INTRODUCTION

   If you happen to live alone the best and ideal scenario for you to enjoy all the latest movies and game titles is to use a powerful surround sound speaker system since nothing can really beat the positional audio offered by such a setup. Unfortunately the "harsh" reality is that not everyone lives alone thus making it extremely hard not to own such a system but rather to use it at will especially if you like to crank the volume all the way up. Manufacturers are well aware of that issue and so their answer are the well-known 5.1/7.1 virtual and "real" surround sound headsets which not only offer sufficient positioning audio for most people but they also save you from the trouble of using a separate microphone with which you can communicate with your friends when participating in online games. Till today however one could only find 5.1/7.2 virtual surround sound headsets in the market at a bargain price. Well X2 seems dedicated to change that and so today we will be taking a closer look at their brand new SATURN 5.1 HD Gaming Audio Headset.

   X2 is originated by a team of PC enthusiasts based in The Netherlands, the design heart of Europe. X2 redefines the true meaning of performance PC hardware. With our exceptional style coupled with genuine product quality X2 is irrefutably above and beyond the rest. X2 strives to surpass the needs of our peers with the satisfaction and our guarantee of reliability, compatibility and consistency in our products. Our mission is to provide the highest endeavor of performance while obtaining top-quality levels in all our products.

   For a system to offer real 5.1 surround audio it needs to have 4 surround speakers (effects), one center speaker (dialogs) and one subwoofer (bass) so all manufacturers had to do was to figure out a way to squeeze all these into a headset. Of course due to limitations with current technology each earcup can currently have up to 4 individual drivers (for 7.1 surround) shooting into the ear from similar direction and that's pretty much why positioning audio can't be on par with a properly setup 5.1/7.1 speaker system. That being said the SATURN 5.1 HD Audio Headset packs 3 individual drivers in each earcup featuring a frequency response of 10Hz-20KHz, 110dB sensitivity (+-3dB) and 32Ohm impedance (+-10%) for the front ones, 20Hz-20KHz, 95dB (+-3dB) and 32Ohm (+-10%) for the center one and 20Hz-20Khz, 100dB (+-3dB) and 32Ohm (+-10%) for the rear ones. It's also equipped with a flexible Omni-directional microphone featuring -36dB sensitivity (+-3dB) with 2.2KOhm impedance and a tiny vibrator inside each earcup which add realism. On paper we have to admit that the SATURN 5.1 HD Gaming Audio Headset seems really nice but whether or not that's really the case remains to be seen.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

A product image, the 5.1 surround sound feature and the company logo are all placed at the front of the box.

The specifications table is placed at the rear of the box right next to a in-depth product description.

Packaging is certainly not the best we've seen and although the sample did arrive unharmed we'd still like to see a "safer" package.

The bundle is very basic and so aside the SATURN headset you will also receive two replacement earpads and the user’s manual.

THE SATURN

The SATURN headset is primarily made by hard plastic, features a nice glossy coating on the exterior and weighs just 435g.

Although the earpads are quite large the headset is actually mid-sized as you can see from the above picture (as always we compare it to the compact REVO Wireless by Jabra).

On the exterior of the earcups we see a silver painted section (looks like a button but it's actually not), 6 LEDs (3 on each end) and the 5.1 channels printed at the rear end.

The Omni-directional microphone may not be retractable or removable but it's very flexible and has a red LED at the front to indicate when it's turned on.

Left and right markings are placed on the exterior right over the earcups and the company logo.

The headband expands up to 35mm on each side but unfortunately X2 hasn't placed any visible increments on it.

As mentioned earlier the very comfortable leatherette/cloth earpads are quite large so chances are that your entire ear will be covered.

You can remove the earpads just by pulling them to reveal the drivers right beneath.

The headpad is also covered with leatherette and is quite comfortable.

From the in-line controller you can mute the microphone and adjust the volume for all the drivers (front/rear/center/subwoofer).

Just like the rest of the headset the braided cable features a nice red/black color combination and thus we were hoping to see a gold plated USB plug at the end but unfortunately that's not the case (doesn't really matter much but it doesn't cost much either).

The SATURN has a total of 14 red LEDs inside its body, the microphone and the in-line controller so it really looks nice at dark.

USING THE SATURN

Since the SATURN comes without a bundled CD you will need to download the drivers from X2 downloads page.

Once again we see the Xear3D software which this time however has been configured for use with the in-line multi-channel USB soundcard. Through the Xear control panel you can enable/disable and configure the surround sound mode (2/4/6/8 channels), set the DSP for each channel, adjust the volume levels of both the headphones and the microphone (you can also mute them), play with the custom equalizer or choose one of the available presets, make use of one of the default environment settings and finally you can enable/disable the available karaoke mode. 

CONCLUSION

   We used the X2 SATURN 5.1 HD Gaming Audio Headset for a total of 5 days with several game titles (PlanetSide 2, Thief, Mass Effect 3, World Of Tanks 9.0 and Warthunder Closed Beta) and some Blu-ray movies (Aliens SE, Avatar SE, Robocop SE) to see if it can be used for things aside gaming. First of all I’d like to talk about the quality of the headset and just say that if you put too much weight on that aspect the SATURN is simply not for you since the plastic used although quite solid gives it a very "cheap" feeling. Of course this goes hand in hand with the price of the headset but we will talk about that on the next paragraph. Moving to audio quality this is where the SATURN actually did pretty well especially with games and although we weren't impressed with its highs it did great with mids and bass. The vibrator feature was something we didn't expect so at first we thought that the trembling of the earcups was because of the powerful bass. X2 did a good job with the Omni-directional microphone since we had clear in-game transmission at all times. Comfort is also at high levels although the somewhat heavy in-line controller may get a bit annoying until you figure out where to place it.

   Right now the SATURN 5.1 HD Gaming Audio Headset by X2 retails for USD79.95 inside the USA (CoolerGuys) and at around 70Euros inside the EU a price tag that puts it at the bottom of the lowest cost "real" 5.1 surround sound headsets in the market. However that comes at a price and so as mentioned earlier the hard plastic used isn't on par with the audio quality and although we do understand that X2 wanted to keep the cost down to a minimum still to some consumers that may not matter. Leaving out build quality the SATURN 5.1 HD Gaming Audio Headset did really good in all our tests and so we are awarding it with our Golden Award.

PROS

- Design
- Audio Clarity
- Good Bass)
- Good Positioning Audio
- "Real" 5.1 Surround Sound Headset
- Vibration
- 3m Braided Cable
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Build Quality (For Some)
- Current Availability