Headphones in comparison with speaker systems have many obvious advantages. First of all, they provide absolute privacy and the sound comes directly into your ears without any external disturbance while listening to the music. Headphones can be easily stored as opposed to speaker systems, especially those with more satellites. Nowadays there are even surround sound headphones, which in many cases are a complete substitute for speaker systems. If stereo sound is enough for you, you might be interested in Saitek GH20 headphones.






Saitek, Packaging, design

Saitek Company, established in 1979, was originally engaged in producing only chess simulators and makes them to this day. In 1993 the firm expanded its product line into PC's and started to manufacture joypads, joysticks, mice, keyboards, headsets, speakers and so on. Saitek today is the market leader with high performance products for PC gamers. Packaging, design and construction



Headset comes in a clear round plastic packaging. Apart of headset, a concise manual is also included. In my opinion, the Saitek headset has a pretty good look to it. The design gives me a decent impression, especially the color scheme of headphones cups. Dark blue transition into black shade gives them a nice metal appearance. Cups feature three silver plastic stripes. Both cups are marked with letters "L" and "R", for Left and Right side, to indicate the correct orientation when placed on. Since they are adjustable to 45 degrees they are conforming to different shaped heads, as far as width is concerned. Flexible boom with microphone is attached to the left ear piece which allows for easy positioning of the microphone. Unfortunately the boom is rather short. When extended to its maximum, it couldn't even reach the corner of my mouth. Some people may also have an issue with the size of ear-pads. I don't think my ears are that big, yet sometimes they were hurting or it seemed as if my ears were adjusting to the shape of headphones, and this leads me to point out another disadvantage of these headphones. Ear-pads are not soft enough in my opinion. It would not bother me if they didn't hurt my ears because of their small size, but then again maybe it's the size of my ears?



To adjust the volume there is a dial with two additional functions. The dial features a switch that enables a decent bass boost by the vibration of ear pieces. This effect is noticeable when listening to hard rock music, listening to softer music requires to substantially increase the volume to notice the "bass" effect. The vibration level is also adjustable and controls the bass boost intensity. In order to use the bass effect, headset needs to be connected to PC using USB cable since the sound card alone cannot provide the necessary power input. Jack terminals used to connect the headset to the sound card are gold-plated. The ear pieces are also extendable. There are 12 levels of adjustments, each extending the head piece by increments of 3rd cm to the maximum of 4 cm. The headband part of headset is also padded. As far as technical specifications are concerned, the Seitek headset is an average product that doesn't stand out or fall behind other products in its price range.

Headphones
Frequency range: 20 Hz - 20 kHz
Maximum volume: 108 dB

Microphone
Frequency range: 30 Hz - 16 kHz
Maximum volume: 58 dB