Sharkoon X-Tatic SX & X-Tatic SP Review

👤by Alex Hull Comments 📅22-11-13
Build, feel and design

Let's see how well made the sets are.




A familiar solid, chunky design


On first holding and using of either of the two headsets you realise that they’re constructed well, whilst not being overly heavy or too light. Sharkoon have found a great balance here. The plastics are of high quality and the imitation leather around the headband is soft and looks professional. There can be no arguments that the headsets could certainly put up with a decent amount of punishment without much of a problem. This is an obvious advantage if you’re a console user and if it’s likely to be left on the floor or cast aside fairly readily. Even the cables feel quite substantial and by no means weak in any areas.


The white finish and lime green highlights complement the Xbox 360 perfectly


These sets are designed primarily with gaming in mind and their appearance suggests as such. A large, chunky design and colour coordination to their respective consoles (with the SP also being 360 compatible, of course). Looking at the photos doesn’t do them justice, they are even better in real life, though I have to say I prefer the SP for its black design over the SX. The logo, details and highlights all look slightly better on the darker colour. This is purely personal preference, check out the photos for yourself and decide which you like best!


The volume control unit sports control for voice (when using chat cable) and normal volume, as well as a switch to turn the microphone on and off


Both sets include an in-line amplifier and volume control, as well as controls for microphone functions (mute and volume). The control pod includes analogue volume control – a massive plus from my point of view as you can fine tune the volume quickly and easily to your preference. I’ve yet to use as adequate a digital control. They also come with a clip attached to the upper part of the cable for routing and affixing to clothes, though I can’t see many users making particularly good use of this as the cables are quite heavy, as suggested above and also due to the control pod. So not an essential addition but it’s nice to have flexibility. The microphone fits firmly into a socket on the base of the left earpiece, though this is only easily possible with the headset off, so if you’re likely to want to move it in and out regularly with the headset on, you might want to look for an alternative with a sliding type microphone permanently attached. This, again, is not a problem, but an observation. The microphone itself is easily twisted and bent into any position you could want, though some may find it a little shorter than most implementations in similar products. This has little impact on performance, but sometimes it can be easy to forget it’s there. Whether that’s an advantage or disadvantage is up to you!


Convenient design


For storage, you can fold the earpieces flat, but there is no bundled bag or case like with the Creative Fatal1ty HS-800 or other similar offerings we've seen.

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