After a few months with my Creative HS-1200’s I can easily declare them superior to any other headset I’ve tried. They are more comfortable, better sounding and include more features than the Logitech headsets I reviewed back in December, 2008. Other headsets are either much more expensive, lack comparable features, or are wired.
The Hs-1200 cans hold a solid charge – at least five hours straight. It’s advertised for eight, but I don’t think I have ever gotten more than six. Kudos to the wireless dongle though, as it is more powerful than any other I’ve seen. Though again, I doubt the advertised 72 feet is possible unless you’re in an empty warehouse with line of sight to the dongle. In the real world I can go upstairs and into a few different rooms if the headset is fully charged. The longer you wear it, the weaker the signal will be at range.
The microphone sounds clear to others and is flexible, which is nice. It would be great to have the little red indicator that the Logitech set has and the ability to mute without having to place the mic in the “up” position. The cans are a bit tight on the ears, but certainly not the worst I’ve worn. For the most part they cover my ears – though I wouldn’t consider them noise-canceling.
The sound quality of the HS-1200’s is great. The only flaw with them is that in Vista you have to deal with Creative’s ALchemy program in order to get the best quality (EAX) from games – which either works great or not at all, and in my experience even crashes some games. I ended up disabling ALchemy altogether.
Performance in Skype is excellent as well, though it should be noted that the software doesn’t work with Skype 4.0 – so pressing the button on the right can doesn’t do anything (it’s supposed to answer calls).
All things considered the HS-1200 headset is a great product, and is certainly worth the street price of around $100.00. It’s not flawless, but hopefully the next edition will address some of the shortcomings.