Overview:

Here is a full shot of the whole setup with the f38′s. You can see the 1/4″ adapter on the 3.5mm jack and the synthetic leather used on the ear cups and the headband. The color is not a true dirty brown, it is called Espresso, which does not look half bad with the cream color mixed with it.

Incipio was nice enough to label each side of the ear cup so you will not put them on backwards and then complain if it sounds weird. You can also see a little closer view of the padded headband made of synthetic leather.

Here is a shot of the width of the ear cup to give you a better idea of how much cushion is built into the f38′s.

We pulled the adapter off so now you can see both jacks, in case you were worried we were tying to deceive you.

Now you can see the “R” marking on the right ear cup, once again helping you to keep your headset on straight. You will also notice the steel wire headband that will adjust to help make the fit as comfortable as possible.

Incipio has included a nice cloth bag for carrying around your f38′s or storing them and keeping them dust free. This is a nice touch for a relatively low-priced headset.

Usage:

For our sound testing, we hooked our Incipio f38 up to our HT Omega Striker 7.1 sound card. We will be testing the f38′s with several genres of music: rap, country and classical. We will also be watching a movie, Rambo, as well as playing Bad Company 2 to round out the testing.

With the music, we tested several genres to get the best overall feel of how well the f38 headset really performs. We started with  rap music by listening to a few songs in order to figure out how accurate the bass is with the f38′s. Surprisingly, the f38 produces a solid deep bass. We were not expecting this with this small ear cupped headset. Where do they fit in all this amazingness (our new word)? Everything else was very crisp and clear in the mids and highs throughout all of the songs. Happy with our rap testing, we moved on with our testing and went to the best genre, country! The guitars and string instruments came through loud and clear and had the impact on our ears that we were expecting. Even the raspy voices came through more “raspier” than ever and gave us the full enjoyment of their hard-partying life style, without actually being at the concert. Moving on to the classical music, we popped in one of the greats of all time, and no, not Beethoven.   I am more a Tchaikovsky person myself. In the “1812 Overture,” the strings and wind instruments battle each other in the beginning, going back and forth. Everything is crisp with the highs, mids, and lows from the orchestra. There is no sound distortion when the volume is fully cranked up, and it sounds just as clear and crisp as it would at any other volume level.

For the movie portion of the review, we used Rambo circa 2009. We believe that it gives you everything you need to test the full capability of the headset with its huge explosions, surround-sound fight scenes, quiet conversations and who can forget the .50 cal ending! Starting with the dialog, it’s clear and crisp in the quieter parts of the movie. The f38′s projected the dialog crisply, even during the fight scenes, such as when the village is getting attacked by the army. During the attack, while the villagers and the lady doctor are trying to get away, you can hear mortars exploding all around her and then the cries for help. You can also hear all of the gunfire from the advancing army and the noise is projected cleanly through the f38′s. However, the best scene in an action movie, probably ever, is when good ol’ Sly jumps on the back of the truck and mans the .50 cal machine gun. When he is mowing down the army, the deep bass of the .50 cal is portrayed nicely though the f38. The sounds of the bullets striking objects was crisp with zero distortion, even when we turned the volume all the way up to soak in all of the goodness that the scene provides.

Moving on to the game testing now with Bad Company 2.  We played this game for a few hours to get a good overall feel of how the f38′s would do in a game. We charged into the plant sites, like we normally do, because who doesn’t love to run-n-gun just to annoy the other team! With the f38′s we could hear a lot of people firing while we ran for the plants, but could not decipher exactly where the shots were coming from. This was bad while we were running for cover after the plant was down. When we were held up inside a building, we could clearly hear people running around us and knew when to stay hidden and when to pop out and eliminate a few enemies. It almost seemed a little like cheating with as crisp and accurate as the sound was portrayed.

With our testing, we understand this headset is geared toward music listening, but we feel the need to fully test the headset in other environments to give the readers a full overview of what is capable with the F38′s. We do not let the gaming tests weigh heavily in our decision  since we know the headset is not made for gaming.

Conclusion:

Overall, Incipio has thrown together an great little headset, especially for an MSRP of $49.99. If you are just wanting something to listen to music on and maybe catch a movie to pass the time, these are almost perfect. The f38 did everything we were wanting from them in our testing, minus bringing us a sandwich! The synthetic leather kept the prolonged used during our testing at a comfortable level and we did not notice any extreme ear sweat either, which is always nice. The bass was not wal-rattling, but it seemed to fit the music very well and we were never left wanting a lot more bass. A couple times it seemed a little light, but nothing major.

The two things you need to pay attention to if you do decide to buy this headset is that:

• 1) Ear cups do not fully encompass your ear. If you wear glasses it may put undue pressure on your ears, although we wear glasses and did not notice any undue pressure. Maybe we are pros at wearing headsets? Who knows?
• 2) The cord is only a little over 4 feet long (46 inches). This is great for iPod listening or things of that nature. However, if you go the computer route, depending on where your connection is located, it may be a a very taught line or may not even be able to reach your head.

Just keep  that in mind before you purchase, and if that will not effect you, then we do not see why you would not be perfectly happy with this headset.

The Incipio f38 headset receives the Techreaction.net Gold Silicon Award!

For more information on the f38′s and other Incipio products, please visit their website.

Pages: 1 2