Sennheiser PC360 G4ME headphones

Sennheiser's PC 360 G4ME headset may be expensive, but it boasts good sound quality that's perfectly suited to gaming and has an excellent integrated microphone that should make fuzzy voice chat a thing of the past. It's also sturdy enough to put up with all-day fragging, even if the open ear-cup design does leak sound to the outside world. Oh, and did we mention that all this comes at a hefty asking price?

Sennheiser PC 360 G4ME: Design and construction

The Sennheiser PC 360 G4ME gaming headset is an over-the-ear design with open ear-cups and a marginally flexible swing-down boom microphone. The headset is comfortable and doesn't exert a great deal of clamping force — while it's not as luxurious as the Audio Technica ATH-AD700, our long-time benchmark for comfortable open headphones, you won't be fatigued after a couple of hours of wear. The headset's weight of 300g isn't as noticeable as we expected it to be. The cord of the Sennheiser PC 360 G4ME is three metres long, terminating in two 3.5mm plugs for microphone and headphones — this is a good length for PC use, as it lets you move around from the computer without necking yourself on the cable or damaging your PC.

The construction of the Sennheiser PC 360 G4ME headset is impressive. The headphones are entirely plastic, apart from the velvet and foam ear-cups and metal grills on the headphones' exterior, but we are confident they'll stand up well to a punishing life of being worn by any gamer. We recall that some time ago we managed to run over a pair of Sennheiser PC160 headphones several times with an office chair, with no visible damage — the PC 360 G4ME should easily handle the same punishment and more. Sure, they may not be as robust as the Sennheiser HD 800, but they should last just fine. We like the microphone switch that's built into the swing arm, and the integrated volume control on the right ear-cup is useful.

Sennheiser PC 360 G4ME: Microphone and sound quality

The headset's sound quality is good — not mind-blowing at low and high volumes, but at moderate volume levels there's a good amount of clear treble and plenty of deep reverberating bass. This very musical weighting of audio is well suited to games, which are usually heavy on dialogue, explosions and other sound effects. Needless to say we wouldn't choose these headphones for listening to classical music or especially demanding acoustic music, but for general gaming and computing, movies and a bit of music on the side they do a good job. The open headphones do leak noise, which may annoy your neighbour at a LAN party.

The microphone of the Sennheiser PC 360 G4ME is probably the most impressive aspect of the headset's overall performance. It is a noise-cancelling mic — its pickup pattern largely ignores ambient chatter — and the clarity we got on our test recordings was excellent. Almost all audio we captured was clear and the range of frequencies picked up was extensive. We'd happily use the microphone for team chat, calling on Skype, or for recording a podcast.

Sennheiser PC 360 G4ME: Conclusion

You'd need to be a pretty dedicated gamer to shell out four and a half Nellie Melbas for a pair of headphones. We can understand the price tag though — the sound quality is well tailored to gameplay, the headphones comfortable and the microphone is excellent. Slash a hundred or so dollars off the asking price, and we'd be all over them.

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