Hardware

Published on February 12th, 2025 | by Scott De Lacy

AceZone A-SPIRE WIRELESS Advanced Hybrid ANC Gaming Headset Review

There are headsets, then there are headsets. But at what point does a headset stop being a standard peripheral and become part of a professionals toolkit?

The audio peripherals market has seemingly exploded with ANC capable wired and wireless headsets, all attempting to out-innovate each other by making the slightest inroads into weight reduction, comfort, audio quality, ANC profiles, custom features, voice controls, add-on software and niche inclusions. But what is inescapable, is the price keeps increasing whilst the value that these products offer tends to remain the same.

AceZone A-SPIRE WIRELESS Advanced Hybrid ANC Gaming Headset certainty doesn’t hold back its punches with a comprehensive feature set, and a $600 AUD price tag. The question, is it actually worth it?

Specifications

Wireless

Gaming Wireless: Low Latency 2.4 GHz
Bluetooth Wireless: v5.4
35-Hour Battery Life with USB Charging Option While Gaming

Audio

LE Audio: The Next Generation of Bluetooth Audio
LE Audio Codecs: LC3
Audio interfaces: Wireless, Bluetooth LE Audio, USB-C, AUX
Driver Size: 40 mm Driver Optimized for High Performance Noise Cancelling and Sound Clarity
Driver Frequency Range: 20Hz to 20kHz

Microphones

Ultra Noise Cancelling Microphone
AceZone Speech Enhancer (3 microphones) Algorithm
Flip-to-mute Microphone

Design

Headset Protected with Premium Hard Carry Case
Weight: 270g
Interchangeable Noise Cancelling Leatherette Ear Pads
Foldable: Collapsible Hinges to Fold Headset Flat
Flip-to-mute boom arm
Mobile App with Pre-defined EQ Game Settings

Includes:

• PU-zipper, Carry Case
• AUX, 3.5 Jack Cable
• USB-A to USB-C, Charging Cable
• USB-C dongle

Unboxing and First Impressions

The box presents well and has all the inclusions down the side, whilst the other faces include quotes from reviews.

At first it was difficult to open the flap and prize the inner box out. There was no air in-between and it kept resisting, but persistence pays.

So tightly packed in the tab wouldn’t come out.

Quality inner box and really nice presentation of the case.

Nice outline sheet with QR code. That will help pack up the kit when you’re done.

Nice plush ear cups and clean mesh.

A warning sheet to ensure you align the green microphone side towards the mouth.

The microphone comes clipped onto the holder. Note the gooseneck bends/turns with the ear cup.

At first it did feel light, but it is a sleek design and the build quality is on par with other quality headsets.

Design and Build

Headband

The headband is a plush design, standard curve that provides some clamping for the ear cups. The ear cups are connected via a plastic slide that slides into the cup not the headband, reinforced with 15Wx1Hmm metal (likely stainless steel) support.

Measured by calipers at the middle of the band:

The average compression that most people would impart would be around 4-6mm. At ~5mm the inner wiring or possibly a conduit or similar can be felt.

Part of the left headband is the sliding microphone snap-lock harness. Not sure why this is sliding/adjustable, it makes no sense at all, other than perhaps being easier to manufacture and ideally to replace if broken. On that basis AceZone get a free pass if that is the case, but keep in mind that the adjustable region is outside the influence of the mic position – it is fixed with the cup, so the lockable portion of the mic will always be around the same spot. It is weird but that is okay.

The design allows for some ‘flex’ but plastic is not made to bend, so attempting to bend and reshape the headband like crazy is inadvisable.

Ear Cups

The ear cups are fairly well designed. Not only can they flex and fold to accommodate the wearer, but it also helps to centralise the ear cups directly into the ear canal.

The plush supports are well stitched and look great. If taken care of and kept clean they shouldn’t deteriorate any time soon – but it is that PVC stuff. Should that happen, AceZone have stated these can be replaced “simply by pulling down…” or something mentioned in a video. There wasn’t any obvious way to do this and it felt like it might break something. We will assume this can be done when one is confident they have to be replaced.

The supports contain a layer of foam which is thicker towards the bottom.

The speaker mesh is a bit dark, but you can make out the 40mm exciter/driver and the protective grill. It doesn’t stick out and try to give you a wet-willie like some other headsets.

In terms of diameter, it is almost spot on with a 10 cent Australian coin, configured as an eight spoke ‘wagon wheel’ grill, but there is a protruding ‘bubble’ or nub that sticks out. For those in the know, they will understand that this is by design and its part of the acoustic characteristics and protection for the wearer.

Microphone

The microphone appears to be of high spec according to the promotional material. What is great about it is that it is on a bendy gooseneck and those who love to fidget and play with their mic – and you know who you are; these goosenecks protect the cable as a form of strain relief as well as simply keeping the microphone where you put it.

Some goosenecks are bare showing off each link in all its glory, and some are encased in shielding. At least this is black and all the collected dead skin won’t immediately show up? But bare is the way to go, being able to have tactile feel for the mic and bend positions is actually useful.

A bright green icon shows the front of the microphone which is not a common feature at all. This can be seen from the corner of the eye when lining up the microphone into the talking position – the corner of the smile. On this headset, it can also kind of be felt too, that is because of the sloppy edge of the printed decal. Yes, printed. Not etched or raised moulded plastic, sadly.

An obvious bug bear exists with the microphone being secured into the holder. As the headset cup is rotated on the vertical (left and right!) it rotates the microphone along with it, meaning when the microphone is brought down into position, it has travelled and is no longer in the same alignment, which of course is made worse when some pulling force is needed to disconnect the microphone from the holder anyway.

The alternative is a dorky non flexible arm, and they suck. It would seem the intended use case here is securing the microphone away for travel, and setting it up once for usage.

There is no ‘mute button’, but rather the mute is activated when the microphone is pushed all the way back towards the headset band. This is some legendary industrial engineering, because it is the innate action of anyone, to get the microphone out of the way, secondary only to covering it.

Buttons

The buttons are located on the bottom of both ear cups. They are all tactile momentary press / software buttons (non-latching). Activated by single press or press and hold, they will turn on/off, cycle ANC modes, play/pause or answer calls, and volume up/down.

All straight forward. The volume buttons can be found by feel easily enough as can the power and ANC button. At no point do you feel you need to remove the headset to eyeball the buttons, even on first use.

There is no new ground here, other headsets do the same thing.

Inclusions

Carry Case

The carry case is surprisingly compact and slim and compliments the design of the headset perfectly. To be fair, a carry case is non-optional at this price point and is the bare minimum that is expected. The materials are great and feels of quality in the fingers. The best features are the softly padded, flex-folded but firm central support and the Velcro secured netting – simple, but lacking in a lot of offerings.

For comparison, the case is slightly taller than Sony ULT’s case, but not as wide.
Inside the case there is a printed layout of how to fold the headset and the QR code for the manual, a nice touch.

Dongle

Housed inside the central support of the case, it was actually overlooked and missed early on. After its camouflage was discovered, it is actually a great spot to keep it. Other headsets may opt to include the dongle in the headset housing, or just thrown in loose on a non secured netting. This is great.

It is small, any smaller and it would be too small. It is the right size for attaching to many things, it wont/shouldn’t encroach on the space of other dongles and cables and its sync button is not located where you would grab it when you are unplugging it. Labelled appropriately so you know what it is for, it ticks all the boxes.

3.5mm Audio cable

It is a decent length, premium shielding. AceZone did not skimp here. Its intended use clearly is for connecting to your Xbox or PlayStation controller, or perhaps your handheld devices, laptop or computer close by. With this length you can do that.

USB-C charging cable

A lot of USB-C devices come with cables that are half a bee’s dick in length, almost completely useless for practical use. This cable is designed to plug in and play, so you will happily be able to sit next to your computer or USB-C audio capable device and connect, whilst also charging.

The cable quality looks and feels great, but naturally, everyone gaming with others will probably opt to swap it out and use their own distinctive, phat, brightly coloured, or elaborately shielded, team affiliated colour right? You do you.

Microphone Windsock

There is one single spare windsock included. Windsocks are reasonably cheap, a $600 headset should come with three spares? Or at least two. Some headsets don’t include any at all.

Software and Upgrades

The website states that the A-SPIRE series firmware can be updated with the AceZone Mobile App.

But on the same page the A-SPIRE WIRELESS DONGLE section states that the dongle must be updated by a tool for Windows only. The link returns to https://acezone.com.au/app-software/.

The app was not tested as part of this review. There are already many reviews out there that speak to the performance of the app with this and the other headsets. Being able to adjust EQ and sidetone and ANC profile within the predefined limits is a function of each and every headset in this category. It is sufficient to know that its there, it works and it can be tuned to taste.

The most compelling reason though is the best. The sound was already great, already perfect and no change was necessary. No impulse sought out a change. That speaks highly for this headset.

Testing

Audio output

No adjustments were made to output EQ or via the app. Immediately the audio quality is great for music and Youtube/movies. Interestingly, the sound felt better coming from an LG TV via Bluetooth, then from the PC. Perhaps more ANC was needed which altered the sound quality slightly.

There are specific game profiles included via the app, such as COD2, but these games were not tested. What was clear is that there are enhancements to spatial depth of field, and what is said about reducing background noise increasing sensitivity to other sounds, such as foot steps etc, is all true.

The spatial feedback of left and right zones even in strategy games like 0AD was also enhanced with more acute sense of direction and could even give an edge there as well.

There are plenty of reviews from high level gamers and audio peripheral reviewers who are able to compare multiple top tier headsets vs another and offer their perspective. Although referenced directly from AceZone, this review is quite comprehensive and worth watching to get an appreciation for gaming performance.

It is worth noting some of the negatives discussed in that video were not evident, such as the odd Sidetone or other areas. Most likely, once the EQ and Sidetone settings are adjusted, and/or with different firmware, then specific artefacts can be encountered.

More importantly, this headset is a wireless headset, and latency usually comes with the territory. Obviously the best results will be had by using the cable and as discussed in the video above, it is recommended during the E-Sports competitions. There were no discernible latency impacts in the testing done, but without extensive tests while watching, watching lips move and measuring for differences, or comparing two headsets etc, it may simply just not be noticed.

Bluetooth and Dongle connections were incredibly responsive and no general latency was there. But as with all of these headsets, as ANC ramps up or needs to work harder, we start to see the house of cards crumble – although in this case, it couldn’t be faltered in audio playback.

AceZone speak highly of the frequency response of this headset even with ANC on. Sine wave tones at 0.8 amplitude were produced in Audacity to see if the sounds can even be produced by the speakers, what was physically felt, and the colour with ANC on via the dongle.

Surprisingly the frequency response even from 1Hz is incredible, albeit out of spec. At the lower end of the scale you can feel the speakers pushing some air through the ear canal. The more powerful intense audio was felt in the middle, speaking range, which makes the A-SPIRE much like any other headset with similar common chipsets and drivers.

Between 2KHz and 10KHz there was clearly some odd tones and sounds coming through. It is unclear if this is an artefact from the PC, Audacity, USB interface (directly connected to the board), or a product of the headset and firmware. It would be unfair to attribute this to the headset without thorough analysis, but some of the sounds went away when ANC was turned off – which usually indicates that it may be circuitry interference – which is not uncommon for similar designed headsets.

The upper end from 10KHz has a dramatic drop off in amplitude, which is expected due to the faster waveform. Where the volume was decreased progressively, it had to be increased to 100% in order to appreciate the audio up to 20KHz.

Keeping in mind this is an indicative test, purely to test if a frequency would output at all, which it did. The purity of the tone was primarily heard despite any other sounds and their sources. Harmonics however, were clearly identified as indicated. Depending on the programming, ANC can and likely will treat a consistent present sound as noise. The noise coming from the speaker itself can be perceived by the body microphone as background noise – much like a call or Zoom conversation filters out noise. Testing with constant tones can often reveal the true characteristics of the ANC’s.

Microphone

Microphones tend to be seldom tested extensively and it is often where most headsets fall down in quality or delivery.

This microphone actually delivers quite a crisp and clean speaking tone. It is optimised for voice and as such, is a single diaphragm which is a Mono microphone. It can be recorded as stereo but the stereo stream is just duplicated to the 2^nd channel.

Left and Right channels are equal completely Stereo recording showing clicks and clapping from the left, front and right.

Frequency analysis of click and clapping

The review video linked earlier has an example of the audio being tested, but this may leave a poorer than is reasonable impression. It is actually quite good – for what it is.

In that video background noise was picked up by the microphone and in testing this was also the case. Playing audio through the headset, worn with the microphone adjusted to speaking position, did show some bleed through at certain frequencies. But it was not as dramatic as shown – and firmware and sound proofing makes a big difference.

All headsets will do this, bone conduction of sound will happen, so during playback when the sound vibrates through the head and along the ear cups to the gooseneck or even out the open mouth as you speak to a team mate, some pass through can and will occur. This headset effectively reduces that volume to low levels, well beyond -35db.

The microphone is more responsive and sensitive to frequencies within the speaking range. It caps off around 6KHz, with one test at 9KHz showing frequency response for 6KHz but at -51db! There is a complete cliff and falloff above this which is why the 9KHz was recorded mostly as a flat line.

1KHz sine at speaking distance

6KHz sine wave at 50% amplitude

9KHz sine reached its limit at 6KHz with harmonic

1Hz-22KHz 50% amplitude sweep

1Hz-22KHz 100% amplitude sweep.

1Hz-22KHz 100% amplitude sweep with ANC disabled. Note the difference in response below 2KHz.

Comfort

The first hour was uncomfortable. The ear pressure felt too strong and something about it felt rigid. Then the next day after this initial use, it felt great. Likely just a small flex is all that is needed or maybe picking a brighter day to get acquainted with the new headset. It is something you can wear for an extensive period of time, but as there is some suction – a break is needed every now and then for most people.

The movement of the ear cups is not frustrating like some headsets. It isn’t a wild horse, it doesn’t have a mind of its own. It will stay where you put it.

The spacings are all proportional, but at the lowest adjustment with no room to reduce, it is just barely at the ‘right fit’. This head set may be designed for… well, people who have more Neanderthal DNA such as Scandinavian people, than others with a more normal average common smaller frame. Don’t worry kids, you will grow into it.

That aside, it should fit most adults and genuinely be comfortable. The weight feels about right and your ears won’t likely get all sweaty and gross within 20-30 minutes at least.

Final Thoughts

Let’s get real for a moment. Simply put, the headset is great. The microphone is really crisp and has good presence, especially voice team chat. Most importantly the audio is great but all this comes at a cost of $600AUD.

Battery life is now 25-35 hours as standard, Bluetooth now enables 2-5 profiles or more and allow multiple connections. Sony have their propriety codec, and everyone is competing to reduce the weight and have the best ANC profile. But that is just it, the ANC is purely software driven and is subject to the manufacturer. There are commonalities that dictate what will/wont be included and when identified, it will usually hold true for the similar models. Usually starting with the speaker driver with 40mm being the most common, but could be 20mm-45mm, depending on the product.

There is no question that the AceZone A-SPIRE wireless gaming headset is a fricken good headset. Even taking into account the undeniable full universal connectivity, ANC profiles and performance, flip to mute mic, and better than average carry case, it cannot and should not justify spending $300 more than premium high priced headsets – especially when competition in this saturated market is clutching at every tiny improvement as their sole competitive edge.

The fact of the matter is that AceZone have built a following around their lineup and marketed well with the E-Sports and gaming community and have built a reliable, versatile, solid gaming product. But unless you are a professional gamer, making sufficient money from competitive gaming or you have money to burn and want the finer things in life, you are vastly over reaching at this price point.

About the Author

Scott De Lacy Scott has a professional IT background spanning over 18 years, is an hobbyist electronics designer, talented musician, holds qualifications as a trainer and experience in emergency and community services sectors. He reviews Movies, PC and XBOX One games, and hardware.

Related Posts

Beats introduces Powerbeats Pro 2 and brings Heart Rate Monitoring for workouts →

20 years of Google Maps: Discover Australia’s Most Talked-About places, cafés, shops and more →

Nebula Introduces New Capsule Air Projector →

Woojer Vest 3 Review →