Star Wars-influenced gaming headset is a real winner

If you’ve been wading through the third season of The Mandalorian and are a keen gamer, you’ll probably want to check out Logitech’s specially designed A30 gaming ear gear which has more than a distinct whiff of Mandalore. After unboxing, I donned my Beskar underwear and cracked into gaming for your edification.

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Based on their well-received Astro A30 headset, the Mandalorian edition comes in a metallic grey and black finish, designed to be all matchey-matchey with the Beskar armour of the Mandalorian. Detachable earpiece covers come in a silhouette of Mando holding a dark sabre. And the arms holding both earpieces are alloy, giving the A30s a reassuringly solid feel. The elegant design will appeal to Star Wars fans and non-fans alike. Most importantly, unlike many gaming headsets, which tend to be over-priced Tupperware-like by comparison, these cans feel built to last.

Star Wars looks aside, the headset is still a Logitech Astro A30 wireless gaming headset. This translates into 27 hours of use via Bluetooth or the bundled 2.4 GHz wireless USB dongle. If longevity and audio quality are your priority, plug in using the bundled 3.5mm/USB-C cables. The A30 also has multi-point pairing, so you can connect to a phone, console, and so on. The plethora of connectivity options means that the A30s will play nice with Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, PCs and Macs, as well as smartphones and tablets.

On the ergonomics front, the A30’s Logitech DNA shines through. The square ear cups and bulky boom mic might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but they are super comfy, especially for extended use. Memory foam in the earcups and a sensibly designed headband (padded with leatherette) make for a light clamp on the noggin that isn’t all that shabby in use.

Audio from the A30 is well-balanced. Thanks to their 40mm drivers, there’s plenty of bass on offer, delivering skull-rattling in-game explosions. This doesn’t come at the expense of treble and mids. Overall, the audio is warm and accurate, reproducing the surround sound of my PS5 and Xbox One with surprising spatial accuracy.

Being Bluetooth wireless and having a detachable boom mic also means the A30 can go where many other gaming headsets won’t – the bus and Wellington CBD. While their noise isolation is adequate for gaming, it lets construction noise through when wandering through the CBD. That said, their music reproduction was extremely good. Salmonella Dub’s and Pitch Black’s trippy synths sounded excellent.

Helping things along more than a little is the built-in controls. While I wouldn’t call them super intuitive, they are handy for music playback. Controls consist of a mini joystick. Moving it forward ups volume levels, and back turns everything down. A single press pauses audio, two presses skip tracks forward, and three presses skip to the previous track. The Astro A30 app (iOS/Android) allowed me to swap between equalisation settings, and I was also able to create and save custom EQ profiles.

Meanwhile, back in the land of gaming, a critical part of any gaming headset is the boom mic. Many other headsets seem to treat this as an afterthought, yet being able to intelligibly trash-talk competing gamers is a big part of the overall gaming experience. Thankfully, the A30 did a decent job of capturing my voice and isolating background noise.

If that’s the good news, the not-so-good news is that getting your own piece of Mandalore will set you back a whopping $529. That said, you do get a hell of a lot of headset for your hard-earned cash.

The A30 isn’t cheap, but it isn’t yet another plasticky gaming headset that meets gamers’ needs and little else. It well and truly exceeds them. This is thanks to solid audio and decent cross-platform connectivity. Add to this a stylish Star Wars-influenced design that feels solidly built to last and comfy to wear, and there’s plenty to like. This is the way.

www.logitech.com