Best New Beauty Products For January 2014 (Part 3) - Sennheiser G4ME Zero, Billion Bipac 7800NXL

1/11/2014 12:28:28 AM

Sennheiser G4ME Zero

For many years now, Sennheiser has been our gaming headset brand of choice - it usually commands a premium over the competition, but for great sound quality is incredibly hard to beat.

This year the company has refreshed its lineup in a few key ways. Firstly, the new models are glossy white, but more importantly the company seems to be moving away from the USB soundcard that previous versions have shipped with. While this means no simulated surround sound, at no point did we find issue with this. The G4ME Zero may have a name that still annoys the hell out of us, but they are not only light and very comfortable, but the memory foam earpads used in this sound isolating model are highly effective. We are less sold on the large unmoveable microphone though - while we can't fault the quality, we wish that we could remove it when not needed. This is a minor quibble though, and yet again we love what Sennheiser has delivered. We don't know price yet, but going off the US one, expect to pay upwards of $300 for these beasts.

Sennheiser G4ME Zero

Specifications

· Weight: 312g

· Headphones Impedance: 150 Ohms

· Connector: 2 x 3.5 mm for desktop/laptop

· Microphone Frequency: 50 Hz - 16,000 Hz

· Headphones Frequency: 10 Hz – 26.000 Hz

· Headphones Sound pressure level (SPL): 108 dB

· Microphone Pick-up pattern: Noise Cancelling

· Microphone Sensitivity: -38 dBV at 94 dBSPL

· Overall: 6/6

Billion Bipac 7800NXL

Billion has earned its reputation as a heavy hitter in the networking market through its focus on delivering great price/ performance for educated users, a marked difference from the push towards simplification occurring with other manufacturers. The 7800NXL bears all the hallmarks of this, supporting a raft of connection options, from USB-mounted 3G/4G dongles, cable/fiber connections through a gigabit WAN port, and a built in ADSL 2+ modem. The only real weak point is that it only supports 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, which means that, while all your devices will happily connect to it, the signal is more subject to interference than something operating over the 5GHz band. This is, of course, moot if you only use 2.4GHz Wi-Fi devices, but 5GHz is increasingly common, and a simultaneous dual band product is near mandatory for serious Wi-Fi users. As long as you are aware of this limitation, though, the 7800NXL is an excellent offering, one that may be somewhat daunting for the less tech-savvy type, but certainly delivers for those who love tweaking settings.