Verdict: Poor sound quality and gimmicky surround sound.

This Terratec headset is enormous. Each earphone has a width of 10cm and completely envelopes the ear, while the austere grey design would blend in perfectly at the Russian Federal Space Agency. Despite the copious padding, however, the earphones aren't particularly comfortable.

Terratec's excuse (in the company's own words) for the headset being so big and heavy is because it's a 'true surround-sound headset', but we're not entirely convinced. It's true inasmuch as it uses six speakers, although they aren't the same as the models you'd find in a 5.1 speaker system. There's no centre speaker dangling in front of your nose; instead, the centre channel is handled equally by the left and right speakers. The rear channels are reproduced by dedicated speakers towards the rear of the earphones, and there's a subwoofer on each side too. It accepts a 5.1 surround sound signal from Windows, so we're pleased that it connects via a single USB cable.

The reason that we're hesitant to call this a true surround-sound headset is that, despite the abundance of speakers, it doesn't sound like surround sound. The centre channel sounds as though it's emanating from inside your brain, while the rear speakers' position seems vague. The subwoofers are the weirdest of all; they attempt to emulate the stomach-churning effects of deep sub-bass but, as it's a head-worn device, it only manages to rattle your skull in an extremely odd and not particularly pleasant manner. If you want to feel a jolt to the brain as you're blown to smithereens by a grenade in Crysis, this headset will oblige, but we found that the novelty soon wore off. Fortunately, there are separate volume controls for the front, centre, surround and sub-channels on the in-line remote, as well as an overall volume control that links to the Windows control panel.

Music tests revealed the worst sound quality on test; there was a lack of bass with the sub-channel turned down, and harsh, scratchy upper-mid frequencies that don't flatter music or DVDs. The microphone also sounded muffled compared with the others on test. Overall, this is a fun idea that fails to deliver.

• Multi-GPU graphics - 20th June 2008
• CPU water cooling - 17th June 2008
• Hard disks - 20th March 2008
• Audio hardware - 29th February 2008
• Graphics cards - 24th January 2008
• CPUs - 21st December 2007
• Motherboards - 13th November 2007

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