic as opposed to the cheap stuff that Turtlebeach seem to love that looks like it’ll break the moment you so much as glare at it) which can control the game volume, voice volume, mute, and more importantly you can toggle if you want SVM on or not. This means that when you’re not in Chat, or simply just antisocial so never venture into Chat anyway, you don’t have to have your voice blaring into your own ears like some kind of drill sergeant. For those that don’t speak technical jargon, the summary of all that is that it’s a good headset, especially more so for the price, and most importantly of all, plays dubstep at such high quality that it should come with it’s own health warning.
The biggest bonus for me, however, is it’s comfort factor. If you’re looking at investing into a gaming headset you probably clock a lot of hours in game time so the last thing you’re going to want to have is some kind of reverse bear trap clamped onto your head, causing your ears to bleed profusely. This is where the Tritton Detonator really shines – having used several different headsets over the years, from several different brands, the Detonator is easily the most comfortable. You can literally play Dance Central with these on and you still won’t notice anything uncomfortable about them at all.
The Detonator retails for around £59.99 and I would easily recommend them if you’re a heavy gamer with a need for a high quality headset under £100. If you fancy grabbing yourself a pair then head over to http://www.trittonaudio.com/prod/detonator.asp#!prettyPhoto to pick one up off of the official Tritton website, or to check out their catalogue of gaming headsets online.