Thermaltake Isurus Pro V2

Not your normal gaming headphones…

$69

Twww.thermaltake.com. au he very idea of a dedicated pair of gaming headphones conjures a very specific mental image. A set of cans that are aggressively styled, often sleak, sometimes oddly clunky, and more often than not blessed/ cursed that blinking RGB lighting. They might feature gaudy coloured plastic highlights, or be stripped back to look like a piece of realworld military kit. Thermaltake’s new Isurus Pro V2s… is none of those things.

That’s because while gaming is the focus of the Pro V2s, it’s gaming on the go that they’re all about. In fact, there’s only a couple of design and ease- of-use hardware choices that separate the V2s from your average pair of in-ear headphones – but those choices do make an impact, and make a pretty good case for picking up a pair if you’re looking for something a little more discrete and versatile than traditional gaming cans.

The V2s can be worn with or without the included, detachable, metal headband. It’s slim and light enough that you barely notice it, but it does offer a degree of security, keeping the earbuds firmly stuck in your ears. The buds come with three pairs of rubber ear tips so you can find the right fit, and it’s definitely worth experimenting to find the right ones for you, otherwise both sound quality and – possibly more importantly – comfort will suffer. As always with such intimate items as earbuds, your mileage will vary, and I struggled to find a truly comfortable fit.

That sense of adaptability goes even further, thanks to a dual 3.5-mm three-pole (TRS) splitter cable, which allows the Pro V2’s to be hooked up to pretty much any kind of gaming platform. If you’re looking for a set of in- ear headphones that are as at home on your PC or Switch, and light enough to double to tackle music playback from your smartphone, you’re in luck. That said, there are

voice while you chat. Voice quality is decent, but we’ve heard clearer, fuller chat audio from higher-end headsets, Such as Razer’s BlackShark V2 Pro and Logitech’s G Pro X Wireless.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing, though – we experienced a spotty connection on a couple of instances during online matches in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, with dotted sound resembling Morse Code coming through. In fact, it was intrusive enough that we were forced to switch the headset off and on again to make it go away. That said, it didn’t occur often enough to be a real cause for concern.

It’s also worth noting that the headset has a somewhat cheap plastic feel, and it sits fairly tight on the head and on the neck below the ears, leading to some discomfort during long gaming sessions. STEPHEN LAMBRECHTS

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