If you are the only one in your house that likes staying up late watching movies, chances are you have been told a time or two to turn your (expletive inserted here) movie down. There are still great ways to hear quality surround sound in the comfort of your own head with minimal expletives other than those that are movie related. Companies like Genius have headphones made specifically for you. The Genius GHP-05Live DRD 3D Surround Sound Premium Stereo Headphones are your gateway to surround sound bliss without pissing off everyone else in the house. Let’s see how they perform:

Price: $49.00

Closer Look:

The packaging for the Genius GHP-05Live DRD 3D Surround Sound Premium Stereo Headphones is very well designed. The addition of the fanciful product windows is always a nice extra. I have said this hundreds of times until every single manufacturer obeys me I will keep saying it: I want to see the product before I buy it. I have seen way to many misrepresented products on the cover of packages. You end up bringing them home opening them up and getting disappointed because it was smaller or bigger than we wanted it to be. The packaging also comes with lots of info one would need for buying a product like this. When it comes to media headphones you want lots of features and these have them.

Included with the Genius GHP-05Live DRD 3D Surround Sound Premium Stereo Headphones are a headphones extension cable, a 6.3mm gold plated adapter, and unlike when you were a kids batteries ARE included.

The Genius GHP-05Live DRD 3D Surround Sound Premium Stereo Headphones are very simple to use just plug the batteries in and turn them on with the one and only button on them. The headphones are very well designed the headband and the earpads are nice and comfortable.

 Let's see some specs and features:

Features:

2xAAA Batteries                                                        Velvet ear pad     Easy adjustable headband

Let's get to the testing:

Gaming headsets and 3D Stereo headphones have a specific purpose. These are not audiophile grade headphones and they were never meant to be. That being said for the testing I will be doing an over all opinion of gaming, movies, music, and comfort. I will sum up the testing by giving each section a rating out of 10. I will be comparing it to my Creative Fatal1ty Headset and My TekNmotion 7.1 Headsets, I wont be giving the other two a rating because they are in a different price bracket (more expensive).

Gaming:

Because we are dealing with gaming I figured this is where the “3D” part of the Genius GHP -05Live DRD 3D Surround Sound Premium Stereo Headphones should shine through. While I am always skeptical of headphones boasting 3d without actually having the surround sound front and back jacks included I give them the benefit of the doubt.

For FPS gaming they did just as well as my Fatal1tys if not a little better. The quality of the 3d effect was much better than the Fatal1ty’s. The Pulsars did the best of all because they have true 7.1 built in by use of usb and software drivers to send certain sounds per channel. Over all the Genius GHP-05Live’s did a remarkable job of giving the illusion of 3d sound. I would definitely use them for gaming in the future.

8.5/10

Music:

For music I like to listen to a broad range of genres. For vocals the GHP-05Live’s were a little sibilant for my liking if you had the song a little too loud your ears were hurting pretty quickly. For what ever reason the quality of bass I heard in the game didn’t transfer over too well to listening to music. The Creatives were a little better for music than the other two but not much better. The Pulsars tickled my ears because of there “vibe function” when listening to bass heavy songs so it got pretty annoying pretty quickly. The Genius's weren't horrible for music by any means they were still a lot clearer than your average iPod generic earbud or $20 headphone.

6.5/10

Movies/Comfort:

I did movies and comfort together because if you are going to be watching a movie you want the most comfort possible. The Pulsars were awesome for the surround sound effect but I have to say I liked the GHP-Live05’s better than both of the head set in this test. The sibilance was not there for movie watching but because of the extremely bright treble on the Genius headphones, you get all of the crisp sounds very clear and the bass is much more prominent then when I listened to music.

I like to use appleseed for the movie test because there is an action seen with the bass of gunfire the mids of speech and yelling and the highs of shells and debris falling. It gives an incredible range of sound all at once and I have to say the Genius GHP-05Live DRD 3D Surround Sound Premium Stereo Headphones did better than any of the other earbuds and headsets I have reviewed. There were sounds I never notices in the past. Over all the Genius GHP-05Live DRD 3D Surround Sound Premium Stereo Headphones where to most comfortable because they didn’t squeeze as bad as the other two and the earpad was so big it engulfed my whole ear so I didn’t get that annoying cartilage pain I end up getting when wearing headphones for a long period of time.

Comfort:

8.5/10

Movies:

9/10

Considering  I put these to the test against a couple pairs of headsets that are a minimum of $20-40 more expensive than they are, the  GHP-Live05’s did an incredible job:

Even though they didn’t perform as good in music as I personally would have liked they were still better than any earbuds the average person has used. I never heard frapping or crackling of any kind. The major selling point for me was how well they performed during the movie test. The range of sound was incredible!

Would I recommend these? If you are using them for 100% music then they might not be for you but if you are a gamer and a movie enthusiast that gets yelled at a lot for being to loud, these are perfect! If I tried these before buying a gaming headset I would reach for these over the Creatives and the Pulsar’s hands down, only if you don’t need the mic function.

Pros:

• Great for Movies
• Comfort 
• Price
• Gaming
• Adapter
• Extension Cable

•  Not the Best for Music

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