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Review: Plantronics RIG 500HD headset

The latest in the RIG headset series, Plantronics’ 500HD, also serves as the company’s PC flagship product. With an in-line 7.1 surround sound card, boom mic and noise isolating ear cups the RIG 500HD aims to be your all-in-one solution for PC gaming.

Setting up the RIG 500HD was about as easy as you could ever imagine. Once everything was out of its packaging it was only a matter of plugging in a cable and adjusting the headset’s sizing. The drivers were easy to find too and a breeze to install. The whole process probably took two minutes start to finish, which is much better than the fifteen or so it takes to setup other headsets (looking at you Astro A40s).

The RIGs are a nice looking headset range; its tight design and customisable headband means it should fit in with any gaming setup. Despite being limited to three size options — small, medium and large — the headset itself is quite comfortable and remains so during long gaming sessions. Most of my time with these was spent playing Overwatch and they were never uncomfortable. The ear cups can be quite tight on the ears but never uncomfortably so and serve to shut out external sounds such as housemates or a dying computer (and yeah, I have both).

The sound quality in the RIG 500HD is about what you’d expect from similarly priced dedicated headphones. While they’re certainly not audiophile grade they do provide good quality sound for their price. Initially quite tinny, the drivers seemed to open up a bit over time and offered a much better sound quality after a few hours of gaming. Sadly, this quality didn’t transfer terribly well to music for whatever reason with something always sounding a little off. I listened to a few tracks on both my everyday headphones and the RIGs and found the latter to be somewhat emptier and more tiring to listen to.

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Perhaps the single most impressive aspect of the RIG 500HD is its microphone. I mean, this thing is excellent. While it won’t be ideally suited for podcasting, it functions exactly as a headphone microphone should. My teammates never once suffered from ear raking white noise or erratic volume increases, something other all in one headsets have suffered from. The microphone is almost always the compromise point in these kinds of headsets and Plantronics has genuinely impressed me with the quality of the one in the RIG 500HD.

The biggest letdown I found with headset is in its 7.1 surround sound. It was at best general and at worst totally inaccurate. I’ve become accustomed to accurate 7.1 surround sound through a MixAmp Pro, a remnant of my long dead Astro A40s. The surround sound reproduction between these two is almost night and day. This may be somewhat of an unfair comparison given that the MixAmp costs almost as much as the RIG 500HD; still, that’s not an excuse for the RIGs to have such lacklustre quality.

As far as all in one solutions go, the RIG 500HD is hard to pass up. It’s comfortable to wear, its microphone quality is far above some of its pricier competitors and the sound quality in-game and with music is above average as well. The only let down here is the 7.1 surround sound which felt muddy and was never truly immersive. Overall, the Plantronics RIG 500HD is excellent value for money and a good investment for those not wanting to spend over $200 AUD for a high-grade setup.


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About the author

Hamish Lindsay

Avid reader and general geek, justifying the time I spend playing games by writing about them. I try not to discriminate by genre, but I remember story more than gameplay. I’ve been playing League for longer than Akali and I’m still Silver. Fallout 3 and MGS3 may be the pinnacle of gaming.