A few years ago Thermaltake decided to introduce a new line of hardware, the Level10. The thought behind it was that this was the top of the line, period. The broke into the market with a case that was almost unique in its design. After that case they have released several more products including a pair of gaming mice that are outstanding in design and performance. Now we are taking a look at their headset, the Level10M headset. This gaming headset is designed in the tradition of the original level10 case and the mice that followed it. So let’s take a look and see if this headset deserves to be alongside the other products in the Level10 family.
Performance - With audio gear it is hard to be objective. After all different people like different music and even people that like the same music might like to listen to it in different ways. To make sure that I cover the audio products that we get here at DecryptedTech I like to have more than one opinion. Usually I gather 5 other people to listen to different audio types (gaming, movies, MP3 and CD-Audio). I then ask for a rating of one to five with one being the worst and 5 being the best for each category. As an added item I also ask for a single word to describe the audio quality. I then follow up with my personal feelings and observations. The Level10M headphones are intended to be a gaming headset so while we wanted to make sure we cover the gaming end of things we also wanted to find out how well they operate with other audio content.
Music (MP3 and CD-Audio) -For Music I have a few favorite tracks that I like to use. These are not always other people’s favorites but they serve as a baseline and have some impressive audio features to them that can distinguish between good audio and bad. One of them is Stevie Ray Vaughn’s rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing. It is an amazing track. Others are A Day in the Life by the Beetles, Are you Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, and Cage the Elephant’s Ain’t no Rest for the Wicked. To this listing we added some jazz, funk, and of course Reggae. The numbers for this along with their corresponding one word comments are below.
Our take -The Level10M has a clean sound with little to no mud in the mid-range. The only thing that was really missing was truly deep low end. The low-end was there, but it seemed muted and not as distinct as it could be. This was evident in our Reggae tracks most of all. On the good side it was not such a large issue that it made the listening experience a bad one.
Gaming -So for this test we did something a little different. In addition to our normal testing with desktop games, we decided that we would also throw in a couple of games on our Galaxy Note III just to see how good the audio reproduction is there. Our normal games are Medal of Honor, BioShock Infinite and Modern Warfare 3. These games have different audio qualities that can push a headset nicely.
Our take -The Level10M headset did a solid job during our gaming testing. In BioShock Infinite the voices were clean as were the sounds of the weapons that were firing at you. On the downside explosions did not have the same impact as we would have liked. They were there, but not as deep or as resonate as normal. In Medal of Honor the audio was good but again lacked that lower end that allows for really deep bass.
The microphone worked very well during our gaming testing as well as when used with Skype. We did not have any issues with clarity and voices were easily understood.
Movies/Video -Movies was an easy one also, I have several Blu-ray titles that are great for this including Pirates of the Caribbean. So I loaded up this title and then dropped in a couple of other movies that have good surround effects. The numbers and words are shown below.
Our Take - Movies and videos seemed to suffer from the same lack of low-end we saw with our other sample types. Again this did not make the listening experience bad, it just did not have the full and vibrant range were would expect from a top-end headset.
There is one note to be made here: earlier we observed that the depth of the ear cups was a little shallow. This did in fact lead to some issues when wearing them. We found that if you move your head side-to-side you can feel them lift up off of your head. When this happens there is a distinct and noticeable change in pressure. This translates into additional sound leakage. The audio you are hearing from the drivers drops in perceived volume while sounds from the outside appear to become louder. Again this only happens if you move your head around a lot so for many games and setups this will not be an issue at all. For multi-monitor setups this could become an issue in the right circumstances.
Comfort -With their weight and design the Level10M headset sits easily on your head without discomfort. Even after a couple of hours of play they do not put pressure on the top of your head. There is also no pressure on your ears when you wear them. This is good news for anyone that games for extended periods of time.
