Zalman ZM-RS6F USB Headphones

Vote: Thumbs Down or Thumbs Up Our Rating: 7.0%       Manufacturer: Zalman

Closer Look & Final Thoughts

We can’t really suggest these as your every day headphones, as they’re not that great for gaming, even considering the amount of speakers that are built in, especially if you normally use a surround sound speaker setup when you’re gaming.

However, they’re not a bad set of headphones for late night gaming or for use at LAN parties or with a laptop. They also sound pretty good with DVDs, although there’s that lack of DTS support which is a shame, as C-Media has other audio controllers that support DTS decoding.

The frequency response isn’t that great either (at 50Hz to 20kHz), the range is somewhat lower than what you get from most normal headphones. They’re also quite heavy at 387g, and if you wear glasses (like me) then you’ll most likely find that the pressure on your ears gets uncomfortable after a while.

On the other hand, they fold up quite nicely, therefore being quite easy to pack when you want to take them with you. The padded head band and ear muffs makes them quite soft and they’re most likely very comfortable if you’re not wearing glasses.

The cable is 2.4m long, but in our opinion Zalman has fitted the sound card part too far up the cable, as it’s fitted about 1m away from the headphones. This is fair enough in a way, as Zalman has fitted hardware volume control buttons on it, but it’s also weighing down the cable. We’d rather see this close to the USB connector end of the cable.

Though these headphones aren’t readily available just yet, Zalman have kindly let us know what you can expect to pay for them. You're looking at dishing out $74.50 USD for a pair of these (around $94.60 AUD), certainly not cheap. There are definitely better solutions out there if you just want a basic pair of USB headphones, but most won’t feature 5.1-channel, or at least real surround sound in terms of having six speakers as these do.

- Pros

Six channel sound

Built-in sound card

Hardware volume control

Reasonably comfortable due to padding

- Cons

Heavy

Uncomfortable when wearing glasses

USB sound card location

Generic drivers

Rating - 7 out of 10