Best identified for his or her PC instances, energy provides and cooling followers, peripherals maker Cougar have a brand new gaming headset on the block: the Cougar Phontum. Eschewing the eye-catching spaghetti-style headbands of Cougar’s earlier headsets, the Immersa and Immersa Pro, the Phontum (undoubtedly not Phantom) goals to win hearts and minds with its outsized 53mm audio drivers, common platform help and its relatively good value of simply £43 / $50. Let’s see if it’s any good.
Compared to the head-turning Immersa, the Phontum is a way more conventional (and arguably extra tasteful) type of headset. Its skinny, padded headband retains a flash of Cougar’s trademark orange on the within, however the remainder of it, from its black metal body and memory-foam cushioned ear cups to its glossy, bendable, removable mic and braided 3.5mm audio cables, is far more in step with different headsets of the day – all for round an astonishing £100 / $100 lower than its upmarket rivals, too.
It’s not simply the construct high quality that makes the Phontum stand out, although, as you additionally get one other pair of ear cups within the field (these ones being thinner and fewer cumbersome for ‘on the go use’, in line with Cougar), and one other 3.5mm audio cable in your PC that comes with twin connectors and a built-in quantity and microphone controller, providing you with much more flexibility by way of cable size and general usability.
That’s extremely beneficiant contemplating its low value – particularly in comparison with the similarly-priced, Turtle Beach Recon 150, which comes with no extras in anyway – so there have to be some type of catch, proper? Well, the microphone isn’t good for starters, because it produced a whole lot of background noise each after I recorded myself speaking in Audacity and over Skype calls.
Speech was nonetheless clear and audible to an extent (the odd little bit of wind-pop nonetheless crept in often), however its most important flaw was that it sounded prefer it was continuously raining within the background, in line with my husband, which isn’t precisely nice in case you’re planning an intensive multiplayer session together with your mates on-line and must preserve in common contact with everybody, as it’s possible you’ll effectively end up taking part in solo sooner relatively than later as a result of it’s so rattling annoying.
Fortunately, the Phontum’s jumbo audio drivers are a lot, a lot higher in the case of precise sport music. You’ll seemingly must do some adjustment first, as the headscarf itself is definitely fastened in place. Instead, you alter the dimensions and match of the headset by knocking down on the ear cups themselves, which slide down their respective steel arms till the Cougar brand doodad can’t go any additional.
Admittedly, the Phontum will not be well-suited to these with small heads, as even its tightest setting nonetheless felt a teeny bit too massive for me. It by no means felt prefer it was about to fall off my head or slip down my face – the sturdy brand blobs present greater than sufficient friction on this respect – however an additional millimetre or two of adjustment within the northwards path wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Still, for essentially the most half, the Phontum produced a mighty spectacular sound for such an affordable headset. In Hellblade, for example, the whispering whirlwind of the Furies’ voices inside Senua’s head had been clear and felt spine-tinglingly near the again of my neck. Likewise, the distant sound of rumbling thunder sounded completely balanced towards the rippling water results as Senua rowed her makeshift logboat down the river.
Doom felt a bit flatter, all informed, with tremendous shotgun blasts sounding a bit unhappy and muted towards the cracking of demon skulls. Raspy demon screeches didn’t have fairly the identical degree of high-pitched readability I used to be anticipating both, once more sounding a bit boring in comparison with different headsets I’ve examined not too long ago.
That stated, the Phontum nonetheless produced a great sense of encompass sound in Doom, with environmental results and fireball trajectories arching precisely spherical my ears as I moved via every degree, and the bass by no means felt prefer it was too overpowering, even when the sport’s pumping battle themes kicked in.
However, it’s clear the Phontum’s high-end vary is certainly a bit on the conservative aspect, as making an attempt them with Final Fantasy XV ended with the same end result to Doom. In conversations, voices had been pretty and clear towards the sport’s background music, however transfer into battle and the banter between Noctis and his boyband friends was a bit on the quiet aspect. The identical goes for weapon results, with sword clangs and scraped steel typically getting misplaced within the wider battle music.
That could also be a great factor in case you like listening to sport music greater than you do sound results, however it will probably make issues really feel a teensy bit unbalanced general, particularly if there’s lots occurring. As I say, it’s not that the bass is fog-horning itself over every thing – removed from it. It’s simply that the highs don’t appear to have the identical type of vary (or attain, if we’re going with a height-based metaphor) as different, dearer headsets.
It’s much less noticeable listening to regular individuals music, as all of my check tracks had a pleasant sense of heat and richness to them, however pop and rock vocals nonetheless tended to really feel like they’d been damped down a bit.
Still, for the cash, I feel it’s one thing I’d be keen to compromise on. It’s undoubtedly a greater sounding headset than the Turtle Beach Recon 150, and I’ll eat my microphone if I ever discover one thing this well-built for a similar amount of cash. Despite the skinny quantity of padding on headband, it’s additionally really fairly comfortable, which is fairly good going contemplating my dogged historical past with ache-inducing headset pinching. If you’re after a gaming headset that doesn’t break the financial institution, then the Cougar Phontum is effectively price contemplating.
