Performance
To start my testing, I did need to get the ROG Delta II up and running. You can run the headset without software, plugging the dongle in Windows picked it up right away and I was up and running. Not to mention you can connect via Bluetooth as well. That said for the dongle and headset to be updated and to get some of the features the Delta II does work with Asus’s Armoury Crate software with its British spelling of Armory or if you don't have other Asus products you can use their compact version which works with some of Asus's peripherals called Armoury Crate Gear. If you have run any other Asus products there is a good chance you have used this software before. It isn’t their only software, but it does handle things like your lighting, peripherals, and driver updates for motherboards as well. The landing page when you open it up has your CPU clock speeds, fan profiles, and Aura Sync profiles all there. You can also launch a few of your commonly played games with the game launcher. On the left side, the second option down is where you can open up pages specific to whatever devices you have installed which in this case would be the ROG Delta II.
The Delta II software page has tabs along the top that split the controls up by audio, microphone, settings, lighting, power, and firmware. The audio page has a drop-down of equalizer profiles or you can make your own. This is also where you can turn on the virtual surround sound options, bass boost, reverb, and a voice clarity setting that can tune the audio for voices if you need it.
The microphone tab doesn’t have as many options but it does have a few and from when I first got the Delta II in until now Asus has added features here. You have a noise gate to help prevent you from being distorted and blowing out your friend's ears when you yell and a perfect voice setting. The new feature is the echo cancellation and noise reduction option which when you have it turned on has three levels. The next page is the settings page. This mostly just has the same options you would find in your Windows sound settings like the microphone volume, turning on listening, and setting the bits and frequency. Beyond that though you can change the voice prompt language in the headset here and you can turn on and adjust your sidetone. Sidetone picks up outside noise and feeds it into the headphones so you don’t miss things going on around you. For some you might put your headphones on to block out noise, this isn’t for you. But if you have a kid, are expecting a call or visitor, or maybe have food cooking this is a great way to still use your headphones without having to keep an ear off.
For the lighting on the Delta II, the lighting tab has a few basic effects that you can switch between. Depending on which option you pick you get additional settings on the side to pick colors, set the effect speed or direction, and adjust the brightness. You can also get into the full Auro Creator took here to make your own lighting effects as well but given that the lighting on the headset isn’t completely over the top most people are going to be happy with the basic effects. You can tie your headset lighting in with all of your other Aura Sync lighting as well when you get into the main lighting page in the Armoury Crate, not just the page specific to the Delta II.
The power tab shows you the current battery level for the headset. More importantly, you can adjust how many minutes before sleep mode kicks in when you are idle. You can also set up visual notifications for a low battery here along with the voice prompts in the headset. You can also adjust at what battery level those kick in here. The last page is the firmware update page and this is where you can check and update the firmware, as the tab name implies.
Overall the software lets you get into any settings you might need and I’m always happy to see when you don’t have specific software needed for each device. The only issue I ran into in my testing here was opening the ROG Delta Ii page does take a little time to open up each time. This isn’t specific to the headset, opening up the page for my motherboard does the same thing. Other pages are snappy, but just not the first loading of the product-specific pages.
With the software out of the way, let’s talk a little about how the ROG Delta II headset performed. Headset performance for me is mostly focused around comfort and audio performance but with this being wireless battery life and wireless range also play a role. I’ve been using the ROG Delta II anytime I need a headset for a few months now, often for extended use when gaming or listening to music when working. I’ve been a fan of large around the ear headphones and headsets and the ROG Delta II does have that larger earcup size to do that. Going in though I was concerned that the triangle shape of the earcups might cause them to sit on my ears in spots, not around them. In the end, though they do fit around them but they do touch a little on the inside because of the shape. I would still prefer a more traditional shape, but I can’t complain too much. For the extended use sessions, that is normally where those problems would show and I haven’t had any discomfort wearing the ROG Delta II. Because it is a sealed earcup design and because the preinstalled padding doesn’t breathe my ears did get warm but that is to be expected with that configuration. Swapping to the fabric earcup pads helped with that somewhat. Being a wireless headset, weight can be an issue when it comes to the top padding putting pressure on the top of your head but that wasn’t bad as well.
For audio performance, the 50 mm titanium-coated drivers had more bass than I expected, especially for a wireless headset and that was even before getting into the software side bass boost options. Overall the audio quality was solid, the 20 Hz to 20 KHz range is in line with the Logitech Pro X2 Lightspeed headset but is smaller than the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless (15 Hz to 21 KHz)and Razer BlackShark V2 Pro (15 Hz to 28 KHz) with both of those headsets reaching lower and higher frequencies. For the microphone, I put the ROG Delta II up against all of the microphones we have tested recently in the video below. This way you can see for yourself. What I found was that the microphone was surprisingly sensitive, picking my voice up loudly even compared to the other microphones tested. There is a good chance you will want to tone it down, all of the mics tested were set to 95% but it was sensitive enough to pick up some of my breathing, until I turned the noise cancelation setting on. With that on you can still hear the keyboard and mouse sounds initially but they quickly are picked up and toned down. Adjusting the microphone level down slightly should get that to be silent.
As for the lighting on the ROG Delta II, you have a ring of addressable LEDs around the outside of both earcups as well as the ROG logo on both ears that is backlit as well. Considering this is a wireless headset and battery life is affected by lighting I was surprised that Asus went that that extent. But it does fit the ROG theme and brand. The microphone boom has lighting in it as well that will light up red when you have the microphone muted to make it easy to see
Beyond the traditional performance areas of comfort and audio performance. The ROG Delta II has two wireless connection options as well as being able to be plugged in using a 3.5mm wired connection as well. That opens up a few other areas to check out like the wireless performance and battery life. But beyond that, it also has an interesting set of controls. In fact, when I first started using the ROG Delta II, the controls seemed a little unintuitive but that was because I didn’t fully understand how the tri-mode connectivity worked. I’ve had a few headsets that can connect using their wireless dongle or Bluetooth like the ROG Delta II. But with those you get one or the other. The reason for the unique controls on the ROG Delta II is because you can connect to your PC using the 2.4 GHz wireless dongle and also connect to a second device like your phone using Bluetooth. You can then play both at the same time. This is a cool way to be able to pipe in music from your phone for example while gaming and because you have volume controls for both feeds independent of each other you can adjust them to fine tune what you are looking for. The 2.4 GHz connection does support 24-bit 96 kHz audio or HD audio for those who are taking advantage of that with your music streaming services.
As for the wireless performance, I was able to use the 2.4 GHz connection all around the house without it disconnecting. The Bluetooth started to cut out when I got to the bathroom in the back but with both, you don’t have to worry about missing out on anything when you run to the bathroom or another room. For battery life, the ROG Delta II has a total life of 110 hours if you have the RGB lighting turned off. Having that on did change that significantly taking it down to around 23 hours in my testing but for me that was the better part of a week of use normally as I still use speakers when I can. With that in mind, turning the lighting off is well worth it unless you really want to show it off. For charging, the Type-C charging port made keeping the headset charged easy as I already have that cable on my desk for my phone.
