The original headset that came with my xbox 360 was great. Fit well, clarity was fine, etc.

After a couple years, that one broke (wire disconnected inside the ear piece)… so I bought this. Immediately I realized this headset has a serious design flaw – rather than placing the on/off and volume at the base where it connects to the controller, its instead dangling in the air. WHY?? Its very annoying, the original design was a lot better.

To make matters worse, this headset stopped working about the 5th time I used it. How ridiculous.

A headset is a must have for any 360 online game. You’ll find it hard to get anyone on your friends list without one, but you really don’t need THIS headset.

I agree that the Official headset isn’t the greatest, and some people might not take the best of care with them, but I can say that there are 3 of them in my apartment, 2 are almost a year old, and they’re all as good as the day they were purchased. You just have to realize that they aren’t very durable and treat them as such.

If you do go the route of a third party headset (any cell phone headset will do), I highly suggest that you get one with an in-line volume control and try to get one with a mute. If you don’t get an in-line volume control you may have problems with things being too quiet.

If you’re playing on XBox Live, you really need a headset. Most games involve voice coordination between people on the same team, and sometimes even discussions with your opponents.

I’m not sure why my experience was so different than the previous reviews. Maybe they got an older version of the headset? It definitely seems to be the same unit – made by Microsoft, for the XBox 360, the basic model.

This headset is relatively inexpensive, and has a padded earphone and microphone. The earphone is adjustable, to have the headband part expand and contract. This lets it fit on larger and smaller heads. The microphone rotates, so that the unit can be worn on the left or right side. It only spins down to just under a 90 degree angle, though, so this forces you to wear the headset with the band right over the top of your head. At that spot, the microphone is pretty much right in front of my mouth (I prefer it a bit lower) and the opposite-side “bracer” part is digging into the skin just over my non-earphoned ear.

I don’t know what it is with these headset creators – but at its smallest setting, the unit is still too large for several adults I know. That makes it even worse for teens and kids! That being said, I find this problem with a lot of headsets, so it’s something you just have to deal with.

There’s a relatively long cord, and it plugs right into the base of your controller. It doesn’t interfere at all with wireless controllers. The base part has a mute button as well as a volume control.

I didn’t have any problem at all hearing other players when I was online – their voices came through very clearly. Also, the unit fit very snugly into the base – I didn’t have any problems with static or dropped signals. In fact for a while I was letting my boyfriend drive in PGR3 while I talked in the headphone/mic, and even with the cord stretched out between us two I could hear fine. Other players could hear me. I didn’t notice any issues with lag, our conversations went back and forth rather quickly.