With so many expensive headphones on the market, the Chillblast Vox gaming headphones aim to deliver a decent audio experience to gamers on a budget. But do they actually hold a candle to higher-end cans?
Priced at £49.99, the Chillblast Vox headphones are extremely light headphones that offer decent comfort and enjoyable sound. A wired-only experience, the cheap gaming headphones are usable on PC, Xbox, PlayStation and any phone or tablet that still has a 3.5mm audio jack.
The simply-designed aluminium frame hugs the top of your head a bit too tightly, but this may differ for you based on your head size, and the soft memory foam ear cups make up for it with plush padding. It might not be as comfortable as something like the EPOS H6PRO, but they cost four to five times as much. You will be able to listen for hours without issue, and that’s what counts - especially at this price point.
The Chillblast Vox headset supports virtual 7.1 HiFi sound through its stereo headphones, allowing the hardware to simulate multi-directional audio. This means that you’ll have better separation of audio than basic stereo cans, allowing more flow between different instruments in songs or different sounds in video games. Gaming is where it shines, allowing you to pick up on spatial sounds, which is especially helpful if you play games like CS:GO, where you need to count the footsteps coming down Banana.
Thankfully, the Vox headphones avoid one of the biggest pitfalls of gaming headsets: bass boosting. While the headphones are still a tad on the bassy side — as most gaming headphones are wont to be — they don’t crush audio for the sake of over-hyping explosions and gun sounds in, say, Call of Duty. You’ll instead be treated to crispy clear audio for the most part, meaning you get to hear the little details that usually get lost in bass bloat, like bullet casings falling from your weapon.
Alongside listening, the headphones also offer a detachable microphone that offers serviceable audio in a pinch. While we wouldn’t recommend recording a podcast or streaming with the included microphone, it should be fine for a Discord call or a game of Warzone. We can’t hold this against the Chillblast Vox too much as headsets costing significantly more have similar microphone quality.
While the microphone does offer noise cancelling, it doesn’t make up for the hardware’s low-quality sound. With services such as Discord already offering rather strong software-level noise cancelling, The audio quality isn’t as bad as, say, original AirPods, but its muffled inputs are far from ideal.
The Chillblast Vox isn’t going to win any awards for audio quality; it’s the definition of cheap and cheerful, and that’s great if you’re on a budget. For £49.99, you’re getting a decent pair of earphones that can handle a bit of a beating and deliver competent-sounding audio without breaking the bank. And if you’re reading this review, that’s probably what you want, especially with the state of the economy at the moment
No, they’re not going to blow you away if you’re used to high-end audiophile headphones, but if you want strong gaming headphones with a good microphone, you’ll be looking at paying for something that’s out of this price range by a significant margin. There’s no shame in that, either, as the Chillblast Vox are good at what they do for the price they do it at.
The Vox is a great choice for those on a budget. They sound as good as any other set of headphones in their price range, and are rather comfortable to boot. They don’t hold a candle to more expensive sets of headphones, but no one ever expected them to. If you want something cheap but still quality that won’t break the moment you touch them, this is the product for you.
