The mic boom is on the left side of the headset and swivels according to where you need it positioned; down for gaming use or all the way up for storage or portability. QuickAdjust is the name Plantronics has given this excellent feature. The end of the microphone features a soft, padded tip. Overall the mic feels heavy-duty; the swivel isn't loose yet it is very easy to move.

The cord is one solid cable until the end 1/3rd where the mic and audio out lines separate into their own plugs. The jack inputs are a bit smaller than I would like but they work nonetheless. The cable made from the standard flexible rubber, and not the braided style like the 5HV2. The cord itself has plenty of length which should be enough for almost any setup.

Down the cord we have an in-line volume control - an excellent feature that I feel more headsets should have. On the volume control there is a clip to hold the cable to your clothes or anything you can find to clip it to. On the opposite side of the volume control is a microphone mute switch for instances in which you need to mute your voice with the flick of a switch.


One of the key design points that I really like is a feature shared by .Audio 370, the Siberia, and .Audio 110: the custom-fitting wire-suspended headband. The headband excels in the comfort department, form-fitting to the size of your head. Above that is the overhead frame which holds the two sides of the headset together.

The other feature that really caught my attention was the large ear cans and their shape. Our ears aren’t perfectly oval shaped like so many headsets we see today. Plantronics, in an ode to diversity and possibly for comfort benefits, has made the inner ear outline more of a square shape.

Testing
I have been running these headsets through various settings and atmospheres for weeks to get the best idea on just how good or bad the performance is. There are some major areas that we as gamers need to consider when evaluating a headset.

I’ve tested the following:

• Sound quality in-game
• Sound quality during music or movie playback
• Comfort
• Other bells and whistles

These features will be tested on Windows Vista Ultimate, with an X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card and the latest Creative drivers.

Gaming Sound

My first audio tests almost always entail loading up Steam and playing Counter-Strike. Old habits die hard, and after 8 years CS is a game that is still an important part of my gaming audio needs. In-game audio had more depth and quality than the 5HV2s I had previously tested. The positional audio was good; the 5H’s were a bit clearer with directional sound detection but that is mainly a result of the lack of audio depth. Regardless, the .Audio 370 performed better than the Icemat Siberia and PC160 that I tested it against. Results were quite similar with Counter-Strike: Source. Both of these games feature sounds ranging from highs to lows, and all of them stood out without that distorted sound we get from some headsets with various tones. I could easily see these being the standard to which I compare mid-ranged headsets to in Counter-Strike.

The explosions in Call of Duty 2 and Battlefield 2142 were really accentuated with this headset. Bass that I had been lacking in the 5H series rang out from these cans. It isn’t the overwhelming-make-everything-muddy-and-deep bass though, it has a sense of clarity to it. Explosions and gunfire were detailed and profound. It was a gratifying experience testing these bad boys out.

The microphone quality is fantastic. I had numerous people comment in-game about how great my mic sounded. I did some audio recording just to see for myself and it did a excellent job of isolating other noise from the background and just picking up my voice. You shouldn’t hear any complaints from your friends in-game or in ventrilo about how bad “your mic sucks”.