Ozone Onda Pro Surround Gaming headset

1. Introduction2. Packaging3. Testing4. Conclusion5. View All Pages

Today we are looking at the Ozone Onda Pro Surround USB gaming headset. This model ships with a detachable microphone and it definitely nails the ‘gamer look' with its dramatic red and black color scheme – but, how does it perform? Lets find out…

Features:

• Surround Sound.
• Dynamic Bass.
• Vocal noise cancellation.
• Lightweight.
• Travel case included.
• In-line remote control.
• Detachable microphone.
• Mac, Linux and Windows compatible.

Speaker Specifications: 

• 40mm Driver.
• 116 +/- 4dB sensitivity.
• 32 Ohm impedance.
• 100MW maximum input.
• 20Hz-20KHz frequency response.

Microphone Specifications:

• Omni-directional.
• -42 +/- 3dB sensitivity.
• 2.2k Ohm impedance.
• 100-10,000 KHz frequency response.

The Ozone Onda Pro headset comes packaged in a plain but sturdy black cardboard box with a product sleeve wrapped around it.

The sleeve of the box gives you plenty of information about the headset's features.

 

The side of the sleeve gives you an in-depth run down of the speaker and microphone specifications.

The opposite side features Gu IMP Sung-bin, an Ozone sponsored eSports player, giving a little speech about the product. According to him, “The new Ozone voice environment cancellation system really works” and “the new Onda Pro X-Surround sound is really amazing.”

The back of the box is standard, it has a picture of the product and boasts a few more features in various languages. Once you flip open the box, you'll find a travel case with the headset inside:

While the headset is in use, the Ozone logo on the sides of the ear cups will light up red.

Now it's time for the fun bit – testing the headset and seeing how well it performs. As a gaming headset, we'll be testing the microphone's quality using Steam voice chat, Team Speak and Skype. As for testing sound quality, we'll play a couple of games from different genres to see how it performs.

First we updated the firmware/driver available on the companies official website over here.

First off we will be looking at the sound quality in games. We started off with Thief, one of the first titles to incorporate AMD's True Audio technology. The Ozone Onda Pro performed well, the surround sound feature worked just as well as Razer's virtual surround software, giving me plenty of environmental awareness. Ambient noise also sounded fantastic, fully immersing me in the world.

Next up we played a few rounds of Counterstrike: Global Offensive. The surround feature performed well once again. However, it is clear that this headset isn't suited for higher pitch noises as gunshots didn't sound particularly great- coming across as much too harsh. I imagine that listening to the gunshots for too long would begin to hurt your ears. There is a distinct treble sibilance and sadly I also found the bass response to be a bit weak.

Now on to the microphone quality. Testing this microphone has been a mixed bag, sometimes it would perform well and other times, it would give me a lot of grief.

Using Steam's in-built voice chat was okay, the sound quality of my voice could have been better but apart from that, there were not any problems. However, Skype and Team Speak are a different story.

Upon joining a Skype call I was met with complaints that my voice wasn't coming through as well as it should and there was a lot of background noise. Ozone doesn't supply any software to go with the headset so all of the configuration had to be done in each application.

I faced the same problems in Team Speak, bringing the microphone sensitivity all the way down seemed to help a bit but unfortunately, nothing could stop the background noise from coming through. There was also a fair amount of feedback going on in both cases.

In all, The Ozone Onda Pro isn't the most impressive headset we have tested. In-game sound quality is average and the surround sound feature performed very well – although I wouldn't recommend this for shooters as gunshots tend to sound quite harsh.

The microphone has its fair share of problems with background noise coming through clearly on both Skype and Team Speak. Overall voice quality could also be improved.

On a more positive note we will give Ozone points for comfort as the padding on the Onda Pro is very nice. I was able to wear the headset for long gaming sessions without any kind of discomfort.

You can buy the Ozone Onda Pro headset for £59.99 at OCUK. We do feel that the price is a little high for this headset – we review a lot of gaming headsets here at KitGuru and the Ozone Onda Pro doesn't hold up well against its competition in the £60-£70 price range.

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Pros:

• Comfortable.
• In-line controls.
• Mac, Linux and Windows compatible.

Cons:

• Microphone quality is poor.
• siblance in high end, weak bass response.
• Expensive for what you get.

KitGuru Says: The Ozone Onda Pro is difficult to recommend at the current price.

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