Logitech’s Astro gaming model has a brand new flagship gaming headset that prices greater than some whole-ass consoles, and it’s designed to concurrently play good throughout PlayStation 5, Xbox Sequence X / S, and PC with a single button press.
However the $379.99 Astro A50 X doesn’t do all of this with merely plebeian expertise like Bluetooth. It makes use of HDMI passthrough for its expansive connectivity — that means the beefy charging dock of this headset is designed to be wired up as a central hub for a lot of your house audio / video setup. I hope you’re ready to take some expert-level lessons on cable administration (i.e. plenty of YouTube looking) if you happen to’re seeking to purchase one when it ships on December twentieth and never make a serpentine mess of cables out of your house theater setup.
Specs and feature-wise, the brutally futuristic-looking A50 X has 40mm graphene audio drivers that debuted within the Logitech G Professional X 2, a built-in mic able to 16-bit 48 kHz enter, Dolby Atmos help (with a Dolby license), and Logitech’s Lightspeed wi-fi connectivity. It additionally has EQ / ranges tuning by way of Logitech G Hub (the primary Astro headset to make use of the mother or father firm’s app), Bluetooth for mixing in your telephone audio or connecting to a Nintendo Swap (sans straightforward swapping), a claimed battery lifetime of as much as 24 hours on a single cost, a USB-C port in lieu of the earlier mannequin’s Micro USB, and two HDMI 2.1 inputs. These HDMI ports are the important thing to connecting your Xbox and PlayStation consoles, and so they help as much as a 4K / 120Hz sign to go by way of a single HDMI-out to your TV or monitor — that means you shouldn’t lose any of the fancier current-gen options like VRR or ALLM in case your TV helps them.
If the A50 X’s passthrough setup sounds a bit complicated (ah, the fun of HDMI), it’s as a result of it form of is. To completely put it to use, you’ll must plug your PlayStation and Xbox into the docking station of the A50 X through their HDMI connections (those you’d usually plug into your TV or house audio receiver). The docking station then has to have USB connections with every console, your PC, and an influence supply. A lone HDMI-out from the dock then unifies all of these gadgets onto one enter of your TV. Decide up the headset and hit the button on the ear cup to cycle between these linked gadgets in your TV. Should you hold the headset docked, the identical button ought to nonetheless cycle between them whereas letting the audio skip it and proceed on to your TV audio system or sound bar.
Chances are you’ll discover that the A50 X doesn’t have a 3rd HDMI-in port for connecting a PC, and that’s as a result of Logitech appears to suppose PC avid gamers solely need to use DisplayPort (which, to be honest, typically has larger bandwidth and extra in-built goodies than HDMI). The headset can nonetheless swap over to a linked PC with one of many three USB-C ports on its dock used for information connections of the 2 consoles and a pc, however switching over to your desktop monitor must be executed manually (such as you’re within the Stone Age).
Logitech appears to examine the A50 X because the one gaming headset to rule all of them, and upon getting your entire gaming setup working by way of it, you simply press the PlaySync button on the rear of the proper ear cup to cycle between setups. If you wish to play video games or use your laptop with the audio coming by way of your audio system, for native multiplayer or since you merely don’t really feel like placing headphones on at that second, the identical PlaySync button will nonetheless be used to modify video indicators and go alongside the audio to a different system whereas it’s docked. The dock due to this fact turns into an necessary point of interest of your setup, although you possibly can nonetheless cost the A50 X with out it by plugging into the headset’s personal USB-C port — a necessary job if you happen to ever must cost whilst you play.
The Astro A50 X has lots of the pure updates you’d count on over the A50 headset from 2019 (a swap to USB-C and new audio and mic drivers), although you could want to essentially be into the multi-console switching to get probably the most out of the almost $400 cans. Should you do need one headset to deal with every thing throughout your entire gaming setup (and also you don’t take care of utilizing any of the assorted 3.5mm wired choices on the market), the A50 X is the one recreation on the town.