Official Score
Overall - 80%
80%
Overall I was quite impressed with the product. The price is a bit steep, but if you are looking to add some audio quality to you headset or speakers, the Sennheiser GSX 1000 is a good option.
The Sennheiser GSX 1000 is designed to improve audio quality on PC. Does it do enough to warrant the price, or should you just stick to your headset without the boost? Check out our Sennheiser GSX 1000 review to find out.
Sennheiser GSX 1000 Review
I suppose the first thing I should do is go over what the Sennheiser GSX 1000 Audio Amplifier actually is. It’s a little box that you plug into your PC or Mac that you hook a headset or speakers into. At the center of the box, you have a touchscreen with your options and a wheel that spins to control the volume directly. There are a ton of different things to mess with once you are plugged in, but we will get to that later. When you are plugged in, you get a more crisp, deeper sound then you would get by just plugging in your PC. It’s hard to put into words, but there is a noticeable difference in quality when using the GSX 1000. I spent a little over a month watching shows, movies, and of course playing tons of different games. It’s easy to set up, as you only need to plug it in and download the drivers to set things up. If you have any issues with anything, there is a detailed PDF on the website to help you out.
On the headset front I played some PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Darkest Dungeon, Total War: Warhammer, and The Long Journey Home. I tried it on Friday the 13th, but the GSX didn’t work. I do not put that on the hardware itself though, as Friday the 13th has a myriad of problems and I wasn’t the only one losing audio in game. While a headset is plugged in, you get the most options to mess around with. Much like their surround sound headsets, this has the options for improved music audio, improved eSports audio, improved story audio, or just improved audio in general. Music is pretty obvious; you can hear the instruments and it adds to the bass. eSports is for competitive games, and helps with direction audio such as footsteps and gunfire. Story audio is meant for more story driven games or the content found in movies and TV shows.
The other options give you more direct control of how you are hearing the sound. One of the big things is you can put on virtual surround sound, even without a surround sound headsets. Is it as good as real surround sound? No. Is it good? Yes. Comparing a natural 7.1 surround sound headset and this, you can definitely tell a difference, but it isn’t as massive as you’d think. When this option is on, you actually have additional control over how you hear things. You can select where the sound is coming from in your headset. All around, front, or back are the options available, and if you have a preference, this has you covered. The other option is meant mainly for games and changes how the sound from the environment works. From what I could tell, it helps on picking up lower key sounds in the games environments. It’s not a game-changer, but it’s a nice touch.
The other big option you can use this for is speakers. You don’t get as many options as you do with the headsets as you do with the speakers. I do want to mention that you can have both plugged in and switch between them quickly with just a touch of the touch screen. This can also give you virtual surround sound for your speakers if you want, but it isn’t nearly as impressive as the headset surround sound. Without it though it did add quality to my cheap Logitech speakers and added to my TV and movie watching experience. Here you can only really change the volume and pick from eSports, story, or music. Each one does make a difference, but this is clearly more meant more for headsets than speakers.
Something I didn’t really touch on that I want to is the touch screen itself. There were no problems with it but the ease of switching between configurations was great. You can save and load your configurations for when you turn your PC off as well. The whole thing was super easy to use and easy to get going. The one big downside to it is that you can’t plug in USB headsets, as there is no USB port. I know some people only have USB headsets, so this most likely won’t be a product for you. That is my only real complaint with the product though. I tested it with my normal iPhone headphones and my Astro A40 headset. Sennheiser sent a GSP 350 surround sound headset for us to test the difference in surround sounds also.
Overall I was quite impressed with the product. The price is a bit steep, but if you are looking to add some audio quality to you headset or speakers, the Sennheiser GSX 1000 is a good option.
