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With the Fusion II, however, it makes a pronounced difference. Your sense of placement is certainly heightened, making it far easier to pinpoint exactly where your enemies are hiding in CS:GO, for instance. As for musical performance, turning on the surround sound allowed for that thumping bass to come through, although it presented with sufficient nuance to neither override or drown out the still-balanced mids and highs.
It features an airtight chamber which Asus claims has been fine-tuned by its audio engineers to create a large area around the drivers to help deliver clear and natural-sounding audio. The Asus ROG Strix Fusion 700 is comfortable to wear, thanks to its adjustable band. It also comes with a second set of ear cushions, which you can swap for the ones that are on the earpieces out of the box for a better fit. It’s not too heavy either, so if you’re planning on a long play session it shouldn’t feel too uncomfortable.I tested FUSION out on a range of different titles; DOOM, Fortnite, Final Fantasy X, Call of Duty, and even used it for some music and Netflix. The headset’s 50mm drivers do an outstanding job at delivering (stereo) sound, which when grouped with the cups’ noise isolated design, makes for some remarkable achievements. Each and every audio cue from whatever media you’re enjoying, comes through crisp and comes through loud. The only niggling complaint that I have is that the headset can take a minute to warm up, so to speak. If you want to swap out the bundled protein leather ear cups for another set, then Asus has been generous enough to throw in a second pair in the box; they’re made of a more breathable foam mesh. Personally, I preferred these in testing, even if the leather ones do feel a little plusher. As for its construction, the Fusion II 500 is pretty well made, although in contrast to other headsets, it can feel a little bit plastic. Perhaps the inclusion of some more metal would have helped to make the Fusion II 500 feel more premium. Nevertheless, the plastic used is hard-wearing and smooth to the touch, and feels decent overall. The drivers themselves offer a wide frequency response of 20-40kHz, which should provide strong bass without washing out details.
However, the Asus ROG Strix Fusion 700 excels at atmospherics, really bringing out sounds that can often be overlooked or lost in the mix with more bombastic headsets, such as footsteps and falling bullet casings. 7.1 surroundThere’s a decent amount of padding sitting around the ear cups and a small leatherette strip on the headband. All of this, combined with the 310g weight, makes the Fusion II a comfortable headset to wear for long periods, and allows the unit to offer up some brilliant passive noise isolation, too. Smoothly adjustable, the headband expands to fit even my hugely oversized melon. Which believe it not, is sometimes a real problem I’ve had with headsets in the past. Despite my dislike of stereo headsets, I must admit I was fairly impressed with the Fusion. After I put the right earphone slightly off my ear, I found myself actually enjoying using it. The Asus ROG Fusion II 500 is the brand’s latest wired gaming headset and it’s been designed with the audiophile-level gamer in mind. I also tried connecting it to my mid-2015 MacBook Air, and aside from the volume indicator briefly showing up on-screen, nothing actually came of plugging the dongle into the USB slot. Even diving into the audio input and output settings yielded nothing – but, on paper, the Strix Wireless supports Mac too.
It doesn’t quite feel like sounds are coming from behind you or around you, so we wouldn’t say that the 7.1 mode will give you any competitive advantage when playing games, as you won’t be able to pinpoint where footsteps or gunfire are coming from, other than from your left or right. What this mode does well is further enhance atmospherics. While bullets don’t seem to whizz overhead, large, cavernous buildings feel even larger, and ambient noises help make your games even more immersive. I witnessed audio cues that I’ve never witnessed before whilst playing games that I’ve played countless times beforehand. I’ll not bore you with the specs because in truth, I don’t fully understand them. I’ve always judged through firsthand use rather than what’s written on paper. My judgement here, if not already clear, is that FUSION is absolutely worth its price, and then some. The headset is must have. Not only does it put you in the game with deeper bass and crisp highs, but its microphone is brilliant too.On the subject of lighting, there are plenty of gaming peripherals known to offer eye-catching light shows, but unlike the rest of the Strix Fusion line, the Wireless remains in the dark. Throwing the Fusion Wireless on and off my head between bouts of Fortnite solidified how surprisingly sturdy and well-built they felt. Despite not looking like the most premium headset out there, I can attest to its resilience. I’d only question how well the outer faces of those ear cups will fair after being repeatedly shoved in a bag, assuming you’re one to travel and game regularly.
Recent years have seen a trend towards gaming headsets becoming more minimalistic in their design, and the Asus ROG Fusion II 500 epitomises that. There’s no doubt it’s a great-looking headset, presenting a nice blend of smooth curves and sharp edges on the ear cups. As for gaming, which is most likely what you'd be buying this headset for, the ROG Strix Fusion 700 performs very well, with the audio detail in particular impressing us in the range of titles we played while wearing it. Again, though, the bass isn’t that prominent, which means you’re not getting the skull-shaking impacts you sometimes get with gaming headsets. At least the Asus ROG Strix Fusion 700 features Bluetooth for connecting to smartphones, tablets and games consoles. It’s nice to have the option to use the Asus ROG Strix 700 wirelessly, and the built-in 900mAh battery should last around eight hours if you use the RGB lighting, rising to 17 hours with the lighting turned off. The ROG Fusion II 500 has all the essential attributes that constitute a top-class gaming headset: great audio performance, usable surround-sound, a clever microphone setup that offers really good noise cancellation, comfort, and build quality. As far as those aspects are concerned, it’s good enough to compete with more expensive headsets, which is something of an accolade.Of course, it’s all very well having a headset that looks the part, but if it doesn’t sound good, then you’re a little bit stuffed. Well, I’m pleased to report that the ROG Fusion II 500 sounds brilliant. The inclusion of the Armoury Crate software also opens up many more audio-based avenues for you to explore with the Fusion II 500, including a bass boost and another function for increasing vocal clarity. You can even add some reverb to the audio, which isn’t something I’ve seen in gaming software before. In the world of gaming peripherals, however, this doesn’t mean a huge amount. More often than not, subtlety is in shorter supply when this particular brand of product design is on the table.
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