The brand new Astro A50 X headset switches between your consoles and PC utilizing HDMI passthrough

Logitech’s Astro gaming model has a brand new flagship gaming headset that prices greater than some whole-ass consoles, and it’s designed to concurrently play good throughout PlayStation 5, Xbox Sequence X / S, and PC with a single button press.

However the $379.99 Astro A50 X doesn’t do all of this with merely plebeian know-how like Bluetooth. It makes use of HDMI passthrough for its expansive connectivity — that means the beefy charging dock of this headset is designed to be wired up as a central hub for a lot of your property audio / video setup. I hope you’re ready to take some expert-level lessons on cable administration (i.e. numerous YouTube looking) in case you’re seeking to purchase one when it ships on December twentieth and never make a serpentine mess of cables out of your property theater setup.

Specs and feature-wise, the brutally futuristic-looking A50 X has 40mm graphene audio drivers that debuted within the Logitech G Professional X 2, a built-in mic able to 16-bit 48 kHz enter, Dolby Atmos help (with a Dolby license), and Logitech’s Lightspeed wi-fi connectivity. It additionally has EQ / ranges tuning via Logitech G Hub (the primary Astro headset to make use of the dad or mum firm’s app), Bluetooth for mixing in your cellphone audio or connecting to a Nintendo Swap (sans simple swapping), a claimed battery lifetime of as much as 24 hours on a single cost, a USB-C port in lieu of the earlier mannequin’s Micro USB, and two HDMI 2.1 inputs. These HDMI ports are the important thing to connecting your Xbox and PlayStation consoles, they usually help as much as a 4K / 120Hz sign to move via a single HDMI-out to your TV or monitor — that means you shouldn’t lose any of the fancier current-gen options like VRR or ALLM in case your TV helps them.

If the A50 X’s passthrough setup sounds slightly complicated (ah, the thrill of HDMI), it’s as a result of it type of is. To totally put it to use, you’ll must plug your PlayStation and Xbox into the docking station of the A50 X through their HDMI connections (those you’d usually plug into your TV or dwelling audio receiver). The docking station then has to have USB connections with every console, your PC, and an influence supply. A lone HDMI-out from the dock then unifies all of these units onto one enter of your TV. Decide up the headset and hit the button on the ear cup to cycle between these linked units in your TV. In case you maintain the headset docked, the identical button ought to nonetheless cycle between them whereas letting the audio skip it and proceed on to your TV audio system or sound bar. 

It’s possible you’ll discover that the A50 X doesn’t have a 3rd HDMI-in port for connecting a PC, and that’s as a result of Logitech appears to assume PC players solely wish to use DisplayPort (which, to be truthful, usually has larger bandwidth and extra in-built goodies than HDMI). The headset can nonetheless change over to a linked PC with one of many three USB-C ports on its dock used for information connections of the 2 consoles and a pc, however switching over to your desktop monitor should be executed manually (such as you’re within the Stone Age).

Logitech appears to check the A50 X because the one gaming headset to rule all of them, and after you have your entire gaming setup operating via it, you simply press the PlaySync button on the rear of the precise ear cup to cycle between setups. If you wish to play video games or use your pc with the audio coming via your audio system, for native multiplayer or since you merely don’t really feel like placing headphones on at that second, the identical PlaySync button will nonetheless be used to modify video alerts and move alongside the audio to a different machine whereas it’s docked. The dock subsequently turns into an vital focus of your setup, although you may nonetheless cost the A50 X with out it by plugging into the headset’s personal USB-C port — a necessary job in case you ever must cost when you play.

The Astro A50 X has loads of the pure updates you’d count on over the A50 headset from 2019 (a change to USB-C and new audio and mic drivers), although you might want to essentially be into the multi-console switching to get essentially the most out of the almost $400 cans. In case you do need one headset to deal with all the things throughout your entire gaming setup (and also you don’t look after utilizing any of the varied 3.5mm wired choices on the market), the A50 X is the one sport on the town.