OneOdio A71 (red)

Hola, considero que con el tiempo he educado mi oído de tal forma que me permite dar mi opinión en cuanto a audio se refiere, durante varios años he probado diferentes marcas de audífonos y nunca pensé que unos como lo son los A71 me iban a sorprender tan gratamente, su calidad de audio es simplemente genial, no se como ira con el tiempo con sus materiales de construcción pero a lo que se refiere al sonido estos pasaron la prueba con creces, naturalmente no todos los oídos son iguales entonces lo único que queda es probarlos y en mi caso disfrutarlos.

Not completely replace, depends on the headset you have before and your mic needs. Many gaming headsets have USB sound cards in a small attachment in the cord. I’m speaking from experience with a HyperX Cloud II. Frankly, I love the Cloud II for a lot of reasons. Most important being it’s an extremely sturdy design which holds up better than others.

When you’ve had a set disintegrate on your head because of cheap plastic breaking down, you learn what to look for in a proper set. However, the Cloud II suffers the same problem that every wired headset or headphone suffers with time. Damage to the tiny wires inside the cable. When this happens, you are kinda stuck with either buying a whole new set or learning how to solder and repair the set yourself.

This is all what happened leading up to my purchase of these OneOdio headphones. Now I do have solder experience but, the right equipment needed to work on the Cloud IIs, I didn’t have. When calculating the cost of what I’d need, I estimated potentially maybe $30 worth of tools. Not the “$2” quotes a lot of guides online tell you (because they don’t need to buy all the equipment). There was also the problem of recognizing where the break in the cable was. Often times these happen near the jack which is easy to fix. However, in my Cloud II, it happened up in the headset itself. Which means a bit more time and work trying to fix.

Ultimately opting to get the OneOdios came down to a sale. They were on a sale that put them down into the price range of how much I’d need to fix the Cloud IIs. Given I’ve got smaller headphones that work just fine from the Cloud II sound card, even deliver the same virtual 7.1 sound, meant to me that the OneOdios would work fine.

Now I know, these don’t have as good of a Mic as the Cloud II has so why would I give up on the Cloud II? Simple, I had bought a Blue Yeti for my mic usage as I got fed up with how poor much of the headset mics were. I never used my Cloud II’s other than testing. So there I had no value on using the Cloud II’s. Mic problem had been long solved.

Next it came down to the quality of the sound. Would the OneOdio’s be just as good? Cloud IIs have 50mm drivers. The OneOdio have 40mm. Smaller but, when I compare the sound quality, they are virtually identical. Really could not tell the difference.

So the next major factor which helped decide my OneOdio purchase was the cable setup. These have plugs on the headset and for the audio device. Meaning, if the cable gets a break in it, just swap the cable out, no need to toss the set. If Hyper X or other game headset makers did this, it would be a game changer and would solve another major issue with the sets breaking. However, they make over $100 in some cases on each set and people are often more than willing to buy a new one vs fix or replace. Hyper X won’t sell just refurb or renewed headsets because then people would likely realize they could get cheap headsets by just buying the parts individually. So it’s a long shot to expect headset makers to do this kind of feature except on expensive sets.

Now, where OneOdio loses some points. Simply, the frame is a recipe for breaking. It’s plastic. Granted it doesn’t feel like cheap plastic but, it’s still a weak point. Especially the swivel feature.

OneOdio also has the same love of the crappy fake leather that it seems everyone uses. They use it on the head area and on the ear cushions. This stuff is utter crap. I’ve used it on numerous sets that came with it over the years. It falls apart very quickly. My Cloud II had it and the head cushion strip is almost all exposed and the earpads that had it disintegrated within a few months of use.

Then lastly, this is kinda silly but for some reason OneOdio doesn’t put a R or L to tell you which channel is which on the headphones, except underneath the clips where you can change out the ear cushions. Come on, there are about 3 or 4 places I can think to put these indicators on the external that wouldn’t make the product look bad but for some reason OneOdio puts them in the one place you’ll never see. Pretty silly.

Ultimately, this is a great headphone. It solves my replacement issue and makes me realize I can get by quite a long time without buying expensive headsets. Some quirks but, for the cost of it, could be worse. There are sets that run over $150 that have more issues than these headphones do. Definitely would buy again if needed.

*Update*

Well they lasted 6 months before the plastic that allows the headphones to twist and turn decided to break. It’s just a simple connection inside the unit. Definitely the weak point. Guess I’m gonna break out the soldering iron and try to patch the innards into the Cloud II after all. Great headphone till now. Lost a star due to poor materials for the definite stress point of the headphone.

*Update

No response from OneOdio after a week of warranty submission approval. Extended warranty was accepted. OneOdio has not responded. Losing more stars.

Good