ASUS ROG Strix Fusion 300 Review

👤by Tony Le Bourne Comments 📅22-10-17
Performance Testing
Setup, Design & Observations
ASUS had considered the ease of setup in the design of the ROG Strix Fusion 300 headset, meaning that it is driverless, and all you need to to is connect to your device or system via the 3.5mm jack, or by the included USB cable. On inspection, the headset itself is made from strong plastics, and despite the initial incident where the ear-cup extension had fallen out of its socket, this doesn't appear to be too major a flaw to warrant any concern about how robust the headset is.

On wearing the headset, we noticed that the Fusion 300 has a rather strong clamping force, but it didn't become uncomfortable; the pressure was reduced a little by extending the ear-cups to fit. The large cushioned ear-pads easily covered our ears, and not only did they provide the needed comfort, they displayed an impressive degree of passive noise-cancelling. Due to the clamping force, we wouldn't recommend use of this headset for those that need to wear glasses.

The microphone wasn't the easiest to retract, but it wasn't too difficult either, and the virtual 7.1 surround button was easy to identify and press. We did however note that there is no onboard volume control, nor an inline remote to adjust the volume also. This could be inconvenient for those without a keyboard that has dedicated volume control.


Despite featuring LED lighting, as it is only red, we only have access to 'Static', 'breathing', and 'off' modes, though it would be safe to assume that the functionality for RGB lighting is on its way, potentially with a different model.


Multimedia
We listened to various lossless audio files, and instantly we were greeted with impressive, rich bass that didn't distort or muddy the mids or treble. The high-mids were a little less pronounced than they could be but overall the balance was decent, which allowed us to enjoy the music playback.

In game the details picked up very clear, with the punchy bass giving an exciting kick to thuds, footsteps and grenades while playing CS:GO. We enabled the v7.1 surround and noticed that the bass become significantly weaker, however the audio widened a lot. While running around we felt that the virtual surround was akin to being in a large communal shower, making the positional audio sound a little confusing, as sometimes certain details in front of you sounded like they are coming from behind, and vice versa. Once we got into the flow of the game, the widened audio was enjoyable and some sounds were eerily directional (for example, one time I thought I heard a sound by my actual feet under the desk), but generally we felt it was unreliable and the loss of that deep rich bass isn't worth it.

Microphone
The microphone sounded acceptable, with a fairly natural range of tones picked up. Though considering the pricing of this headset we felt the microphone was a little sub-par. It isn't very long so it doesn't reach close enough to your mouth. This means that the sensitivity must be set high, introducing some static while picking up some background noises. The microphone also picked up some vibrational noise from the cable/chassis which was eliminated by moving the USB cable from the front ports on our case to the rear motherboard panel.


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