Xbox Wireless Headset Impressions/Final Thoughts | Even with Low Expectations you can be Disappointed

This is going to be quick and not formatted like how my normal initial impressions will be. I will not be doing a full review. I have had them for several days now.
 
Sound
 
A Lot of people were asking me what I expected from the Xbox Wireless Headset before its release, and I said I expected it to be a very feature-rich comfortable headset with a good design and build that had below average sound quality. But I was wrong, it's a “Feature-rich headset, that has ok comfort and poor weak design that sounds shockingly bad”.
 
Not in my wildest dreams did I expect this headset to be tuned so poorly. Brands that are known for tuning way too much bass like Beats or Razer blush when they see how much bass is here. 5db-10db is about where I cap a headphone for bass over neutral. 5db over my neutral target is pretty much Harman and 10DB over my neutral target is about where the Meze 99 classic sits, a headphone known for having a lot of bass and for many too much bass(including me). The Xbox Wireless Headset reaches Meme tier with its over 20db of extra bass over neutral(and that's without the bass-heavy preset and without the 12 steps of extra bass boost). Not only that, it bleeds far into the mid-range which is also recessed and super thin, then you get an over-emphasized upper mid-range, a hole in the lower treble, and piercing treble overall. They somehow did everything wrong including a tinny timbre.
 
They also are more seal sensitive than your average headset. anything on your face breaking the seal will make them sound even worse. Very Glasses unfriendly, even too much hair on your head will break the seal. It's really bad. There is also a weird bass issue where without moving the headset or doing anything the bass level will dorp and raise randomly for no reason. Which is not good.
 
With a very V-Shaped tuning like this, I at least expected a wide stage which you do not get because of the awful overall design of the housing among other reasons. Base stereo imaging left to right is solid, well shockingly solid with how bad everything else is, but when you talk about how it images in the stage beyond that it's not good.
 
Overall resolution once you EQ it with a proper parametric EQ is fine for a $100 wireless headset, but so much else goes wrong, it gets wonky and grainy, distortion gets worse, and everything sounds hazy and dynamically dead. Sadly no EQ can fix it. Good EQ can only take it from terrible to below mediocre. The XBOX accessories app is such a garbage 5 band eq and isn't worth using, Dolby Atmos is the only way to eq it with a 10 band eq on Xbox and even with that, it's not great.
 
If you EQ it a lot and don't care about audio quality at all and just want it for the features then it's ok I guess, but things like the Stealth 600 gen 2 or Kaira which I called bad are much better.
 
But nothing will change the fact that it sounds worse than sub $40 wired headsets. It really does sound awful at any price. If you care at all about sound quality just ignore it at any price.
 
Beta Grades:
Tonal Grade: E
Technical Grade: D-
 
Build/Design/Comfort
 
Some other design issues are the lack of any joint articulation, there is no left to right swivel so fit isn't great and up and down swivel is super limited. This is a shockingly poorly thought out headset.
 
Build is strange, it's made of very cheap plastics but feels kind of solid I guess, it has some rattling and creaking, but it's not that bad. Build is definitely meh and feels kind of poor but it's about average for budget wireless headsets I guess.
 
The pleather material feels slightly above average for the price but they still feel cheap. The volume wheels feel fairly smooth but if you use them while it's on your head you can hear how scratch they actually are.
 
On the note of the Mic, it sounds better than average, which is not surprising as headsets that use the Xbox direct connection tend to have decent mics and worse sound quality. So this was to be expected. But the mic is very short and because of this it sounds unnecessarily compressed and mic monitoring isn't as good as it could be.
 
Latency: 60ms (Average)
Battery Life: 18hr (Average)
Range: 180ft (Very Good)
 
Conclusion 
 
First off sorry this wasn't a well-structured post and sorry that I won't be reviewing this fully. I just don't want to commit that much of my time on headsets that just don't deserve to be talked about, and this really doesn't. But thinks of it this way, this is what my posts look like in Draft one, this is the kind of rambling shitshow I type on my first pass before go over it a few times and edit it, so you get a little look behind the scenes I guess. This is a headset that should sell poorly and be discontinued fast so Xbox can release a gen 2 that is at least ok.
 
I can't think of a single worse wireless headset on the market and its hands down the worse Xbox wireless headset sound wise. Even the awful HS75XB sounds better.
 
You get every feature you can really think of mixed with an above average mic, above average battery life, above average range, mediocre build, average comfort, mediocre latency, poor ergonomics, poor overall design, terrible tuning, poor sound quality, all for $100USD. I didnt even talk about all the issues like higher than id like to hear noise floor, the awesome audio quese when using the headphone sound like ass as there is so much static on them, or the fact my mute light was broken and was on when my mic was on and off when my mic was off (if thats notbroken thats stupid design), or the dumb super short inlcuded charging cable that may as well have no been included and much more.
 
Really to use this headset you need to buy a longer USB-C cable and you need Atmos to EQ it(won't fix it but better than nothing). So the fact these all will cost you extra makes it not really a $100 headset. Then for PC use you need the $25USD wireless controller adapter, so for PC use this is a non option. And for xbox it's just a bad option.
 
Personally, my final word is AVOID.
 
I thought about not even bothering to talk about this as this is just going to bring on a lot of harassment from people, but whatever.
 
Do with this info what you will, talking about bad headset suck and I dislike it so that's all I have to say. If enough people request more graphs, like the presets I guess I'll upload them. I had a Pros and Cons list but it was pointless to add.
 
Edit: I hoped my headset was broken and they were not tuned like this, but Rtings has their measurements up and they look the same.
 
Xbox One Wireless Headsets as a point of Comparison.

FR/TG
Latency/Range/Battery/BT
Price
Audeze Penrose
A-/B-
25ms/50ft/14hrs/Yes
$300USD
Arctis 9x
B-/D
80ms/70ft/25hrs /Yes
$200USD
Astro A20 Gen 2
C-/D
20ms/130ft/19hrs/No
$120USD
HyperX CloudX Flight
C-/D
80ms/100ft/30hrs/No
$160USD
TB Stealth 600 Gen 2
C-/D-
100ms/95ft/24hrs/No
$100USD
TB Stealth 700 Gen 2
D+/D
25ms/100ft/17hrs/Yes
$150USD
Razer Kaira Pro
D-/D
25ms/150ft/18hrs/Yes
$100USD
Razer Kaira
D-/D
25ms/150ft/14hrs/No
$150USD
Corsair HS75XB
D/D-
65ms/130ft/22hrs/No
$150USD
RIG 800LX
D/D
35ms/105ft/24hr/No
$150USD
LS LS35X
D-/D-
40ms/95ft/16hrs/No
$140USD
Xbox Wireless Headset
E/D-
60ms/180ft/18hrs/Yes
$100USD
All of these use USB type C minus the Arctis 9x and X flight.
 
This headset put a lot into perspective for me and I have been apparently way too harsh on some headsets, because this is what really bad audio is like.
 
My Graphs
 In the Future my graphs will look better.
 
Accurate up to 4.5k, i need to work on the calibration to get it accurate to 10k. This is a 711 complaint rig so ignore over 10k.
 
I added 2 targets to show how damn bassy it is. The curves are the Harman target (V-Shaped preference target) and a Flat below 1k modified Harman target which is close to what I call neutral.
 
Also I normally normalize at 1k but with this headset it didn't really represent how it sounded so I matched at 2k which shows a better example of how it sounds.
 
This is also an average of about 10 measurements of the headset.
 

Here are all the Xbox Accessories App Presets. 
 
DO NOT USE THE 5 BAND EQ HERE IT'S GARBAGE AND REALLY CANT HELP.
 

Here is a very quick EQ I did by ear, you could improve it a bit more but not by much the Fixed 10 band Dolby EQ sucks for this headset. (In general fixed band EQs suck, graphical EQs also in general are not ideal.)
 

Here are the EQ settings I used, not optimal by any means but better than stock.
 
The headset still honestly sucks but with this its usable I guess. Though after 6 months you have to pay for Atmos and it should have came free with this headset as its pretty much a requirement. Plus investing more money into this headset isn't a great idea, just don't buy it.
 
Also as a note I paid for Atmos to test headsets on ages ago and apparently I no longer own it. So beware of that.