Audeze Maxwell Wireless Gaming Headset for PlayStation, Mac, PC, and Switch

I was waiting to upgrade my headset for many years but nothing seems to have the versatility of my logitech G933. When this came out and I was very hyped about this headset and decided to finally pull the trigger. I received this unit on 3/21 and been using it daily. This headset sounds amazing. Overall, i enjoy this headset and it was a well worth purchase.Here are some pros and cons after 2 weeks of use.Pros:- Headset sounds amazing and can get extremely loud. There are various presets such as bass boost and treble boost. These presets slightly boost the bass and treble and maintain very clear sound. It doesnt make the sound muddy. Setting this headset to volume of 78 is equivalent to my old headset at 100 with dolby atmos on. If i turn off dolby for the G933, the volume will be extremely low.-Battery life: the headset battery life lasts quite long. Under the first week, i manage to get around 60 hours. I havent done a true test yet as Audeze claims 80 hours with volume being 80 dB. During my first week of use, I push this to the limits and multiple times running volume at 100 and connecting to multiple device. Overall, huge step up from my old headset which lasts ..maybe 8 hours now.- Connection versatility - Like my old logitech, this can connect in a variety of methods- aux, usb dongle, bluetooth 5.3 and wired USB mode. All these require the headset to be turned on but the battery life is so good that its not a big deal. Also, this support mutliple bluetooth codecs SBC,AAC, LC3, LDAC.- Connection range - the range using the dongle is quite amazing. So far for my apartment, i was able to walk out to the living room and still have good audio. Distance is about 25 ft or more. With bluetooth, it was almost as good, audio did get a little static.-Microphone was very good . My GF said I sound clear and loud. The background noise suppression was amazing. I was able to eat chips while talking and she did not hear it. Theres also a built in mic when you remove the boom mic which is neat.-Build quality - Aesthetic is sleek and very understated. Did not look gaudy at all. EarPads were comfortable but gets a little warm. Earpads were deep enough but after long use, my ears can eventually touch the driver. The construction feels sturdy and nice. Although makes me worry that I will scratch the paint off.Cons:-No simultaneous bluetooth with the dongle. Not a huge deal but this may be important for some people. You can still achieve this via usb + BT or aux + BT. Due to the nature of the dongle, I dont see wireless simultaneous BT ever being a possibility. The dongle is not a 2.4 ghz dongle. It is actually an LC3+ bluetooth dongle. Despite this, the latency is just as good. I did not notice any latency.-Latency for gaming on phone at the moment is okay. Since most phones dont have LC3 support, we are stuck with SBC, AAC, or LDAC. All three dont have amazing latency. I play alot of rhythm games on phone and I can sense lag right away. So far SBC is the best for Android and AAC for iphones.-Comfort - this headset is heavy so may be a dealbreaker for some people. It was fine for me with the suspension headband. One annoying thing was that on the default notch for the headband, the bottom of my top of my ears touch the inner ear pad wall. However, if i move the band notch up, it becomes too tight and the bottom of my ear now touches the earpad. I ultimately went back to default configuration and wore a hat instead.- Software - still needs to be updated. On PC, none of the custom preset can be set at the moment. You can still use android app to set the preset on your phone and it will sync with your device I think. Also the battery indicator on the Audeze HQ for PC is not giving the right readings. If you charge to 100%, and start using, it wil quickly drop to 95%. However, the next time you turn it on, it will read 100% again. Customer support says they are working on a fix for this to show proper battery reporting.

Have had these for 1.5 years and use them every day for an average of 5+ hours, except when on vacations or trips. They still work the same as on day one. The audio quality is exceptional for gaming and music. You can EQ them to your liking, I started with a V curve for music and a more tuned EQ for gaming. Over time though, I adapted to the bass boost preset (close to the Audeze preset) and I've gotten used to it, so now I only use that for everything. I really love these headphones, use them at work for meetings and music (mic is really good) and then after for gaming and discord. The charge lasts a week at least, even with my heavy usage, I usually just charge them overnight when they are low and forget about it. I will say that at the beginning they were heavy and I had to also find the earcups that worked for me. I settled on the Wicked Cushions and after about 2 weeks I no longer felt them heavy on my head. After a month, they were comfortable and still are to this day. I don't really feel them on my head, it just requires getting used to.I recommend these for anyone that is concerned about audio quality and that would also want to use them to hear music. Something I've been doing for the past few months that's also really cool is connecting them to a Bluetooth turntable. They are just amazing for hearing music.

Let me start by saying I was SO excited to get these after researching and seeing the reviews about how great they are. I wanted to drink the Kool Aid and I was not able to. In fact, I'm very wary of the articles I read saying these are good. I bought TWO PAIRS for my partner and I. Here was my experience:THE GOOD:-The sound quality is pretty much as good as they say. Crystal clear with nice heavy bass. I'm not an audiophile by any means but it just sounded good. I'm happy to give credit where it is due.-Battery life: I didn't use them long enough to benefit, but it's hard to beat 80 hours.-That's literally it.THE BAD (here we go):-The software on these things is so bad that I gave up using them after 20 minutes of trying to get by with them. The firmware included in the headset cuts out the first second of audio from any "new" source. Youtube Video, Discord call, Spotify, etc. It seems to want to "fade in" new media sources, but you just end up missing the beginning of whatever you're trying to hear. There is no setting for this and Audeze literally won't even acknowledge this if you email their support.-I know, who really cares about the mic on a high end pair of gaming headset? As long as people can understand you, it's fine, right? Well, that was too high a standard for the Maxwells, I guess. The mic quality is about the same as the $15 office headset you might use at a call center in Mumbai. It really is that bad. Condensed and muffled to the point that my friends on call were asking if maybe my input had defaulted to my webcam that was 15 feet away. (Ironically, that actually sounded better.) I thought maybe I just got a bad set but I looked up a Youtube video of comparing mic quality (Hardware Canucks has a great video showcasing what I mean) and that is just how they sound. Audeze Support says this poor sound quality is "designed to make your voice sound more natural," when I emailed them about this.-Enabling sidetone (which is helpful since they are noise cancelling) introduces an extremely loud hissing noise in a dead quiet room. Turning it down enough to a tolerable level means the sidetone is not really hearable. Furthermore, you can hear the terrible sound quality of the mic in your ear if you can manage to tune out the loud everpresent hissing. Audeze Support says "All headsets do this!" (My 4 year old Arctis headset did not do this, nor do the Razer Blackshark V2 Pros I got to replace my Maxwells, so I almost don't believe them!)-Chat app instability (at least in Discord): Many random things just cause the mic to stop sending audio altogether. Turning on your video, deafening briefly, locking my PC would cause the mic to stop working. Audeze has an article on what settings to change for Discord (because why would I want a headset that works out of the box?) and I followed the instructions and then emailed Audeze Support that it didn't make a difference. They said, "Have you read our article about changing the settings on Discord?"TL;DR: If you want to use these for console I hear they're pretty good other than the mic quality. If you are going to just use them for headphones, they're probably fine (though for 300 USD you can probably find better). For PC gaming, you will be disappointed and your friends will ask why your microphone sounds so bad, and then they'll say "Why did you stop talking?" If you email support, they will give you a copy/paste response and make you pay to ship them back and send you a pair with the same set of issues. My advice: Don't bother.