Thanks to the Sades A2, I’ve never felt more like an X-Wing pilot.
That’s not one of this gaming headset’s key marketing points and it can certainly be used for more than just Star Wars Squadrons. But I must have nearly worn out the microphone just clicking it up and down, shouting “Red One standing by!” with each click. It’s certainly great to get my hands on a headset that’s so pleasingly tactile.
Yes, in-line control buttons are great and I’ll still mess with the LED pattern on my other Sades headset. But raising your microphone to mute it and hearing that click means you don’t have to take your eyes off the screen for a second. Likewise the volume control; you can reach up to your left ear cup and twiddle the volume control with your thumb and, if you’re playing Call of Duty or some other twitch-intensive shoot ’em up, the seconds you’re not looking at the screen can be super important.
None of that would matter if the headphones were so tight they risked doing a Van Gogh on your ears. Fortunately, I can report that the A2 is really comfortable, reducing outside noise without being painful. The Sades A2 headset comes in two colours: black (with a tiny bit of orange) or pink with white padding. The latter is dubbed the ‘angel edition’, though they’re essentially identical.
Sound quality is excellent; the A2 proved to be marginally bassier than my previous pair, which you can tweak on PC but not on consoles. But the headset handled everything I threw at it admirably, from ripping demons apart in DOOM, pottering around in Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (and taking in the gorgeous soundtrack) and watching movies. Likewise, microphone sound quality was good; you’ll typically get better quality from stand-alone microphones but for gaming it’s more than enough.
The one fiddly thing about the Sades A2 headset is that if you want to use it on a gaming PC, you have to use the provided lead. I’m not going to call it a negative as it’s just the way headsets work; the A2 has a three pole connector which means you can plug it into a controller or a laptop and use the headphones and microphone at the same time. If you want to use it with a PC that has a separate headphone and microphone slot you need to dig out the included cable and use that instead. It does give you more reach, however, and it means you can use the headset on anything with a 3.5mm socket.
The Sades A2 delivers excellent audio and pleasingly user-friendly controls, without breaking the bank. If you’re looking for quality at a budget price, you can’t go wrong with the A2.
