Pros:Great sound; separate volume controls for voice and game sound; tiny little transmitter; ear cups seal out outside sound very well
Cons: Not as comfortable as the X2’s
Design and Features
The Ear Force X3 comes with the wireless headset, two AAA batteries, a transmitter, a power adapter for the transmitter, a cable to attach the headphones to your Xbox 360 controller, and wires to hook your audio source to the transmitter. The headphones have a power button, bass boost on/off, and volume control along with a port for the cable that connects them to the Xbox 360 controller. The microphone is fully adjustable and is on the left side along with all of the controls. The headphones have a lot of padding on the ear cups as well as the piece that goes over your head, and they are fairly comfortable. They use the “spring loaded, pinch your head” design, but thanks to all of the padding, they are still fairly comfortable. Not as comfortable as the X2’s, but not bad at all. All of the padding on the ear cups forms a nice seal that does an amazing job of blocking outside sounds. You really can’t hear anything else when you are wearing them. It is also worth mentioning that the transmitter is surprisingly small and lightweight for the X3. The X2’s had a large, strange looking transmitter, but the X3’s is tiny. It comes with little Velcro strips as well as a suction cup so you can attach it to the side of your TV or wherever you want so it is out of the way.
Performance
Overall, the sound quality is very good with the Ear Force X3 right out of the box, but you can tweak it a little bit with the bass boost and stereo expander features. The stereo expander spreads the stereo signal to give an effect that certain sounds are coming from beyond the headphones rather than right next to your ear. It is a pretty nifty little audio trick that makes the little sounds like rain or wind or background music a little more all-encompassing like they should. Normal game sounds are not expanded so as not to interfere with directional sounds you might need to listen to such as gunfire or footsteps and the like. All in all, it works surprisingly well and immerses you into the game all the more.
