I was recently approached about reviewing Able Planet’s new gaming headphones, and after reading about the 0000ff;font-size: x-small">PS500MM I was intrigued to check them out! Able Planet traditionally has made products for people with disabilities, and they have expanded their product line to address the concern of younger people having hearing loss. With this in mind, they’ve taken their Linx Audio technology and created a gaming headset for PC gamers that improves sound quality, without the need of one having to raise the volume to higher decibels.

“We designed this innovative new headset specifically with PC gamers in mind,” said Able Planet’s chairman and CEO Kevin Semcken. “Gamers tend to spend significant periods of time playing online games and such extended play of rich multimedia sounds puts a cumulative strain on the ears this can cause hearing loss and fatigue.  Our technology minimizes this risk so that users no longer have to turn up the volume just to be able to drown out background noise.”

With this in mind I definitely wanted to try out the headset! It’s a decent looking headset with an adjustable mic, and it even comes with it’s own USB adapter which I don’t really see come with many headphones. So I eagerly popped open the package, connected the headphones to my Mac and proceeded to fire up WoW to test out the headphones. Over the next week I was able to get a good feel about this headset.

I can say that on the first day I could really tell that the sound quality was better than what I was getting from my usual headset. The ambient noises from the game sounded clearer and I didn’t have to have my iTunes volume as high as I usually did.  The microphone also seems to work quite well and projects clearly as I received comments from my guildmates that I sounded a lot clearer in vent. So I have to give it an A in the sound department as it has lived up to what it has promised to be and then some!

The area where I was a bit disappointed in was in the comfort levels. The headset has rather small earpieces and even after breaking them in for a few days, I have to take them off regularly as they begin to squeeze my ears a bit too much. Not good for when I want to play for an extended period, do a raid, or just sit in vent and talk with my guildmates. In this area they may want to take a page from other gaming headset makers and work on the comfort level. Most of the gamers I know who would use a headset like this tend to play for several hours at a time, and when you’re going to be wearing something on your head for that long you want to make sure that it’s comfortable.

But all in all I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the headset. I’m glad to see that a company is making a good headset that also improves sound while trying to prevent long term hearing loss. Even with some issues in the comfort level, if you’re looking for a new headset, I recommend taking a look at Able Planet’s! It’s also an added plust that this headset will work on both PC and Mac systems. The PS500MM retails for $99, so it’s relatively competitively priced against other manufacturers, and it can be found on their site or Amazon.

Headphones provided by Abel Planet.