I'm a big fan of the AceZone A-Spire. This gaming headset brings tournament-quality features to your home, including pinpoint positioning, great noise isolation, and superb active noise cancellation. But golly, it's expensive.
Luckily, you can secure yourself a pair for chunky $100 discount over at Amazon right now, bringing a pair down to just $219. That's cheaper than AceZone's own website, which has them for $239.
Alright, that's a lot of money for any gaming headset. Especially a (mostly) wired set such as this. It's still very high on the unaffordability scale even with this discount, but it's important to note these are competitive cans with some truly original features. I reviewed them earlier this year and only had a handful of minor gripes with an otherwise impressive all-round package.
The main sell for me is the noise cancellation. The earcups contain a feedback mic, feedforward mic and ANC chip, which when combined deliver excellent noise cancellation. That's especially effective with impressive passive noise isolation from the leatherette earcups and makes for a calmingly quiet gaming experience.
The noise cancellation extends to the mic on a flexible boom arm. This will unmute once lowered and can be adjusted to sit right in front of your face as you bark commands at your team. The microphone comes through really clearly, and I was very impressed with the quality during my time with these headphones for review.
That said, most of my gripes with this headset were microphone-based. Not in the quality but the flip-to-mute function requires a completely upright microphone, the mostly unnecessary clip for the mic broke, and the foam tip often fell off. Minor things but obviously these matter a little more when you're spending so much cash.
The AceZone A-Spire comes with multiple modes for keen-eared FPS players, including Apex Legends and Counter-Strike. These claim to be specifically designed to highlight audio cues in these two games and can be enabled within the mobile app.
So, this is the confusing bit. This model of A-Spire isn't sold as a wireless headset, even though it is, in fact, wireless. It offers Bluetooth connectivity for connecting to your mobile phone, which is handy for listening to music. Most of all you'll likely use it in conjunction with the AceZone mobile app, which lets you adjust the EQ, fiddle with settings, and update the firmware.
There's no 2.4 GHz connection on the standard A-Spire, however.
If you want full 2.4 GHz wireless connectivity, the recently released A-Spire Wireless is available for $269. That's also with a $100 coupon applied. Though I've used the wireless set and, like our independent reviewer with a different pair to me, found the 2.4 GHz connection to the provided dongle a little unreliable. It's a bit of a pain to reconnect, too.
Nevertheless, the wired option I really rate, I've just struggled with the price tag. The $100 discount sure helps in that regard.
