Like
- Excellent audio and mic quality
- Analog as well as USB and Bluetooth connections
- Comfortable
Don’t like
- No equalization options for mic or surround software
- Mediocre battery life
- Not friendly to sweaty ears
- USB-C to analog cable costs extra
International pricing isn’t available, but $249 converts to roughly £205 or AU$395.
There aren’t a lot of competitors at its price; the most notable one is the excellent Logitech G Pro X 2, which is lighter at 230 grams compared to this model’s 258 grams. The Logitech also delivered a longer battery life than this — they’re rated roughly the same, but this is the first headset I’ve tested that’s dropped as far as down to 10% during relatively light usage. It also has a less finicky connection to the dongle and has G Hub software allow for customization.
While it has similar specs to most other wireless gaming headsets, notably the 40 millimeter drivers and 20Hz to 20,000Hz frequency response range. It’s all in the tuning. And Beyerdynamic tunes them well; without any equalization adjustment, they have a wide soundstage — solid lows and crisp, clear mids and highs — with no perceptible distortion at high volume.
The boom mic is especially good. It’s got a relatively large condenser capsule for a headset mic at 10mm (cardioid pattern), and it shows in the mic’s frequency response range of 50Hz to 18kHz — in gaming headsets, it’s typically 100Hz to 10kHz. That translates to a much fuller, more natural sounding voice thanks to the extended pickup of the lows and highs. Without software equalization, though, you can’t tune it to optimize for chat. I don’t think it has noise cancellation, but whatever it does it’s extremely good at blocking out background noise.
There’s an “Augmented” mode as well, which uses the secondary, built-in mic to allow some outside sound to pass through the fairly isolating earpads; like most of these transparency modes, the digital processing actually makes many sounds more pronounced (my keyboard makes an odd, distracting popping sound when I slam keys like Enter). The built-in mic, which is intended to for use when connected via Bluetooth to a phone, so you can wear these outside without the boom mic, isn’t terrific, but it’s about average for these types of mics.
The tiny opening in the orange line is the built-in mic.
Its design is simple, with a detachable mic with permanent foam cover, USB-C port for charging and the aforementioned analog connection, a button for switching among connections and a volume dial you can press to mute the mic and to control calls and playback.
It connects to some Bluetooth devices immediately on pressing the button, but it won’t tell you which ones. That’s fine if you only have it paired to a single device. But if you’ve paired it to multiple devices, you get to play the “which one are you connected to?” game, one that I can only win by turning Bluetooth off on all the potential culprits. (This is actually common Bluetooth headset behavior, but I will complain about it. Every. Single. Time.)
I found the low-latency connection and dongle a bit wonky. There weren’t any issues I could repeat, but they were unpredictable, which can be worse. The signal range can get to around 30 feet through walls and doors in my apartment. Or it can disconnect right outside my bedroom door. A couple of times I had to replug the dongle.
The fit is easy to adjust, though the cups don’t rotate, and the ear cushions are quite comfortable — the headband didn’t squeeze too tightly, a problem I frequently have since I wear most headsets on the smallest size where the headband is at its squeeziest. But the leatherette cover of the ear cushions seemed a little more prone to give me the ear sweats than usual (or more precisely, the ring-around-the-ear-sweats), despite being what I think is the same leatherette as other headsets.
The Beyerdynamic MMX 200 wireless gaming headset is good at the things Beyerdynamic is good at — sound — and ranges from “decent” to “just OK” to “can’t-do-that” on everything else. And despite its name, it doesn’t seem to be optimized for gaming as much as competitors all over the price spectrum are.
