The Frustrating Experience of Dolby Atmos Headphones from Dell

As I sat down to test the new Dell gaming headset, I couldn't help but feel a sense of frustration. The heavyweight design of the headset felt oppressive, and the constant need to launch games from it was a nuisance. "I'm sorry," said John Nell, "and this might be another problem." It seemed that the proprietary standards for spatial audio were causing issues, leaving me wondering if Windows would support them natively or if I'd have to constantly download apps.

The Dolby Atmos feature promised immersive sound, but after 30 seconds of waiting for the Dolby Access app to load, I was still underwhelmed. "Dell did a terrible job," I thought, "the fact that I couldn't Google AW uh Alienware 720h headphone drivers and just get to the webpage is very bad." The normal way of loading the page worked great, but it highlighted the limitations of the proprietary system.

The Dolby Atmos feature was touted as having multiple equalizers and music customization options, including movie profiles and game profiles. However, I found the game profile to be "a little bit overbearing." The Dolby Access app had a section that read "professionally tuned for Republic of Gamers," but it didn't quite live up to its promise. Despite this, I was impressed with the latency on the headset, which was surprisingly good.

The AI noise canceling feature was still active, and I couldn't really play music or test audio without it. The spatial audio was good, but again, I wasn't blown away. "It's very isolating," I thought, "I can barely hear my computer at all." The sound design of the headphones was lacking, and I found myself yelling for attention when someone walked by.

As I continued to test the headset, I noticed some interference issues, possibly due to a connection problem or low battery. The normal price of the headset was $160, which seemed steep considering its limitations. "Not worth it," I thought, "not even during sales." If you're in the market for a gaming headset, I'd recommend sticking with more established brands like HyperX or SteelSeries.

The versatility of these headphones is undermined by their inability to be used seamlessly with PlayStation or other non-Dell devices. The inclusion of the Logic G Pro X as a compatible option seemed like a good idea, but I haven't personally tested it. Instead, I'd recommend looking into the ATH-M50x STS, which are $70 more expensive but offer significantly better quality.

In conclusion, the Dell gaming headset was a disappointing experience. The proprietary standards and limitations of the spatial audio made it feel like a half-baked product. Unless you're already invested in the Dell ecosystem and want to try out their latest offerings, I'd advise against purchasing this headset.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the new 720h gaming headset from Alienware we've been talking a lot about Alienware these days mostly because they have been putting out some of the best monitors that money can buy for gaming like real real bangers however their headphones let's just say they're not exactly as talked about for those Alienware also has a bit of a reputation for being hit or miss when it comes to a lot of different products they have a long history they've been around for a long time come back here look at that we got oh I kind of like it there's a little embossed Alien Logo kind of subtle there's also what looks to be like a bunch of the components just kind of the headset like that looks like the microphone it's kind of neat promises 30 hours of battery life with an asterisk it has Dolby Atmos support and it has its high-res audio certified high-res audio certification is kind of meaningless don't ever let this influence your purchasing decision it doesn't mean it sounds good it's a badge that you can pay Sony to give they call this a dual mode headset which they mean it can run wired or it can take advantage of 2.4 gigahertz wireless with a dongle adapter they also claim to have ai noise canceling microphones a fast charge 15 minutes of charge for up to six hours of use that's actually pretty nice what else we got for specs 40 millimeter high-res drivers Dolby Atmos star star but note it can only do Dolby Atmos through the digital connection which is the USBC wireless connection basically that's because the digital Sound Processing either happens in the dongle or the headphone so if you don't have some a source that supports Dolby Atmos then it won't be able to send it and this must just be doing an analog signal over the 3.5 millimeter connector because it's just going into your computer cybridge level 105 DB impedance 32 ohms and weight of 348 grams and they got a microphone but all those numbers don't really matter if the thing doesn't sound good and if it ain't worth the money but what do they add in as value adds to make it worth the money let's find out we got oh a very nice feeling braided cable I believe this is only for charging as the headset has a 3.5 millimeter Jack on it which I imagine that's how you get wired play through ooh Alienware sticker oh I guess this was under the booklets I missed this we also have a combo jack cable with a mute switch on the cable that's pretty nice as well as there's a microphone a very similar braided cable to the USB cable this is actually pretty interesting that they give you this microphone as well because that means that there's a headset on the microphone as well as right here they thoughtfully include a USB a to c adapter oh boy let's look at this stuff for onboard controls on the headphone we have a volume dial a power button a audio selector so I guess that's if you want to hear game audio or you want to hear your chat audio which one do you want to prioritize we have a mute button and we have a 3.5 millimeter Jack and here is the microphone which come out like that considering that there's a mute button right here this microphone doesn't have like a tilt to mute I really hope that if we push it in that makes it mute automatically as well I do appreciate that this can kind of be stowed away this makes these more versatile however since they don't have Bluetooth it kind of makes them hard to do double duty as both a commuter and a gaming headset do the ear cups come off they don't come off in a way that makes me feel like I'm not about to break them but you never know sometimes you gotta Break Stuff to find out well I don't know if the ear cups come off but uh the ear cups themselves are made of a nylon material they have a good depth in them you can see on the insides there there is the right and the left ear markers and then the headband is adjustable like five levels and it uses a tensioned band and it uses a tension band support just like a steel series headset or there's quite a few headsets these days it doesn't like to stay in place very well this uh tension mechanism but it could fit a wide amount of heads but how does it fit mine I have a hat on so that's going to add a little bit to the size of my head they're comfortable for me on the inside my ears are touching the inside of the cup which can be really annoying for some people this is quite a soft memory foam that's inside of this ear cushion and it really doesn't put up much resistance against the general clamping force of this headset maybe if I make it a little bit bigger it'll be better but do you see that I was just adjusting it like now it feels too loose it takes a little fiddling with to get right but once you get it on there I guess it's okay in terms of like Flex on the headband it's kind of hard to tell but what this is is you can tell it's two pieces of plastic around here with a very slight frame in between seems like it's very very focused on saving weight like I can kind of poke through here like hard but then here's eh and the fabric itself is feels pretty nice though and in terms of just general fit and finish while it is very plasticky lines and like materials are minimized this is rubber for some reason there's no twist there is tilt there's no swivel you can't adjust like you really you're just bending the headset now I just want to bring attention to where they put the USBC port on here it's right it's right here which really makes me think we must not be able to listen because are they really gonna have it coming out like this while it's on your freaking head that look like a fool an absolute idiot so apparently some headphones like the Sony xm5s don't work while you're charging them I very very much hope that that's not the case with this because it is I don't care about how fast your quick charging is if I'm in the game and my headset dies I can't wait 15 minutes for a charge so I can play for a decent amount of time again I want to be able to just pull out a cable and uh you know keep clicking heads keep winning those games keep you know my MMR come on my MMR but what really matters is how they sound and you know what sounds really good to me a good deal from our sponsor grammarly thanks to grammarly for sponsoring this video grammarly is throwing their hat into the AI ring with grammarly go which offers a generative AI to accelerate your productivity while staying true to your personal style what makes grammarly go so unique is that you can customize your preferred communication stuff by setting your voice to your personalized tone the business team uses grammarly go to rewrite emails and talking points to be more concise all while keeping it authentic to our voice need help with a video concept just input prompt and grammarly go will provide innovative ideas to unlock your creative potential our favorite part about grammarly go is that it's there to help you write no need to leave the platform you're on just download sign up and start typing you'll be amazed at what you can do with grammarly go sign up at grammarly.com shortcircuit and get 20 off of grammarly Premium game time let's go so turn it on I hold that down the uh it's not working Bell luckily we got the fast charging but also plugged so I don't my MMR now I'm gaming it appears that this is only a charging cable which is kind of a bummer I prefer to have as many connection options as possible this is the mic test give me the gift of the griptop sock a drip drape Ship Shape Tip Top sock not your spin slick slapstick slip slop stock but a plastic elastic grip top sock not a spot speckled frog freckled cheap Shake sock but a hodgepod the mic sounds uh like a gaming headset mic which is famously not very good you can say words on it it doesn't really sound particularly like your voice maybe it all can be redeemed if with a some good old audio so let's take a listen to some some music I've just been informed that this comes in two colors lunar light and dark side of the moon which means we gotta listen to some Floyd they sound terrible I'm so sorry these uh these don't sound very good if you're looking for a music headphone you should look pretty much anywhere else this took all of the detail out of a beautifully produced album over bloated the bass loses the detail it's yeah but that's just my opinion what do the graphs say well they say they sound like as you can see the bass is massively overpronounced in the base region so it's not a rumble like with the sub bass region it's a boominess that destroys all details you basically lose out a lot of the stuff in the lower mid so it makes most of your bass notes up feel bloated the mids are kind of a mess where you have strange peakiness probably not that bad if you're talking about like right around the 800 range but this massive dip in the upper mids they're on the 300 kilohertz just kind of adds this hollowness that then is made up by just sheer Sparkle that can be kind of fatiguing really though it's the base and the low mid mess up that just ruins the sound of these and then this little dip up here but the microphone how does the mic measure and as you can see on the mic curve what's supposed to be a flat line is very not flat it's not a terrible job like it doesn't do a terrible job of hitting the target but you can see in the upper in the in the very high highs you just kind of lose detail and there's an overpronounced bit in the lower parts and way down in the bottom it might look a little bad but that's kind of beneath where the human voice lies so the only concern would be if you have some sort of low rumbling in the background that this might pick it up however maybe that's something they can fix with their AI noise canceling we are yet to get that software installed because it took a dog's age to download this is the worst part about gaming headsets is that every single time you get one you have to do some sort of stupid song and dance we have to install an application to your computer that you definitely don't want to have it takes forever this Command Center Software from Alienware is 1.1 gigabytes as a download that's not after install it's super annoying Dell even screwed this up you go to this URL and it sends you to their documents page not their driver download page you go to this URL and it sends you to every single driver for Dell products then you have to search and then you find out that there's a supportassist software that you're not allowed to use because you don't have a Dell computer thank God you don't have a Dell computer because then you'd have to use it I finally have it downloaded but every single short circuit we do on gaming headsets that have some sort of good proprietary dump software take like an hour and a half longer than they need to because we're always fumbling around with this extra bulk that provides the consumer nothing in return other than what you can make your pretty is good how hard is that to do how hard is it to make good software that makes your lights go good I I really don't know I'm not a software developer maybe it's really really really really really really really hard so maybe I just sound like it right now but it's just so frustrating that as a consumer I have to have this heavyweight thing that someone that wants to know about my games it wants me to launch my games from it I'm not gonna do that I already have epic game store I already have steam I already have all these other dumb utilities my my GPU drivers want to launch my games too leave me alone well sorry I'm sorry and John Nell says he's sorry and this might be another this is another problem is that now that we have all these proprietary like standards for spacious around is Windows expected to support all of those natively or am I going to have to constantly be downloading apps Windows does have a spatial sound thing um it's not very good so like I'm all for trying to have better standards but currently I've been waiting for about 30 seconds for this Dolby access app to finish like doing its little loading animation and I don't know if it's if it's just if it's if it's doing anything I'm yet to really be blown away by sound surround sound in a headset there's literally just like limitations that you can't overcome in a headset because the speakers are right by your ears surround sound becomes more impactful when the speakers are placed further away from you because then you can hear Reflections in your environment as well as stuff like the head related transfer function which is like when sound goes through your head and then you actually hear it in this ear that you don't get with a headphone because there's not as much force yeah Dell did a terrible job the fact that I can't Google aw uh Alienware 720h headphone drivers and just get to the web page is very bad there that loaded immediately now once I did it the normal way not through Dell software that worked great okay we're doing Dolby Atmos boys here we go so Dolby Atmos on top of it gives you a bunch of equalizers as well as music customization there's movie profiles game profiles um it's like the game profile prioritizes accuracy positional accuracy for Competitive Gaming so it might be a little bit overbearing it's funny the Dolby access app has a little uh there's a little section that says professionally tuned for Republic of gamers yo get erect still not really Blown Away by Dolby Atmos but maybe it'll be better in a game okay we're gonna play melatonin check out the latency on this bad boy uh yeah the latency is actually pretty good on it there's like not really a noticeable delay I don't even know how to do the AI noise canceling is that just like a default always on to be clear that's microphone noise canceling that's not active noise canceling in the headphones I can't really play this on a trackpad here we go you know it's uh it's good the spatial audio is good but again I'm not very Blown Away oh my God this track man I will say that they're very isolating I can't hear my computer at all and I'm not very playing the audio very loud um and I may be the guys on set can attest to it because they've been yelling at me so many times to get my attention when you run over people there's a good crunch under I don't know if Dolby was on I think it may have crashed um there's some sort of like interference happening maybe it's I don't know there's interference happening right now here lookies and clackets maybe it's my phone too close my phone's not very close yeah I don't know if it's a connection issue or something but there's something that's like crackling I don't know if ammo's screwed it up I don't know if there's if it maybe it's low battery we didn't they were dead we didn't charge them for that long foreign okay yeah how much are these not worth it not 160 US Dollars they're not worth it uh what's the normal price that's the sale price not worth it Dell didn't do a very good job I wouldn't I wouldn't buy these I would stick with pretty much any of the other obvious go-to's of like the hyperx clouds and the steel series arctis fives or whatever those are going to be a better experience the versatility of these is undermined by the fact that can you use like you can use this with PlayStation the logic G Pro X that's also a good one I haven't looked at those personally but I've heard lots of good things about them so I don't know if you're going to be buying a gaming headset don't go with the ones that they send you with your Dell computer maybe look at the ath m50x STS I know they're like 70 dollars more expensive but they're like you're getting just so much more quality for that product yeah avoid these sorry Dalethis is the new 720h gaming headset from Alienware we've been talking a lot about Alienware these days mostly because they have been putting out some of the best monitors that money can buy for gaming like real real bangers however their headphones let's just say they're not exactly as talked about for those Alienware also has a bit of a reputation for being hit or miss when it comes to a lot of different products they have a long history they've been around for a long time come back here look at that we got oh I kind of like it there's a little embossed Alien Logo kind of subtle there's also what looks to be like a bunch of the components just kind of the headset like that looks like the microphone it's kind of neat promises 30 hours of battery life with an asterisk it has Dolby Atmos support and it has its high-res audio certified high-res audio certification is kind of meaningless don't ever let this influence your purchasing decision it doesn't mean it sounds good it's a badge that you can pay Sony to give they call this a dual mode headset which they mean it can run wired or it can take advantage of 2.4 gigahertz wireless with a dongle adapter they also claim to have ai noise canceling microphones a fast charge 15 minutes of charge for up to six hours of use that's actually pretty nice what else we got for specs 40 millimeter high-res drivers Dolby Atmos star star but note it can only do Dolby Atmos through the digital connection which is the USBC wireless connection basically that's because the digital Sound Processing either happens in the dongle or the headphone so if you don't have some a source that supports Dolby Atmos then it won't be able to send it and this must just be doing an analog signal over the 3.5 millimeter connector because it's just going into your computer cybridge level 105 DB impedance 32 ohms and weight of 348 grams and they got a microphone but all those numbers don't really matter if the thing doesn't sound good and if it ain't worth the money but what do they add in as value adds to make it worth the money let's find out we got oh a very nice feeling braided cable I believe this is only for charging as the headset has a 3.5 millimeter Jack on it which I imagine that's how you get wired play through ooh Alienware sticker oh I guess this was under the booklets I missed this we also have a combo jack cable with a mute switch on the cable that's pretty nice as well as there's a microphone a very similar braided cable to the USB cable this is actually pretty interesting that they give you this microphone as well because that means that there's a headset on the microphone as well as right here they thoughtfully include a USB a to c adapter oh boy let's look at this stuff for onboard controls on the headphone we have a volume dial a power button a audio selector so I guess that's if you want to hear game audio or you want to hear your chat audio which one do you want to prioritize we have a mute button and we have a 3.5 millimeter Jack and here is the microphone which come out like that considering that there's a mute button right here this microphone doesn't have like a tilt to mute I really hope that if we push it in that makes it mute automatically as well I do appreciate that this can kind of be stowed away this makes these more versatile however since they don't have Bluetooth it kind of makes them hard to do double duty as both a commuter and a gaming headset do the ear cups come off they don't come off in a way that makes me feel like I'm not about to break them but you never know sometimes you gotta Break Stuff to find out well I don't know if the ear cups come off but uh the ear cups themselves are made of a nylon material they have a good depth in them you can see on the insides there there is the right and the left ear markers and then the headband is adjustable like five levels and it uses a tensioned band and it uses a tension band support just like a steel series headset or there's quite a few headsets these days it doesn't like to stay in place very well this uh tension mechanism but it could fit a wide amount of heads but how does it fit mine I have a hat on so that's going to add a little bit to the size of my head they're comfortable for me on the inside my ears are touching the inside of the cup which can be really annoying for some people this is quite a soft memory foam that's inside of this ear cushion and it really doesn't put up much resistance against the general clamping force of this headset maybe if I make it a little bit bigger it'll be better but do you see that I was just adjusting it like now it feels too loose it takes a little fiddling with to get right but once you get it on there I guess it's okay in terms of like Flex on the headband it's kind of hard to tell but what this is is you can tell it's two pieces of plastic around here with a very slight frame in between seems like it's very very focused on saving weight like I can kind of poke through here like hard but then here's eh and the fabric itself is feels pretty nice though and in terms of just general fit and finish while it is very plasticky lines and like materials are minimized this is rubber for some reason there's no twist there is tilt there's no swivel you can't adjust like you really you're just bending the headset now I just want to bring attention to where they put the USBC port on here it's right it's right here which really makes me think we must not be able to listen because are they really gonna have it coming out like this while it's on your freaking head that look like a fool an absolute idiot so apparently some headphones like the Sony xm5s don't work while you're charging them I very very much hope that that's not the case with this because it is I don't care about how fast your quick charging is if I'm in the game and my headset dies I can't wait 15 minutes for a charge so I can play for a decent amount of time again I want to be able to just pull out a cable and uh you know keep clicking heads keep winning those games keep you know my MMR come on my MMR but what really matters is how they sound and you know what sounds really good to me a good deal from our sponsor grammarly thanks to grammarly for sponsoring this video grammarly is throwing their hat into the AI ring with grammarly go which offers a generative AI to accelerate your productivity while staying true to your personal style what makes grammarly go so unique is that you can customize your preferred communication stuff by setting your voice to your personalized tone the business team uses grammarly go to rewrite emails and talking points to be more concise all while keeping it authentic to our voice need help with a video concept just input prompt and grammarly go will provide innovative ideas to unlock your creative potential our favorite part about grammarly go is that it's there to help you write no need to leave the platform you're on just download sign up and start typing you'll be amazed at what you can do with grammarly go sign up at grammarly.com shortcircuit and get 20 off of grammarly Premium game time let's go so turn it on I hold that down the uh it's not working Bell luckily we got the fast charging but also plugged so I don't my MMR now I'm gaming it appears that this is only a charging cable which is kind of a bummer I prefer to have as many connection options as possible this is the mic test give me the gift of the griptop sock a drip drape Ship Shape Tip Top sock not your spin slick slapstick slip slop stock but a plastic elastic grip top sock not a spot speckled frog freckled cheap Shake sock but a hodgepod the mic sounds uh like a gaming headset mic which is famously not very good you can say words on it it doesn't really sound particularly like your voice maybe it all can be redeemed if with a some good old audio so let's take a listen to some some music I've just been informed that this comes in two colors lunar light and dark side of the moon which means we gotta listen to some Floyd they sound terrible I'm so sorry these uh these don't sound very good if you're looking for a music headphone you should look pretty much anywhere else this took all of the detail out of a beautifully produced album over bloated the bass loses the detail it's yeah but that's just my opinion what do the graphs say well they say they sound like as you can see the bass is massively overpronounced in the base region so it's not a rumble like with the sub bass region it's a boominess that destroys all details you basically lose out a lot of the stuff in the lower mid so it makes most of your bass notes up feel bloated the mids are kind of a mess where you have strange peakiness probably not that bad if you're talking about like right around the 800 range but this massive dip in the upper mids they're on the 300 kilohertz just kind of adds this hollowness that then is made up by just sheer Sparkle that can be kind of fatiguing really though it's the base and the low mid mess up that just ruins the sound of these and then this little dip up here but the microphone how does the mic measure and as you can see on the mic curve what's supposed to be a flat line is very not flat it's not a terrible job like it doesn't do a terrible job of hitting the target but you can see in the upper in the in the very high highs you just kind of lose detail and there's an overpronounced bit in the lower parts and way down in the bottom it might look a little bad but that's kind of beneath where the human voice lies so the only concern would be if you have some sort of low rumbling in the background that this might pick it up however maybe that's something they can fix with their AI noise canceling we are yet to get that software installed because it took a dog's age to download this is the worst part about gaming headsets is that every single time you get one you have to do some sort of stupid song and dance we have to install an application to your computer that you definitely don't want to have it takes forever this Command Center Software from Alienware is 1.1 gigabytes as a download that's not after install it's super annoying Dell even screwed this up you go to this URL and it sends you to their documents page not their driver download page you go to this URL and it sends you to every single driver for Dell products then you have to search and then you find out that there's a supportassist software that you're not allowed to use because you don't have a Dell computer thank God you don't have a Dell computer because then you'd have to use it I finally have it downloaded but every single short circuit we do on gaming headsets that have some sort of good proprietary dump software take like an hour and a half longer than they need to because we're always fumbling around with this extra bulk that provides the consumer nothing in return other than what you can make your pretty is good how hard is that to do how hard is it to make good software that makes your lights go good I I really don't know I'm not a software developer maybe it's really really really really really really really hard so maybe I just sound like it right now but it's just so frustrating that as a consumer I have to have this heavyweight thing that someone that wants to know about my games it wants me to launch my games from it I'm not gonna do that I already have epic game store I already have steam I already have all these other dumb utilities my my GPU drivers want to launch my games too leave me alone well sorry I'm sorry and John Nell says he's sorry and this might be another this is another problem is that now that we have all these proprietary like standards for spacious around is Windows expected to support all of those natively or am I going to have to constantly be downloading apps Windows does have a spatial sound thing um it's not very good so like I'm all for trying to have better standards but currently I've been waiting for about 30 seconds for this Dolby access app to finish like doing its little loading animation and I don't know if it's if it's just if it's if it's doing anything I'm yet to really be blown away by sound surround sound in a headset there's literally just like limitations that you can't overcome in a headset because the speakers are right by your ears surround sound becomes more impactful when the speakers are placed further away from you because then you can hear Reflections in your environment as well as stuff like the head related transfer function which is like when sound goes through your head and then you actually hear it in this ear that you don't get with a headphone because there's not as much force yeah Dell did a terrible job the fact that I can't Google aw uh Alienware 720h headphone drivers and just get to the web page is very bad there that loaded immediately now once I did it the normal way not through Dell software that worked great okay we're doing Dolby Atmos boys here we go so Dolby Atmos on top of it gives you a bunch of equalizers as well as music customization there's movie profiles game profiles um it's like the game profile prioritizes accuracy positional accuracy for Competitive Gaming so it might be a little bit overbearing it's funny the Dolby access app has a little uh there's a little section that says professionally tuned for Republic of gamers yo get erect still not really Blown Away by Dolby Atmos but maybe it'll be better in a game okay we're gonna play melatonin check out the latency on this bad boy uh yeah the latency is actually pretty good on it there's like not really a noticeable delay I don't even know how to do the AI noise canceling is that just like a default always on to be clear that's microphone noise canceling that's not active noise canceling in the headphones I can't really play this on a trackpad here we go you know it's uh it's good the spatial audio is good but again I'm not very Blown Away oh my God this track man I will say that they're very isolating I can't hear my computer at all and I'm not very playing the audio very loud um and I may be the guys on set can attest to it because they've been yelling at me so many times to get my attention when you run over people there's a good crunch under I don't know if Dolby was on I think it may have crashed um there's some sort of like interference happening maybe it's I don't know there's interference happening right now here lookies and clackets maybe it's my phone too close my phone's not very close yeah I don't know if it's a connection issue or something but there's something that's like crackling I don't know if ammo's screwed it up I don't know if there's if it maybe it's low battery we didn't they were dead we didn't charge them for that long foreign okay yeah how much are these not worth it not 160 US Dollars they're not worth it uh what's the normal price that's the sale price not worth it Dell didn't do a very good job I wouldn't I wouldn't buy these I would stick with pretty much any of the other obvious go-to's of like the hyperx clouds and the steel series arctis fives or whatever those are going to be a better experience the versatility of these is undermined by the fact that can you use like you can use this with PlayStation the logic G Pro X that's also a good one I haven't looked at those personally but I've heard lots of good things about them so I don't know if you're going to be buying a gaming headset don't go with the ones that they send you with your Dell computer maybe look at the ath m50x STS I know they're like 70 dollars more expensive but they're like you're getting just so much more quality for that product yeah avoid these sorry Dale\n"