There’s plenty of gaming headphones (or headsets) in the RM200 range to choose from. But what you pay for all the different models and brands may be different. Sades has made plenty of gaming headset to suit the different needs of a particular gamer. The cheap entry-level, but very good Moyu headset is one example.
So where does the Sades A60 come in? This sets of cans is a terrific all-rounder, as long as you know how to tweak its settings just right.
Build Quality
The Sades A60 may look large but rest assured the rubber-like plastic covers for the pads, both the sides and the top, makes it a fitting and comfortable to wear for long periods of time. There are a few colour variants, with the review model here in black and blue. The black colour is in a matte finish, with the center piece that houses the Sades logo (with glowing LEDs) in a gloss finish. Two pieces of gloss metallic just at the part where the headset extend gives the sleek look some contrast. The microphone is nicely tucked inside the left side of the cans, and can be accessed easily by a gentle pull.
Moving downwards, the 3m cable is covered in fabric, which looks and feels great in the hands. There’s a volume control hub that houses all the direct controls available: volume up and down, a mute button, a mic mute button and a vibration button at the middle (more on that later). The Sades A60 uses an USB plug, and requires a driver to work on PC, so it’s not compatible with other devices. Thankfully, the driver disc is included in the package, or can be downloaded from Sades’s official website.
All in all, a solid looking and feeling headset.
Technical Specs
Here’s the technical specs, taken from the official website of Sades:
- Loudhailer Speaker: Φ30mm
- Driver Diameter: Φ50mm
- Frequency Range: 20Hz-20KHz
- Sensitivity: 111dB+3dB
- Impedance: 32Ω
- Distortion : ≤2.5% THD
- Max Input Power: 50mW
- Mic Diameter: Φ6.0×5.0mm
- Sensitivity: -54dB+3dB
- Directivity: Omnidirectional
- Mic Inpedance: ≤2.2KΩ
- 7.1 Virtual Sound Channels: 7.1 Virtual Speaker Shifter
- Plug Type: USB
- Cable Lenght: Appr. 3.0m
Sound Quality
Honestly, I was a bit disappointed with the overall sound quality at first. The A60 favours bass and ambience sound, but it makes it too far off and sounds too quiet for my liking. Likewise, the voice sounds are more louder and peaky than I would prefer. It was not until I dig into the Sades Gaming Headset app, included when you installed the drivers, to see a wealth of things to adjust. Along with the basic equalisers, there’s a lot of other settings to mess around with to get that perfect mix of sound- including adjusting the 7.1 Virtual Surround Sound settings. The microphone can be adjusted as well to pick up different range of frequencies.
While it is very interesting that Sades is providing a lot of things to mess around with, finding the perfect preset that just sounds great will take time. There’s no preset for games, only for music, movies and hi-fi, and none of those I find to be as great as the cheaper Sades Moyu. It could be just a matter of taste though, so your mileage may vary. Plus, the settings are adjustable enough to compensate these nitpickings. Once the proper tweaking has been done, then it should be smooth sailing.
The microphone is pretty good for a gaming headset, with clear sounds recorded and received with little noise and distortion. The vibration mentioned earlier is essentially vibration generated form the headsets, noticeable with more bass sounds, or something like explosions. It can be toggled to high, low or off from the volume controls. An interesting feature but not something I enjoy. The surround sounds however, are very audible. You can clearly guess the direction of sound coming which should give you an advantage in some games where spatial awareness is key. I tried playing Fallout 4 and it definitely helped me get through the Corvega Assembly Plant, where enemies are littered around almost every part of the plant.
Verdict
The Sades A60 is a solid headset no doubt. Though it does need some tweaks to make it sound better, as it should in the first place. That sour note unfortunately holds me back from straightly recommending this before checking out other models of its price range to see if they can provide more. However, what you get from the Sades A60 is well worth its price. It has fancy looks, a neat volume controls, nice looking cables, decent mic and sound plus it’s very comfy to wear. A solid gaming headset no less.
Thanks to Gamehypermart for providing the headset for review. You can get it online with some interesting bundle package provided.