1More is best known for earphones, but it's made the jump to headphones, and from there you only need to pop on a microphone to make a gaming headset. The Spearhead VR is the company's first gaming headset, a USB-powered, wired PC model with 7.1-channel simulated surround and colored lighting. It offers good sound and an attractive design, but at $149.99 it's expensive for a wired headset, and its lack of a conventional boom mic holds back its voice chat abilities.

Design

The headset looks very striking, thanks to both its colored lighting and metal frame. Each over-ear earcup is circular, with soft, fabric-covered pads and black plastic bodies mounted on black aluminum struts. The struts don't pivot, but the earpads can freely tilt a few degrees in any direction to rest comfortably against your ears. The earcups are connected by a black metal headband, with another slightly padded band suspended under it. The pads easily stretch to conform to the top of your head, keeping the metal lifted above your scalp and ensuring a comfortable, light fit.

A ring on the back of each earcup and a 1More logo above each strut light up. By default the accent lights are red, but if you install the 1More software on your PC you can change the lights to another color. The light options are limited, with no rainbow effect or color cycling. You can only pick a single color and decide whether it will stay constantly lit, slowly fade on and off, or pulse like a heartbeat at different speeds.

The left earcup holds all of the Spearhead's controls, ports, and the mic. A micro USB port sits on the bottom edge of the earcup, with a 3.5mm aux input in front of it (both cables are included). A wheel behind the micro USB port adjusts volume or, when clicked, bass levels. A mic mute switch rests above the wheel, on the back edge of the earcup.

Lighting and Microphone

A translucent white pipe extends from the bottom of the left earcup's strut, appearing to be some form of boom mic. It's only an accent light, however; the actual headset microphone is a pinhole on the underside of the right earcup. The pipe lights up the same color as the headset's accents when muted, and is dark when unmuted. It seems counterintuitive, but it's a clear indicator when you're not being heard when you're communicating with teammates.

Unfortunately, without a boom mic, you don't get the clarity of a boom mic. Test recordings sounded a bit muffled and distant, lacking the depth and presence we've experienced in more conventional gaming headsets like the Beyerdynamic Custom Game and Kingston HyperX Cloud Alpha. It simply sounds inferior to every comparably priced gaming headset we've tested that uses an actual boom.

Connectivity

The Spearhead is primarily a USB headset, functioning as a 7.1-channel audio device when connected to a computer with the included USB cable. You can also use the 3.5mm aux input, though this will disable the boom mic and lighting (though an in-line mic on the included cable lets you talk through the headset when it's connected to your phone).

1More refers to the Spearhead as "VR Gaming Headphones," but there's no real distinction between it and a regular wired gaming headset. The comfortable design can help when you're wearing the headset over an HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, but there are no VR-specific features.

Music Performance

Music sounds good on the Spearhead, with reasonably strong low frequency response and solid presence in the higher frequencies to balance it out. It handled our bass test track, The Knife's "Silent Shout," at maximum volume without any distortion. It won't rattle your head or seriously threaten your ears like similarly priced bass-heavy headphones can at these volume levels, but the power still comes through clearly.

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Yes' "Roundabout" sounds well-balanced, thanks to sculpting between the low-mids and high-mids. The acoustic guitar strings in the opening get enough high-end finesse for their texture to come through and the electric bass sounds punchy but not overbearing, though neither reach toward any frequency extremes. The result is a strong performance that doesn't overwhelm or neglect anything in the mix.

Gaming Performance

Game audio is stronger, since the sculpted lows and highs complement most action games. The Spearhead uses 50mm stereo drivers for each ear, combined with 7.1-channel simulated surround sound produced with audio processing through the USB connection. The faux surround doesn't create accurate imaging for figuring out where audio sources are around you, but it does mix the sound that goes through the drivers to make it seem louder and fuller. We've yet to see any simulated surround sound that genuinely offers a tactical advantage, but the feature tends to enhance the gaming experience by making it sound bigger, regardless.

Overwatch sounds nice and full on the Spearhead. Junkrat's bombs have a solid amount of punch, and gunfire from Soldier 76 and McCree is easy to discern against the game's bombastic musical score. Voice cues from characters can also be clearly made out in the middle of combat, thanks to the sculpted mid-highs.

Doom sounds active and full on the headset, with plenty of bass in the explosions and the announcer's voice in team deathmatches. It's a satisfying sound that provides lots of low end to give the combat a sense of force. The simulated surround sound doesn't do much to provide accurate directional imaging, but left-to-right cues can be clearly heard, like any good headset in a game with a solid stereo mix.

Conclusions

The Spearhead is a laudable first attempt at a gaming headset with one major error: 1More forgot the boom mic. The light pipe looks striking, but without a microphone on the end of it, the headset relies on pinhole microphones, and that presents a significant drop in sound quality. Since a microphone for reliable voice chat is what separates a gaming headsets from a standard pair of headphones, it's a pretty big omission. You can still talk through the headset, but it won't sound nearly as good to your teammates as gaming headsets that cost half the price, like the Astro Gaming A10. For the same price as the Spearhead, we also like the Turtle Beach Elite Pro, which offers a more luxurious design and better audio performance across the board.

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