Headphones – they generally look a lot more huge, but performs better in most cases, given the same price range of course. Armaggeddon sent me their Pulse 5 headphones, a gaming-oriented pair of headphones where they also emphasize on the bass response.
With such a flashy product delivered to my doorstep, I took a look at how the Pulse 5 actually performs.
The Pulse 5 comes in a very, very eye-catching red colour. I’m not joking – it’s red all over from the outside to the inside, and even the unit’s colour that I’m getting.
After removing the internal compartments from the box without causing bloodshed, I found that the packaging was rather too simplistic – there’s the headphones themselves here, a bunch of cables tucked away behind the center piece and that’s it. No documentations or extra accessories.
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First up, the Pulse 5 has a very huge cable splitter that splits from 1 main cable to 3 separate cables.
This is important, as you’ll get 3 separate cables – one USB, one audio jack, and another microphone jack.
The Pulse 5 comes with a rather… weird features. Looking at their product page, I thought the Pulse 5 had the same mistake that the Kai-9 Sentinel keyboard (which we reviewed) had – where the rendered images had lights, but the real product didn’t.
Just now this time, it didn’t! They actually have lights coming out from the earcups and also the boom mic!
However to get this lighting effect, you will need to have a USB port available to supply the power. Yet that is the only function if you connect to a USB port – there is no active noise cancellation, no additional amplifier capabilities with the extra power. Just for lights.
The main cable however has an in-line independent volume control knob and another microphone on/off switch. This entire block is made out of a soft touch material, but the knob and switch is just too plasticky that it feels like the entire thing is going to break. Also, no lights on that red strip of plastic!
Build quality wise, the earcups themselves feel like it’s made out of hollow plastic, the headband is plastic, but these plastics are covered in soft touch material all over. Nice to touch, but not really that nice to use.
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A major issue needs a dedicated section of its own in any reviews, and this is no exception. I found that the Pulse 5 had issues with a 2 things.
First one is the earcup foams. It’s soft, but not thick enough. My ears (which protrude a lot) didn’t really get anywhere near comfortable as my ears will brush against the inside of the headphones themselves. This issue might also be contributed by the next issue – the clamping position
I guess Armaggeddon might have considered that everyone’s ears are directly 90º from the vertical axis. When I did spread the earcups apart with my hands, I saw that the headband is perfectly horizontal at the top with the earcups perfectly vertical at the sides. Seriously???
The clamping force comes in from just above my ears, blocking some blood flow and really causing some pain when I removed them after wearing for a while. This also contributes to poor noise isolation as the bottom of the headphones are left opened.
Headband however is quite elegantly flushed along the plastic construction, and soft enough to provide comfort.
[nextpage title=”Sound quality”]The usual devices are used in testing, but for mobile however I obviously can’t plug in the USB port, although it does nothing other than lighting.
Just to say it out first, noise isolation on my tests were horrible, it might be due to my head shape or just generally horrible clamping position of the Pulse 5.
Bass is certainly punchy and tight, as tested on Adventure Time by Rogue, and I also enjoyed the bass it produces on Singin’ In The Rain by Mint Royale. It’s not overwhelming, it’s not going to cause a headache, and the mids are just fine.
Moving on to Fly Me To The Moon by Beegie Adair. Again the bass response is not overwhelming, and piano sounds good enough although the chimes were a little distracting.
I did find out that the soundstage isn’t really that good – it sounds like as if I’m stuck in a 2-dimensional room that is very compact, and everything just sounds like it’s coming from left and right.
The microphone however it solidly built, but there are again 2 main issues. First one here being the pivoting point. It just requires too much strength to rotate the microphone to the front, and you’ll have to make sure you hold the left earcup first before attempting to rotate the microphone.
Secondly is the distance from my mouth. I don’t have such pouty lips that can reach about 5cm away, yet the microphone is on the far left side. Doing some recording test shows that the Pulse 5’s microphone is just badly executed.
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The Armaggeddon Pulse 5 could and should have been a better piece of headphone, but didn’t make it. Even retailing at a price of RM79, try this piece of headphone before purchasing.
By the way, it is also available in white/blue accent, yellow/black accent, and the black/red accent which I had in this review.
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