BENGOO X-40 Review

This product finished at the back of the group, delivering one of the worst performance we have seen to date. While it is the cheapest with a list price around $35, $50 headsets scored almost double this one.

Performance Comparison

For this review, we bought all of the best and brightest gaming headsets currently available, then compared their performance side-by-side to pick our award winners. We divided our testing scheme into four weighted rating metrics, with the BENGOO's pitiful performance outlined below.

Comfort

The BENGOO immediately claimed the distinction of being the least comfortable headset to wear, earning a 4 out of 10 in this metric, which is responsible for 40% of the total score.

About half of our panel of testers refused to wear this headset for more than one or two hours, while the rest deemed them acceptable for eight to ten hours. No one really liked this headset all that much, with the opinions wavering from alright to refusing to wear it. This is largely due to the lack of articulation of the ear cups, making it much more difficult — almost impossible — to get them adjusted to fit your head. This also makes the ear cups apply an uneven amount of pressure to the sides of your head, focusing it on the top.

The ear cups and headband are both covered in leatherette, which can get kind of sweaty and sticky on hot days. On top of all the other comfort issues with this headset, it is also one of the heaviest pairs at just over 12 ounces.

Audio

Our audio tests came next, with the BENGOO again doing quite poorly, earning a 3 out of 10 for its underwhelming results. These tests account for 30% of the total score, again causing the BENGOO's total score to take a solid hit.

Music, quite frankly, sounds awful when played through this headset. It sounds completely blown out and congested, with bass, treble, and mid-range frequencies being mashed together. It doesn't do any better with voice, making all of our teammates sound like they had a really bad stuffy nose and were incredibly congested.

For our benchmarking evaluations, it again did exceptionally poorly. It had tons of parasitic buzz in the bass quality test and the drivers didn't seem centered at all in the driver matching test. However, it did quite well with the binaural recording, accurately conveying the correct location of the sounds.

Unfortunately, it didn't carry over this direction prowess into our in-game sound positional test, with our tester only able to correctly identify where gunfire was coming from about half of the time and hardly ever could identify the origin of quieter sounds, like footsteps. It also doesn't block out any ambient noises, almost making any background noises louder, if possible.

Microphone

Delivering another below average performance, the BENGOO earned a 4 out of 10 in this metric, which is responsible for 20% of the total score. Recorded messages of our voices sound exceptionally fuzzy and far away. There is a slight amount of feedback when the mic is tapped and it is exceptionally sibilant. However, we did like that it isn't overly harsh with “T” sounds.

This headset picks up almost any external background noise and it makes a very irritating noise for the person on the other end of the line when you mute it.

Ease of Use

For the final set of tests, worth the remaining 10% of the total score, we looked at how convenient and easy to operate each headset is. The BENGOO continued a trend and again delivered a disappointing performance, meriting another 4 out of 10.

This headset has inline controls to adjust the volume and to mute the mic, but, as mentioned above, there is a distinct electrical sound transmitted every time you mute or unmute the mic.

The cable is a little on the shorter side and isn't detachable, though you can add a little under a foot by not using the lights. The mic also isn't detachable and doesn't give you the option to enable a sidetone.

Value

While the BENGOO isn't very expensive, it isn't that great of a value, as the performance is so shoddy overall.

Conclusion