ASTRO Gaming A50 Wireless Headset + Base Station Gen 4 - Compatible with Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, Mac - Black/Gold

Let me first start out by saying I am a casual gamer. I've been playing Xbox One for the last few years and decided to get this head set for that particular gaming system. This is a great gaming headset! I upgraded from my Turtle Beach headset that served me very well for many years. Here is what I liked and did not like about the Astro A50. Pros: Great sound: Customizable pre-sets and default presets make this headset ideal for those that want to tweak their headset settings. You can easily adjust settings on this headset by using the free Astro app on any Windows PC or Apple OS computer. You can also select one of three headsets loaded on the headset by simply pushing the preset button. This cycles through three presets on the headset (1-3). Great feel: This headset is lightweight. You can easily wear this for 8+ hours during those long gaming sessions and still not get fatigued by wearing it. While the headset is lightweight it is still built very very well and feel solid. You won't feel like you can easily break this headset which for the price point is a good thing. The headset also does not pinch or make my head uncomfortable in anyway and if measured out I have a large head. Wireless: The headset is 100% wireless. The only time you will need to have the headset docked is for charging. There is no cables to get in the way between you and the gaming controller or the gaming console. The freedom is nice. With the wireless capabilities also comes outstanding range. When wearing the headset I can literally go to any area of my apartment and still hear voice and game sounds. It's also nice not being tethered to your controller or console. If you've never experience true wireless gaming this will be mind blowing for you--it was for me. Mic: While some reviews have posted complaints about the mic quality I have had really no issues with the mic. I am careful with it and raise and lower it with ease as to not damage the mechanism. The mic is turned on and off by raising and lowering. Up is in the off/mute position and down is in the on/voice position. No complaints from anyone in my gaming party on not being able to hear me either. You may need to carefully bend the end of the mic inward to your face a bit for best results. Keep in mind that if you do this the mic will hit the headset in the off/mute position so be careful not to damage it. While it would be nice to have a switch to tap to turn the mic on or off it is also nice to have the mic up out of the way for those solo gaming sessions or if you don't feel like being social during a particular gaming session. Cons: Adjusting in game and voice chat volume: While there is a "rocker switch" to adjust game and voice chat sound it is often confusing and I find myself constantly looking to see which way I should push the switch to adjust either the game volume or voice chat volume. This is especially true if I don't use the headset for several weeks between gaming sessions. Again, I am a casual gamer so this is my experience. Opinions on this will vary! Overall volume: It is nice to be able to easily raise or lower overall sound volume. This is game volume and voice chat volume. The downside to the particular way this headset's volume control works is that it's on a round dial. This dial is too easily manipulated especially if you are resting in a reclined position. I find myself inadvertently lowering the volume in the middle of a gaming session and then I need to remove one hand from the gaming controller to re-adjust the volume control. This is a drawback to the design but not a deal breaker. If you never game in a reclined position you very well may never experience an issue with this! Overall this is light years ahead of any basic headset and even more advanced in many ways over the competitors top end headset models. If you are a serious or casual gamer this is a headset that you should check-out and you'll probably realize that this is the route to go. Thanks for reading!

Do NOT buy this headset!! I've had this headset over a year, I use it everyday, and everyday I hate past me even more for buying this stupid overpriced thing. I'm usually not the type to complain and just keep trying but oh man, I hate this headset with such a passion and I look forward to it breaking so I can buy a new one. The speakers and mic are still working and I spent too much to not use it until it breaks but man I want it to break so bad. Within 1 week, the charging station wouldn't charge most of the time unless it was EXTREMELY carefully placed and not even the slightest bit bumped EVER. Within 1 month, it would no longer charge at all on the station, regardless of how it's placed. I have to unplug the base station and plug that cable directly into the headset, so I can not use the headset while it's charging. The battery is terrible. It has enough battery for 8 hours of game play, that's it. So if you've planning on long gaming sessions, you better make sure you have a backup because this thing WILL die at the most obnoxious times. It has 2 speaker modes, Voice and Gaming. And it will choose to randomly switch between them, with no warning. No I didn't bump the headset, it would just change modes so I'd have to tab out to change the speaker settings to the one it's changed to. The headband is absolutely horrific. It's super comfortable for about 3 months, then it will loosen and practically hang off your head and you can not tighten it again until it's had time to cooldown or something. There is a bridge connection at the top of the headset to connect the 2 beams, this has become unstuck on 1 side and will frequently detach and stab me in the top of the head. When this happens, the loosening of the adjustable head size gets even worse. TLDR: Great speaker/sound but the practical use of this headset will anger you forever. DO NOT BUY IT.

First impressions: -Nice packaging, everything is brand spanking new with really nice plastic peels. Awesome new smell too. -Connecting the headset to my PC with the included optical and USB A to Micro USB cables work instantly, all I needed to do was switch computer output to optical out for my sound card. -Did some preliminary testing with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare + Warzone. Sound profile is differently from my recent Sennheisers, will have to play around with EQ and Dolby Sound settings. Sound's fine, just a really wide soundstage compared to the Sennheisers with Dolby Sound on, which I'll be getting used to. -Its taking a long while to charge the headset by today's standards, where you can almost fully charge a smartphone in less than 45-minutes. ~25% in an hour is not bad for something that will sit on the charging base for like 16-18 hours out of each day, though. -Almost the same as my old Gen 1 Astro A50s, with some really nice improvements. I like the comfort and the removable foam on the ear cups and head band for easy cleaning/replacing. Also nice to have a button to switch EQ profiles on the fly. And I now have again my favorite feature from my old headset, the rocking right ear cup plate to balance game and chat audio I've had many headsets over the years, always tried to get something nice and comfortable for long sessions, and tried to go for the best quality+comfort+features balance I could find for my PC+PS4 desk setup. I've had these headsets over many years, and in this order: a Logitech G700, Corsair Vengeance 2000, a refurbished gen 1 Astro A50, cheap Logitech G33 when my Astro was stolen during travel, Steelseries Arctis 5, Sennheiser Game One, Sennheiser GSP500. Out of all these, the Astro A50s and both Sennheisers are easily above the rest, these three are high quality headsets with satisfying sound. Steelseries Arctis 5 is easily the most comfortable of the bunch, and had lots of really nice features, but a faulty proprietary connector and the bad customer service experience that followed turned me off their brand forever, even if Amazon made things right in the end when they didn't have to(Thanks Amazon!). I loved my old Astro A50s, and these feel like coming back home, with some really nice improvements. I like the removable foam on the ear cups and head band for easy cleaning/replacing. Also nice to have a button to switch EQ profiles on the fly. The charging base is also really nice to have, and the expected 15-hour battery life should make life much easier compared to the 3 hours I used to get on my old refurbished ones. I now have again my favorite feature from my old headset, the rocking right ear cup button to balance game and chat audio I'm really looking forward to enjoying my Astro A50s with my PC + PS4, and hopefully PS5 when it comes out. I'll be updating my review to reflect my user experience as time goes by, Especially if any issues pop up.

The first A50's I ordered were advertised as "refurbished" and I quickly found out that was not a good idea. They were listed for half the cost of a brand new pair, so I thought why not. I assumed someone else ordered a new headset because their old headset station stopped working, so they swapped their broken station for the new one and then returned the item & basically replaced the headset station for free, because the charging station never powered on. Needless to say, I returned the refurbished headset and bit the bullet and paid for a brand new pair. I know alot of folks might be apprehensive about spending $300 on a gaming headset, but after years of blowing through cheap headset after cheap headset I decided it's time to invest in the best headset money could buy after reading reviews on the A50'S. I've now owned & used them for about two months and held off on leaving a review until I spent enough time using them for a honest and fair review of the product. I can honestly say the sound is superior to any other headset I've ever used. They sound great for gaming but what came as a bonus is when I discovered they were even more amazing for listening to music. I like to crank the volume up and listen to my favorite music often and found out these work better than my actual studio headphones that I used to wear for causal listening. The headset comes with a software app where you can EQ and adjust the volume, bass etc settings to your liking. These suckers are loud and that's the way I like em! Nice high, med and low range. I really can't complain about a single thing, other than after a couple of hours they can become slightly uncomfortable, but that may be a ME problem and not a product issue, as I typically have issues with migraines and having anything pressed against my head for extended periods of time. Oh, and when placing the headset back onto the charging station, sometimes it acts a little picky about how I place them onto the station if the headphone contacts aren't touching exactly where they need to be on the charger; it takes a little wiggling around to get it to make contact & charge. Battery life seems decent. I have no idea what the advertised battery life is but you'll probably get about 4-5 hours easily with a full battery. Additionally, the material they are made with feels strong & durable, but also lightweight at the same time - almost like a carbon fiber material. Case and point - this is more than likely the last headset I'll ever need to buy (knock-on wood) unless something horribly goes wrong and they stop working or get destroyed. Highly recommend if you have the extra cash to invest in a A+ product and are looking for the best possible gaming headset out there.

I received this headset and was able to try it for a couple days before returning it for a refund. I will start off by saying I did about a week worth of research comparing Turtle Beach, Steelseries Arctis Pro Wireless, PlayStation Gold and Platinum headsets. I have owned Turtle Beach Elite 800 since about 2016. They are amazing with the built in mic. The problem I started having about the year 2 mark of owning them were they would lose audio and then come back on 5 seconds later. Then they started outputting a screeching sound. Call of Duty for instance, all of the sounds the game has, they would be outputted into the cups with screeching added to them. It was terrible. Factory reset didn't do anything. After that going on randomly for a couple more years I figured I would look at another set of headsets. I finally decided on the Astro A50 Gen 4 as they are just like the Elite 800s in the fact they have a magnetic base to charge the headset. They were more expensive then what I originally bought the Elite 800s for and come with a boom mic instead of built in. Within the 2 days of owning the Astro A50s I had them power off then back on for no reason. I could see the base lights go off as well. Then the headset would boot back on within seconds. This happened twice to me. The first time I figured it was just a glitch but then second time reminded me so much of why I grew to dislike my Elite 800s. Also it is as if the sound reset from what I had it dialed in to? So it would start a match and it would be amplified so loud and I would have to remix it. I also cannot stand the fact since I was so used to them on the Elite 800s but the game/chat mix on the Astro A50s is super annoying. The Elite 800s have chat volume on the left earcup and the game volume is on the right earcup. Completely separate. You don't get that on the A50s... If you want your game volume to be higher you click twice? and hold the right button on the right earcup. You will hear two beeps. You then take the volume dial and put it at what game volume you like. Then for chat you do the same thing but you click the back side of the earcup on the right ear. Then dial it in. After that you may not have it right and have to do everything over again. Better yet you could finally dial it all in and then a new game is started with different sounds mixed from the studio and you have to RESTART your settings all over again. Clicking and clacking. SUPER ANNOYING. Turtle Beach got it right by making the two volume controls (for game and chat) completely independent from one another. Astro did it in such a weird way and its terrible. Structure/Design: The headset and Base look awesome out of the box. The headset felt a bit on the cheaper side/lightweight. I will say though the cloth earcup coverings were nice though if you have facial hair it might get quite itchy. (They do have a overpriced leather "mod" that you can use for leather earcups. Absolutely ridiculous price tag for those --price gouging for sure) Sound: The sound was great for footsteps. I noticed it lacked bass but that is just the same as everyone else has said. Other than that the sounds were clear and crisp. I don't know why but they sounded so much more different than the Turtle Beach Elite 800s. That is good and bad. I did favor the Elite 800s sound though, It could be because I am biased as I have owned them for 4 years. Verdict: With the quality of the headset, the controls, and price I completely regretted buying it and am glad I could return the headset. This headset is not worth the $300 price tag what so ever and this is coming from someone who has spent a lot of money on high priced things. This is one of my very few buying regrets. I personally would choose the Elite 800s even if the Astros were given to me for free. With that being said, I have another PS4 and have since went with the PlayStation Platinums for $115 and they have a built in mic with independent game/chat mixing for more than half the price. I will see how they stack up.

I bought this headset to replace my Turtle Beach Elite 800x headset mostly hoping it wouldn’t make my ears hurt so much after a long gaming session. I’m happy to say these are extremely comfortable headsets and I’m very pleased with them overall. They sound good. I think they get plenty loud - I usually have them set about halfway. They were easy to setup. I love the look and the customization with the command center. They get excellent battery life, I've never dropped below 50% charge even after gaming most of the day away. And again, I can’t stress how comfortable these things are. -- Below is the original story -- This is a great headset and I will give it 5 stars once a very simple problem is fixed. The headset will not be recognized by Xbox after the Xbox is turned on. To get the headset to be recognized you have to either unplug and re-plugin the base station or switch the mode switch to PC and back to Xbox. Unfortunately I see forum posts about this going all the way back to the gen3 version in 2016 so I decided to leave a 1-star review in the hopes it might actually motivate ASTRO to finally fix it. Update 8/21/19: I reached out to customer support. They said that they are currently working on a fix for the connection issue but there is no estimate when the update would be released. They at least seemed to know exactly what problem I was referring to so hopefully it’s resolves in not too long. Update 11/23/19 Customer support ended in a dead end. The Xbox connection issue still persists. I've been trying every so often to check if there's a firmware update but there never is. It seems that support for this brand new product is already discontinued. Final Update 12/7/19 I reached out to customer support again and was given a version of firmware to install manually on my headset. I did as instructed and the problem is now resolved. I have not had any more issues with needing to reset the headset to get it to connect to Xbox. It's unclear if this update is published publicly yet (I never got any prompt to update through the command center) so if you're having this issue reach out to their customer support.

Please take the time to read this as this is NOT a paid review, rather a legitimate person whos had Astro's for a long time. Alright so as a seasoned user with the Astro headsets I am going to now speak up on my personal experience with these both positive and negative reviews of the A50. The main topic of these are directed to mainly the A50 series. I have had the A10, the A20's, the A30's, 40's and 50's. I have had the Astro A50 Gen 3's (Twice) and 4's, due to the repeated problem I experience with the 3 and the 4's, I have branched off to the logitech G Pro X 2 Wireless, and will review that in the future. But lets get to the review though. Astro A50 Gen 4, the 2nd newest generation of the Astro A50's that dropped just a couple years ago. When it comes to comfortability, the A50's have been by far the most comfortable headset I have had in all my years, the way their head bands are built are what are most satisfying in gaming for long durations. When I am home and off work, most of my time is spent playing video games, so long durations with these are a must for having a memory foam on your head rather than a plastic built to shape head band that leaves a headache on you, so I will give huge props to them for producing a flexible headband with a memory foam made for people with big heads, not a lot of companies keep in mind of this and should very much take on after Astro's A50 headband style for adults and improve with this. Microphone quality, yeah we all have those friends who sound like they are choking on their microphone or the background audio keeps making it through even though other products have a label saying they have background removing audio tech, I will say these are actually legit when they say they do, and by default. I have never tuned these for microphone quality and have used them without issue for the longest time. However, back with the Gen 3's, these often produced through wear, many issues with the microphone producing fuzz/static noises when you brought the mic arm down to speak, or moving it at all. I gave the Gen 4's a try and that problem was very much resolved, so I believe the company received plenty of complaints enough and looked into this before dropping the Gen 4. Overall microphone quality is pretty damn good. Audio. We all love to be able to or wish we could hear a mfker around a corner on COD or any shooter game that we like to compete in. Again, another big pro with these. The Gen 3 and Gen 4 both came with an Astro software (Which I could never get to f**kin work) allowing you to tune out audio from a discord call while playing your sweaty COD match to win that round with some mkfer camping in a corner. I will say that these are by far the bost when it comes to their dolby audio technology to amplify audio on demand or turn it off for a more relaxing game or conversation with friends. I have been called a cheater so many times in my time using this gaming headset, I have to again, give big props to the company for producing some great gaming headsets that could be used for competitions. Battery life. for these being 2 years old, I have gone over 24 hours using these to the fullest of its capability. overall these are good when bran new. unfortunately, over time some may experience just like any other headset, that the battery life may go down the more you keep it on a cord. I have kept them on the platform when I get off and go to bed, and I recommend you do as I did because when you just plug these in to a cord, the headset isn't built to know when to stop the charging and could cause wear to the batteries. I still get 24 hours of gameplay after 2 years having these. NOW, the cons. I know someone was dying to quickly scroll past and find the cons for this, well here they are. After 2 years of having these (I bought this headset in the beginning of November 2023), I have noticed a great issue where the headset would stop connecting to my PC, the connection of the headset would not turn on the audio the first time turning it on and would have to switch it back off and then on again to get audio through the headset. Time to time the headset would not connect to the platform and show the charge status (4 Square lights), this also is a means of knowing that your headset is automatically paired to the platform correctly and you can then remove it and turn it on and it would run as a wireless headset for the PC. I even attempted taking the cord and plugging the headset in itself, no good. As of now today, My headset is officially out of commission. The quality in its time was very good however the connection of wireless setting to it deteriorated, becoming more difficult to be able to connect and play. the platform is never disconnected from the PC unless the issue occurs and as their troubleshoot described, to disconnect the platform, hold the dolby button and game volume on the earphone both at the same time for 30 seconds, and it will hard reset. unfortunately as of now this has stopped working for me and no longer wants to function. Granted, I have given alot of positive reviews on the Astro A50's, but as for age it doesn't last for more than 2 years I have noticed as I have have 2 Gen 3's for 2 years each, both giving microphone issues, and now the Gen 4 has resolved all quality issues but now has wireless connection issues. I hope this helps a alot for others who are big into gaming and comfortability. I still recommend these, but I wish I could get a replacement for these.

I hate to be the person that leaves a one star review, but this product is incredibly disappointing for what they are charging for it. Out of the box this headset wasn't very impressive to me. The dock still uses outdated micro USB to connect to your PC. The software is difficult to use and has not been supported or received any updates in several years. I had to hunt down updated firmware to even get the dock to communicate with the headset. The annoyances did not end after I got it working. The headset appears to have been designed for a literal giant. The adjustments do not place the headphones in an appropriate place for the headband to rest comfortably on my head (and I have a rather large head). I can only assume that the headset is meant to automatically shut off when you take it off and place it horizontally on your desk, but this function leads to the headset turning off if you look down at your cell phone or anything on your desk for more than 10 seconds. When the headset turns off, or when you use any of the buttons to change a setting, the most ear shattering beeps come out of it unless you use the terrible software to change the volume of the beeping. It took me until a month ago to figure out how to do that. I purchased this headset in January 2024 and by September it has begun to fall apart. The pad that is meant to rest on your head refused to stay clipped on, leading to the headset putting pressure on your head in uncomfortable places. Additionally, several screws have fallen out, leading to some of the plastic plates flexing and sharp panels that will poke your head. Please save yourself both a figurative and literal headache and steer clear of anything made by this company.