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We take a look at the latest headphones to come from Beyerdynamic, which offer a comfortable headband, a sleek appearance, and top-of-the-line audio.
"Hello everyone and welcome to another Gamereactor Quick Look.
Biodynamic has made, well, consumer electronics for many, many, many years, decades even, that are very, let's say, designed for production studios, for professionals, or at the very least sort of semi-professionals."
"But like a lot of these very enthusiast brands over the past couple of years, they've tried to take what they've learned from all of this expertise over decades of professional tuning and put it into more consumer, mass market products.
And they've now made a gaming headset, which is this, the Biodynamic MMX150."
"It is pretty unremarkable to look at and it is also pretty unremarkable to use, but that does not mean that it's bad.
So let's go over it really quick.
First and foremost, inside, or before we go inside actually, outside."
"It looks fine.
I mean, I like the orange to black sort of very McLaren-esque colorway.
There is a pretty sturdy aluminum headband here, which is covered by some memory foam padding at the top of the brace."
"There is a lovely sort of indented Biodynamic logo there at the very top.
And this exposed wire is of semi-high quality.
One thing that I think really stand out is these really soft cushions with the memory foam in them create this really pillowy feeling when you wear them, even over long stretches."
"So the materials are used are fine, but that comes with a few asterisks.
I'm sure if you look at this, you don't see anything particularly extraordinary.
I mean, it's fine.
It's not broken."
"I mean, the coloring that they've used on this glossy black plastic feels a little low budget somehow, but still, there's nothing inherently wrong with it.
It's just not exciting at all.
It is, like if I took away the Biodynamic stuff and I just showed it to you like this, you probably wouldn't think that it was garbage, but you probably also wouldn't be able to like distinctly separate it from something that would be costing much less and come from a much less, you know, honored brand."
"So I think they have dropped the ball a little bit with design here, which is really a damn shame.
Still, 304 grams of weight, aluminum brace, as I said, lovely ear cups.
This detachable microphone is called MetaVoice."
"It's good.
It's an electric condenser cardioid pattern microphone.
I don't like detachable microphones because this isn't even sort of particularly, you can't do a lot with it."
"You certainly can't fold it up when you're not using it.
So if I'm not using it, for instance, I don't want it to be here.
I think it's annoying and distracting, which means that I need to remove it.
So where do I keep this when I don't want to use it?
I still think that the future and good design means that a user can either flip this up or even better, hide itself inside the cup so that both modes work great."
"This even supports Bluetooth, seemingly because that you would need to, you know, take it for a walk maybe.
And like this, it looks like a fine bulky headset, but what if someone calls you?
You'd need this."
"So it's just a matter of maybe streamlining some design elements, I feel like.
And I don't think they've quite gotten there.
Still, I have actually listened to this and it sounds great.
There's a lovely spacious sound profile in here with lovely balancing between the, you know, the various sort of treble-y and bass-y elements."
"In games, it works great, I think.
There's a good sort of sense of a sound floor, which works really well.
I wouldn't say that there's a ton of exciting technologies that means that, for instance, 360-degree sort of Tempest PlayStation-esque sound profiles here, nor is there a lot that you can do with the EQ, but it works well and they sound good enough."
"And the microphone, although it's really annoying that it is placed right there, is extremely good.
So what I'm just lacking is a bit of an X-factor here.
Maybe a design rework from an aesthetic perspective."
"Maybe a brand new feature.
I mean, it has something called augmented mode, I think it's called, where it's basically transparency mode from Bluetooth headsets, meaning that you can let more of the world in."
"But does that work wirelessly?
It seems like not.
So I would urge Beyerdynamic to, they have a good framework here.
They just need to go back to the drawing board and make something special, given their expertise."
