Bluetooth multipoint can give you an easy way to connect to a couple of devices, but what about in gaming? For that, Logitech has been working on something.
Listening to the big sound and impact from a game may well be better with speakers and a soundbar, but it’s not something everyone can do. Loud noises can wake up the neighbours or even the kids, and so if you’re planning to game, you mightn’t have the luxury of running it through your TV’s sound system.
Of course, there are other solutions like headphones, and of course enormous amounts you can spend on the things. There are premium gaming headphones from the likes of Audeze and Bang & Olufsen, but they’ll typically handle one console at a time.
And that’s just how it tends to work. While the idea of a multipoint headphone isn’t a new thing, getting a pair of headphones to play with more than one console isn’t something anyone has managed to get going well.
Logitech could be changing that, however, as its Astro gaming brand readies a new pair of headphones made especially for that.
The idea of console-switching will arrive in the Logitech G Astro A50X Lightspeed, which will use a special base station and some clever proprietary signal management technology to jump between multiple devices you can have plugged in.
The headphones include a 40mm graphene driver on each side and support for up to 24-bit sound, while the base station they connect to will act as an HDMI switch of sorts, jumping between Xbox, PlayStation, Mac, and Windows PC, using HDMI on the consoles and USB on the computers.
Each one of these devices will be wired into the Astro A50X base station, while the headphones themselves are wireless, allowing you to switch device with the press of a button.
On the computer side of things, the USB includes the driver and runs its own onboard audio system, so you won’t need any special drivers, so Mac and Windows users are very much in the realm of plug and play. In fact, with HDMI audio used for the console side, it’s much the same there, too.
The idea will mean gamers with multiple devices will be able to listen and speak into their headphones using the one pair split to different gaming systems, making life that little bit easier overall.
Pricing in Australia will see the Logitech G Astro A50X arrive in the first half of 2024 priced for $749.95.
