Being a favourite choice of gamers, air traffic controllers, and sponsors of the Aston Martin Formula One team should tell you all you need to know about EPOS
The H6PRO is EPOS’ flagship range, coming in three different, elegant colourways; Ghost White, Sebring Black, and Racing Green. All three have tasteful accents in metal, a matte finish on the plastic parts, and an easy-clean faux leather headband for particularly sweaty gaming sessions. It’s so good looking in fact, it’s actually won design awards. Weighing in at just over 300g, they’re heavy enough to feel strong and sturdy, but not so much that they become noticeable or uncomfortable on your head.
They definitely have a gamer-y look to them, but they’re a more mature step away from the over-the-top, 100 million LED colour combination, cat ear headphones of some of their competitors. They’re also full of interesting “I didn’t know I needed that until now and can’t live without it” quality of life features too. Who says you have to pick form over function?
The adjustable headband is numbered so once you get the settings just right it’s easy to go back if you knock them out by accident or to just make sure you have the height equal on each side. The right ear-cup includes a hardware volume control, so if you don’t have easy access to your volume settings either on a second screen on through keyboard controls you can change it on the fly, on your ear. Or you can use it to fine-tune the volume with a combination of on the headset and on your PC or console of choice.
The microphone is the only design aspect that maybe doesn’t quite fit in form with the rest, but in this case, it’s better to err on the side of function. There’s nothing worse than trying to play with your friends on new hardware, only to spend the first 5/10/15 minutes or more adjusting your audio and microphone settings so they can hear you.
With the EPOS H6PRO this wasn’t an issue. The microphone settings were crystal clear immediately. Another couple of cool things with the mic too – lifting it fully up away from your mouth mutes it, and if you want to wear your snazzy new headphones out but thought the mic would look silly on the bus, don’t worry. It’s attached with magnets so you can take it off and put a cover over that spot whenever you want. And since it’s a magnetic connection there’s less worry that the connection will degrade over time. They really have thought of everything.
Of course, the most important thing about headphones is the audio quality, and these certainly deliver. It’ll be no surprise that the H6PROs sound great. Listening to music you’ll notice clear treble and warm soft bass, with an impressive frequency response range. We tested the open-cup version which in theory should give a closer-to-reality sound, whereas the closed cups will give a little more bass-heavy sound which some people might prefer. Again, EPOS has thought of everything and that’s why the H6PRO comes in two versions.
Now these aren’t 300ohm impedance, full audiophile headphones that get kept in a glass case when not in use, but they’re not priced like that either. In fact, the sound design definitely leans towards their primary intended use, which is gaming. Directional sound cues are easy to identify – as long as your game of choice has the appropriate sound design too. Games like 'Warzone' (or 'Call of Duty' in general), all of the 'Battlefields', and anything else where particular care and attention has been paid by the developers to the in-game sounds will really benefit from this particular headset. If you’ve been using anything other than a top-tier headset, you’re 100% going to notice the difference and benefit to your gameplay.
In short, the EPOS H6PROs look great, sound excellent, make you sound better to your buddies, are comfortable for long play sessions and feel like they’ll last the test of time. They’re not cheap, but they do feel like a good investment if you’re in the market.