Stay in Touch with your Guild - Logitech Clearchat Pro
by
shopaholic_man
,
in Music, Movies, Pets, Musical Instruments at Epinions.com
,
Jul 3, 2009
Pros:
Very comfortable, clear sound, easy to install and use.
Cons:
No easy way to switch OFF headphones and use external speakers.
The Bottom Line:
For the World of Warcraft or other online communication applications, the Logitech Clearchat Pro Headset is comfortable and clear sounding.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
The world is a dangerous place. Cougars, boars and wolves roam the plains ready to eat you. At any time a raid of Alliance Night Elves and Humans could disrupt your quests. However, with a well organized team of Blood Elves, Tauren and Orcs, the Horde will prevail. You'll want to be well equiped with the best axes, swords and staffs, good quality leather or chain armor, magic spells, enhancements and of course the Logitech ClearChat Pro Headset. How else can you talk and listen to the rest of your party with ease? If you stop to type into chat instead of casting a healing spell, you might end up dead!
Wether you are a Tauren Shaman, a Blood Elf Death Night, or an Orc Warrior, the Logitech Clear Chat Pro Headset with built in microphone will allow you to keep in communication with other members of your raiding party.
The World of Warcraft or the Real World
Wether you spend your nights in the Realms of Azeroth playing for the Horde or the Alliance fighting in the World of Warcraft or waste your time in the Real World on Skype or Yahoo Chat, these Logitech Headphones are an affordable, good quality solution for computer communication needs. This is a stereo headphone set with a swivel down microphone. It is unfortunately wired, but then again, that means no batteries or recharging. It works off an available USB port. You can use it to talk and listen to other people while you are on your computer. These are NOT headphones for your iPod, stereo system or studio monitor headphones for practicing your guitar because they plug in via a USB port and not a standard 1/4 or 1/8 inch jack.
The headphones are specifically designed for voice applications on the computer, including popular communication applications like Skype or Yahoo Chat and popular Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games like Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft. You may have already guessed why I purchased a set.
Quality, Comfort and Price
Anyone who has played an online video game knows that you can lose hours in virtual realms. An uncomfortable headphone set wouldn't do. These are comfortable over the ear headphones with a padded band that goes over your head. Each earpiece is padded and overall this set is very comfortable to wear, even for long periods of time. Not only that, the quality is actually quite good!
iTunes - I set the headphones to music and loaded up iTunes to listen to some music on these, and I was quite surprised to get very good sound quality. I listened to Bjork wail about Earth Intruders, David Bowie sing of Modern Love and Barry White sing about love. All their voices sounded very well defined and in Barry White's case quite rich and deep. Ensiferum's Victory Songs sounded epic and Tarja's voice on Nightwish songs sounded operatic while the band sounded awesome. They actually sounded a lot better than a lot of cheap stereo headsets that ARE designed for stereos and iPods.
World of Warcraft - You can set the headphones to phone or video game as well, as near as I can tell, the headphones just have more dynamic range for music, and the phone setting maximizes the midranges that human voices are in, while cutting out some of the low end bass. Games is a compromise midway position, giving you the epic background music as well as letting you listen to the other players on your team. Voices were very clear and I was also easily understood by my teammates. One of my teammates, a level 70 Death Knight named Grimie, would frequently use the built in mike on his MacBook to request a Mountain Dew Horde Soda. He likes calling me over the computer instead of yelling DAD! from the other room. I could hear him clearly with these headphones. With the built in voice activated microphone I could respond easily You know where the refrigerator is! He also says that I sound funny over the microphone. This isn't a bad quality of the mike, everyone sounds somewhat different on the telephone or over a mike. He could hear me very clearly when I talked to him.
Staples - That was Easy! - I found these Headphones at Staples doing my monthly office supply shopping for only $31.99. Logitech also offers cheaper and more expensive styles. Since these headphones are office supplies they are also tax deductible. Hey, you never know when one of your fellow Orcs or Trolls will need legal representation!
Installation
You could call a computer tech and pay a couple hundred dollars to have this microphone professionally installed if you aren't good with computers. You could also just plug it into a USB port and watch as your computer instantly recognizes it and it starts working. Really, it's that simple. The only drawback I found was that one day when I used this, I decided I didn't want to use the microphone, so I unplugged the headphones from the USB port midgame. My Windows Vista computer didn't recognize it as unplugged, so I got no sound from my computer until I rebooted. I wish there was an easy way to switch from the headphones to the speakers as in regular headphones.
Controls
The headphone has pretty basic controls that are easy to operate on the right side ear. Set a switch in the middle to phone, game or music. Phone emphasizes the midrange at the expense of wider dynamic range, games is a compromise, and music gives you the full range of music. Sometimes a games epic score may make it difficult to understand or hear your teammates, hence the different settings. The mike may be muted with a simple button press, and the headphone volume can be raised or lowered by clicking a button at the top or bottom of the earpiece. At first I had to look at the ear, but after a while, you just can tap your buttons without looking.
For finer settings, you need to go into your computers sound settings or your game controls. I was able to adjust the microphone volume in both the System Settings on my Computer or in the Voice Settings within the game World of Warcraft. The microphone is voice activated.
Will These Headphones work for the Horde or the Alliance? (or Macs and PCs?)
Yes, wether you've aligned yourself with the Human Alliance Paladin Steve Jobs and use Macs or whether you've gone onto the dark side with the Horde's cruel Orc Mage Bill Gates and use a PC, this headset will work. It works with the new Mac OSX and Windows XP, 2000 and Vista.
Summary
If you are ever in the realm of Aggromar, and happen to see a giant Tauren Shaman named Marsiferum, add me to your party and say hello! I liked these Logitech headphones, both the earphones and the microphone worked well, it was affordable, easy to install and easy to use. If there was a way to shut them off to switch back to the external speakers I would give them five stars. Nonetheless they get a solid 4 stars.
