Your New Gaming Hub Are Your Headphones, Meet the A50 X.
I find that I’m somewhat of an everything gamer. My setup is uniquely set up to handle as many things concurrently as possible. I use a 8bitdo Pro 2 controller just so I can use the same controller across four devices. But what I’ve gained in flexibility I have lost in HDMI port availability. Logitech have made a prescient move and somehow come up with a pair of headphones to solve my problem, enter the Logitech G Astro A50 X Lightspeed.
At first blush this is an uber premium pair of headphones with a charging cradle. The magic though is that the back of the cradle has three HDMI 2.1 and USB-C slots. One for your PC, and two others ostensibly for Xbox and PS5 (I say ostensibly because you could really chuck anything in there, I have my Switch hooked into it as well as an Android emulator system). An output cable then goes into your TV making it a full blown multipurpose HDMI hub.
The hub is then controlled by the headphones themselves. A button on the right ear switches channels, sending audio from the selected device to your headphones while simultaneously switching the picture on the TV. LED lit labels on the front of the hub let you know which channel you’re currently on.
The trick for Logitech was learning when to be hands off and when to intelligently take over. This means that waking up your console will no longer automatically wake your tv and switch to the right channel, you’ll now have full control of this process on your headphones, so things don’t get messy as devices try to take over. Dropping the headphones back into the hub/charging cradle will immediately switch the audio to be ported directly into the tv.
It doesn’t mess with PC output settings, leaving that delicate process up to you. I think overall this is a fine compromise to not make sure things aren’t a complete nightmare to administrate. Honestly having the picture and audio synced via the hub saves so much connection heartache. The Switch isn’t the greatest thing in the world to connect to via bluetooth so having it be a completely automatic process is a lifesaver.
The headphones themselves are comfortable over long play sessions and the audio experience itself is incredible. One whole side of the headphones is actually a rocker button, which switches between balancing voice chat and game audio. It has a volume wheel and comes with a bluetooth button for those times you’re connecting to something that isn’t plugged directly into the hub, giving you ultimate flexibility.
All the headphone mics I have reviewed over the last year or two have been suboptimal compared to an old pair of hyperX that inexplicably have great recording clarity. That means when I’ve recorded video in the past I usually go back to this set. The A50 X has successfully knocked it off its perch, making it my new favourite recording device with no need for post processing. This is down to it being the first Logitech G headset to feature a high resolution 16 bit 48 kHz LIGHTSPEED microphone. If you want to add more depth and timbre to your voice you can do this with the Logitech G App or G Hub on desktop. You can get granular with your sound settings here if you like but I have found the default experience optimal for my needs.
The Logitech G ASTRO A50 X Wireless Gaming Headset + Base Station is available for pre-order now for $799.95 NZD from Logitech G.
