Engineering Apprentice Logan Campbell has been testing the HP 600 Gaming Headset (available here in our store). This is his review-
“The HP Pavilion Gaming 600 headset is a high quality, comfortable and easy to use gaming headset that is perfect for those on a budget.
To test the Pavilion 600 headset I thought a good trial by fire would be to play games that heavily rely on sound for the full experience and as a fan of them I opted for the trial by fire, Military Simulation (MilSim). I tested this headset with Rising Storm 2: Vietnam and Insurgency. The first thing I noticed when launching Insurgency is that these headphones are loud, which is perfect for immersion but not too good for my ears, luckily they have a convenient hardware volume slider built into the design so this wasn’t a problem for long. When playing both of these games the virtual 7.1 surround sound was definitely noticeable over a standard pair of headphones. This combined with the Pavilion 600’s open ear design can make for quite the immersive experience in the heat of a firefight. The con of an open ear design is that other people in the room can hear anything playing through the headphones.
The in-built microphone on these headphones is surprisingly high quality, it’s no studio microphone and I wouldn’t record my X-factor audition on it but it’s perfectly passable for competitive gaming and the sound comes through clearly even with background noise.
The Pavilion 600’s physically are a big pair of headphones but are deceptively light and not noticeable even after a few hours of constant use. The ear cushions are fittingly also very large and make the headset comfortable for prolonged use. The look of the headphones is what can only be described as “gamer-ey”, they are definitely for gamers with a black and green colour scheme featuring green LED’s that illuminate the HP logo.
A side note on these headphones is that while the box and the HP website seem to claim they are only compatible with Windows 10, I tested the headphones on Windows 7, MacOS & Arch Linux and with all 3 of these the headphones were simply plug and play with no hassle. They have a USB interface instead of the standard audio jacks meaning they can be used on some newer laptops that may only feature the one headphone jack.
The HP Pavilion 600 Gaming Headset is an effective and comfortable pair of gaming headphones that don’t cost the earth and will work with pretty much any system.”
