Audio Quality and Comfort
The first thing I want to cover is the comfort of the headphones. The padding on the ears is definitely familiar to what we have seen with other over the ear headphones in the past. The material is leather like material that is covering a pad that rests on the outside of your ears. The size of the cushions are somewhat smaller than I would have hoped for, the headphones don’t actually wrap completely around my ear lobes and kind of sit on top of them somewhat. This didn’t bother me at first, but after a couple hours of wearing the headphones my earlobes began to hurt.
The band at the top of the headphones is almost completely non-existent. There is a small piece of rubber and it has some sort of give to it, but it really isn’t a pad or cushion of any sort. This is a disadvantage in my eyes, because it isn’t really uncomfortable, but it certainly doesn’t add to comfort at all.
One thing that doesn’t really have anything to do with comfort, but something I still feel is important is the lack of labels. The two earphones are not labeled, so I could not tell which headphone was left and which was right. This isn’t all that important for just listening to music or watching television or a movie, but when it comes to direction sound in a video game it could be somewhat troublesome to not know which direction was which.
Bone Thugs N’ Harmony – The Crossroads – The song with incredible amounts of lows and mids with a dash of highs is excellent on the Arion Urban Zen headset. The lows all come through really clearly and the mids and highs are also produced quite clearly throughout. The bass has a nice amount of kick, but the subtleties such as the tambourine and other instruments that are played throughout. All and all I would put this headset up to par with the other headsets that we have reviewed. I can’t really give an edge to any of them because it wasn’t significantly better or worse.
Nat King Cole & Natalie – Unforgettable – This is a mellow track with a good range of mids and highs and some scattered lows. Once again the headset does a fine job with all ranges of vocals and instrumentals. Again the sound was okay, but I don’t think it was anything too special, and in fact this time I would give the edge to the other headsets we have reviewed. The Arion Urban Zen just didn’t have that little something that really made this song, Unforgettable.
Eric Clapton – Rush (Soundtrack) – 10 – Tears In Heaven – Another mellow track, but this time with a bit more lows the sound once again comes out pretty clear. I did have some issues feeling like some of the audio was lost in parts of the song where highs and lows were playing together. With the lost audio I feel that I definitely have to give the edge to other headsets we have reviewed.
Ludwig van Beethoven - Für Elise – This is a famous track with mostly highs and the occasional mid and low tossed in. The highs were all very clear and the mids and lows were okay but not extra special.The Arion Urban Zen did a fine job of producing the track throughout, but as with other songs I feel that it lacked the little something extra that would make it special.
Television – Doctor Who – Today we pick up the travels in Pompeii and how lucky for us it is volcano day. Immediately we get a chance to see how the headset will perform in action sequences. With the rumbling of the volcano and the intense music to start out the episode it is clear that the headset can definitely handle the lows. When I got to the mids and highs that are dialogue however I started to notice an interesting issue however. When folks are talking it seems as if it is happening from a distance. The dialogue doesn’t really echo, but it certainly sounds like it is coming from further off. It doesn’t make the sound unbearable, but it is enough that I was able to notice it.
Game – League of Legends – For the most part the headset was great in game. Aside from the small issue of not having labeled earphones and me getting confused when I was expecting things to be on my right and they were on my left, it fared really well in game. I also experienced the distance issue that I experienced with the vocals in Doctor Who. The announcer in game seemed to be distant as it was with the television show, but the other sounds throughout were perfectly clear.
Microphone – The microphone on the headset works, but only with mobile devices. It only has the single jack to plug in for both audio and microphone which means the microphone cannot be used with PC. The microphone was clear I was told, but it wasn’t as clear as the Bluetooth microphone that was on the Foldable Bluetooth Headset by Arion. The quality wasn’t bad at all, but it wasn’t crystal clear as it has been in the past.
Something I want to cover that doesn’t really fall into place anywhere else is the foldable design. This is a nice feature for headsets to have, even though it may rarely be used. I go to four LAN events at least every year, and I am always worried about breaking or damaging my headset when I am tossing it into my bag. The foldable design and carry case allow for easy storage and transportation from place to place and is perfect for LAN party attendees.
One final thing I want to touch on is the in-line volume control. The headset does have a volume control built directly into the wiring and allows you to change the volume on the fly. It isn’t perfect and certainly doesn’t allow for precise volume control, but it does give you the option to turn things up or down without adjusting the volume on a media player or your computer as a whole.
