YIHAO Headset Review

Hey guys I’m DeltaBurnt. I’m a new blogger here for DS Database 🙂 . Basically I’m just going to post some fun blogs and do reviews of various electronics and toys (possibly flashcarts if I get one that hasn’t been reviewed here yet). Anyways I’m doing a review of a cheap 9 dollar headset on dealextreme. This is a headset from YIHAO that has a microphone (you probably already know that from picture ^^). That’s it right up there *points towards the picture at the top*. Yep that baby’s only 9 dollars! Is it worth it? Or will it fall apart the second you pick it up? Continue reading to find out!

Intro –

What’s this? Your headset broke? You need a new one? Let’s go into the wonderful world of cheap products on the internet! We found a nice little headset on dealextreme that looks promising and it’s only $8.43! That’s 20 dollars less than retail headsets that are made out of cheap plastic! Wow! This sounds too good to be true! Maybe it is!?

Ok let’s get down to business this is a standard headset, with a tiny bit of noise cancellation, a microphone, and no drivers needed. Let’s take a more in depth look at it’s use.

Functionality/Use –

This headset is somewhat in between those cheap headphones made out of plastic and those high tech ones with noise cancellation you see in stores for 50 bucks. It has a little noise cancellation itself but nowhere near as much as those headsets that basically engulf your ears. This headset is detected by most programs (alot of times this may just depend on your sound card) such as Ventrilo, Team Speak, and Skype. The quality of the actual headphones is a little bad. If you switch from a headset with good/really good quality (EX: Those like 50-70 dollar headsets you’d see at best buy) to this headset you’d definitely notice that the quality is a little worse. It’s nothing too bad though, after maybe a day of using this headset I pretty much got used to it (in other words it’s not so horrible that it pains to listen to music or play games with it).  The microphone quality is actually pretty good, usually when I call my friends on Skype I’m the one with the better quality microphone.  So either all my friends have really crappy microphones the 90s or the microphone on this is pretty good (and no my friends don’t have microphones from the 90s :P). Be warned though the microphone quality isn’t the best it’s just pretty good/decent.

Build –

The build of this headset is actually pretty interesting. First let’s start with the headphones. The headphones are padded just a tiny bit to make it so your ears don’t hurt when using the headphones. The shape of the headphones is circular, now seeing as how a regular person’s ear is more of a egg/oval shape headset may cause some discomfort after extended use (about 3-4 hours). If this happens it’s probably a good sign to maybe take them off or go do something else besides the computer for awhile (so it’s not completely a bad thing it’s just telling you you’re on the computer too much haha ^^). Next let’s move onto the little volume control on the cable/cord, most headsets come with these and have a volume control for the microphone/headphones and an on/off switch for the mic. Unfortunately this headset only comes with volume control. The lack of a microphone on/off switch is accidentally breathing into the mic or the people you’re talking too not being able to hear because the volume for your mic is so low. Now the breathing into mic problem brings me to my next part of the build section and that the actual microphone. The microphone itself can be bent in many different directions and then also swung parallel to the base of the headset so you can easily move the microphone away from your mouth if you don’t want to accidentally breathe into it. The microphone’s little metal “wire” or cable it’s attached to that allows it to bend, it doesn’t look too flimsy but at the same time doesn’t look too sturdy either it’s possible it may break or loose it’s ability to stay in place/be stiff. The microphone does come with a little black cover like most do and it’s pretty standard, it could easily come off if you wanted it to.

Last but not least the most interesting part of the build the cords, the cords are so unique because of their covering. Most cables/cords are covered by a certain rubber like type material (because rubber pwns electricity) while the cable on this headset is more like what you would find on a lanyard (the things that go around your neck and at the end might have like an ID card or something of the sort). Check out these pictures to get better idea of what I’m saying:

On the left is a standard headset cable and on the right is the cable of our headset.

There’s some upsides and downsides to this really, 1 is that standard cables/cords can alot of times have many chemicals on them that if you’re fiddling when them and goto eat you may get those chemicals in your mouth and you’ll most likely get a little sick from it (trust me I fiddle with the cables alot). Downsides though would be that if you have a cat they’ll probably want to play with the cable and that may lead to your headset’s cable being damaged (electrical tape should fix that up). Near the end of the cable there’s a plastic black piece similar to the volume control piece but on the other side the cable is split into two really tiny cables (still the same type of material make ups the cable/cord’s covering though) and these may easily get damaged (mine is already a little damaged). One is to hook into your line-in port on your computer and the other is for the microphone port. Oh and the length of the cable…it’s pretty good, it’s about the standard length of a normal headset (about 6 feet, just enough to go behind your desk and plug it in and have enough left over so you move back 1-2 feet).

Oh one last thing I forgot to mention was the little adjusters that let you adjust the headset according to the length of your head. These are pretty straight forward (they’re like most other headsets) only problem is the side of the headset with the microphone has more weight (obviously because of the microphone) so alot of the times it might slide down and that can  get annoying if you head is a little smaller. Grabbing some tape should solve this problem.

Installation –

The installation of this microphone is pretty simple, there’s no drivers required, no software you need to download, you just plug it in and you’re ready to go (this is often called plug-and-play). Depending on your operating system or program you want to use this with you may need to change a few setting but other than that it’s fairly simple. If you run into problems you may just need to un-mute your microphone in the windows sound control panel (obviously this is for windows only you may need to do similar things on other OSs). Also if you find that maybe you’re speaking into the microphone but nothing is coming up it could be that your sound card, even if it has a microphone port, doesn’t support input of sounds (this is what originally happened with my first sound card, but I bought a new one for 20 bucks and it was all good). Basically to summarize this section, this headset is ready to go straight out of the package.

Conclusion –

This is a pretty good headset, there’s obviously alot of downsides to this but at the same time some good things about it. The 9 dollar price tag can tell you that it’s not going to be perfect.

Use/Functionality, 6 out of 10 – It has some noise cancellation, and the microphone quality is pretty good but the sound quality is pretty bad. You definitely hear things alot more when using then computer than you do when you’re speaking so the sound quality weighs a little more heavily.

Build, 7/15 – This is a pretty bad topic here, at 9 bucks you can expect this to not be perfect. There’s alot of upsides and downsides here but sadly there’s a little more downsides than there are upsides. The stability itself of the headset is good, it won’t just fall apart if you drop it it’s more the little annoyances and possible problem that cause this section to get a low rating.

Installation, 5/5 – Very simple and very compatible with almost every program I’ve used with it.

Overall, 18/30 – Pretty good for a 9 dollar headset, it’s a good deal (especially since dealextreme has free shipping) but alot of people may find the headset to be a little too annoying. I would recommend this for anyone who’s old headset just broke but doesn’t have the money to pay for the 50 dollar ones at that point in time. This product is more of a temporary type headset, you get it until you can pay for one that’s a little more expensive.

That concludes my review of this headset! If you wish to get more info on this headset or maybe buy the headset you can goto the dealextreme page by clicking here. Stay tuned for more blogs and reviews from me. Bye!