Ozone ekho h80 review (full review)

Ozone is a manufacturer specialized in high quality products and the best features for the most demanding gamers. The Ozone EKHO H80 are the brand's most advanced helmets and promise to be the ideal companion for the most enthusiastic player thanks to their excellent features. A very comfortable design, the best sound quality and an RGB LED lighting system come together in a unique product. If you want to know more, don't miss our complete analysis in Spanish.

First of all, we thank Ozone for the trust they placed in giving us the EKHO H80 for their analysis.

Ozone EKHO H80: technical characteristics

Ozone EKHO H80: unboxing and analysis

The Ozone EKHO H80 leave us a great impression from the first contact with the product, the helmets come inside a hard cardboard box that shows a lot of quality and that the brand has put a lot of care on the product and in all its details. The box also includes a sliding cover with a very striking design in which we see an image of the helmets, we also detail some of its most important characteristics such as its RGB LED lighting system configurable in 16.8 million colors, a sound system Virtual 7.1 surround, adjustable headband, foam padding and a retractable microphone. We will talk about these characteristics in more detail later. On the sides and the back we continue to detail the main characteristics of these helmets.

We remove the cover and the cap and finally we see the Ozone EKHO H80 helmets perfectly arranged in a plastic piece. A perfect packaging that will prevent them from moving during transport so that they reach the user in the best possible conditions.

We take out the helmets next to the piece in which they fit and we see a small quick start guide, quite useful for novice users who are not used to dealing with products of this type, we see that Ozone cares about everyone.

Finally we see the Ozone EKHO H80 helmets together with its connection cable that is finished in rubber for greater resistance, as usual it includes the USB connector itself as well as a control knob.

More details of the USB connector and the remote control. Strangely the first one is not gold plated, something that is common in the vast majority of peripherals of mid and high range that we have analyzed and we are surprised that Ozone has dispensed with the coating that is responsible for improving contact and protecting against deterioration, a small point to rectify in a future review.

As for the control knob, it includes two small buttons to increase and decrease the volume, which constitute an alternative to the traditional wheel for this purpose. We also found a button to mute the speakers and one to mute the mic.

The Ozone EKHO H80 from a front view, we appreciate a design based entirely on the color black although the lighting system will take care of breaking the monotony of the color once they are in operation. Helmets are built with plastic and metal as the predominant materials, the first is the most abundant and it must be said that it transmits a high quality feeling and helps to achieve a much lighter product than if the metal had been abused, only They weigh 380 grams for great comfort.

We are faced with a classic circumaural design formed by a headband which is responsible for puncturing the helmets from above, a solution that uses only one axis but achieves sufficient closing force and pressure to offer good insulation from the outside while being very comfortable helmets. Ozone has placed special emphasis on comfort in the design of these helmets and has focused its efforts on achieving an ideal closing pressure for excellent insulation from the outside without disturbing during long sessions of use. Remember that the EKHO H80 are helmets aimed primarily at the most demanding gamers and these usually spend many hours.

The headband is quite padded on the inside for maximum wearing comfort, Ozone has named it foam padding and it has been created thinking once again of maximum comfort. It is the same padding that we will see later on the ear pads and the truth is that it is very soft and before putting the helmets on we already realize that they are going to be really very comfortable. In the headband we find a height adjustment system so that we can adapt the helmets to the measurements of our head without problems.

We go to the earphones area, the first thing that strikes us is that its connection to the headband is articulated to allow a certain degree of mobility that helps to accommodate the helmets on the user's head, thereby gaining in comfort a one more time. As for the pads we see that they are very abundant with the very soft foam padding so that the pressure on our ears is not excessive and that we can wear the helmets for many hours without getting tired.

As for the speakers, these are two neodymium units with a size of 53 mm, a figure slightly higher than the 40-50 mm that we are used to seeing. With this Ozone already hints that it does not go with nonsense and has managed to integrate a high-quality sound subsystem, the large size of the drivers will undoubtedly help to achieve richer and deeper bass. The speaker characteristics continue with an impedance of 32 Ohm and a response frequency of 10 - 20, 000 Hz.

In the left earphone we find an omni-directional microphone with a retractable design, personally it seems to me the best option because it allows us to hide it when we are not going to use it and we always have it much more at hand than a detachable micro design. Taking out the mike is as easy as pulling it. The micro has noise cancellation technology that will allow us to communicate with our colleagues in a very comfortable way during our favorite games. This microphone has an impedance of 2.2 KOhm, a frequency range of 50 Hz - 20 KHz, and a sensitivity of -38 dB. At the end of the microphone we find a small LED that is part of the lighting system and makes it more attractive.

Ozone software

The Ozone EKHO H80 and its comprehensive management software make use of Cmedia and its Xear Living digital processing technology, a technology that rivals Dolby and is capable of achieving excellent results at a much more competitive cost. Thanks to the use of this technology, 7.1 surround sound is obtained and it is also capable of providing greater stereo presence in 2.0 sources. Although we can use the helmets without installing the software, it is very important that we install the application to be able to use Cmedia and Xear Living under Windows, since without them the helmets lose a lot of charm.

The software can be downloaded from the official Ozone website. Once downloaded, its installation is extremely simple since we only need to click next until reaching the end.

Once the software is installed we open it and see that it is fully translated into Spanish, which is great. The application stays in the background and is accessible from the Ozone icon in the system tray. Once we open the application we see a control panel that is divided into three sections: speaker configuration, microphone configuration and lighting configuration. In addition, at the top we have a bar to adjust the volume level, something that we can also do from the integrated control in the cable in problem.

The software panel does not have tabs, to access its different sections we only have to secondary click on the 3 icons on the left that correspond to the speakers, the microphone and the lighting, once we click Secondary an individual options menu is displayed.

The different submenus include the following speaker adjustment panels:

General volume control with a slider bar and two bars for the left and right channels. Adjustment of the sampling frequency in 44.1KHz, 48KHz 88 KHz and 96 KHz being both 16bit or 32 bit. A 10 band equalizer that goes from 30Hz to 16KHz and with a level range of -20 db to + 20 dB in each band. A Surround section to activate it in film or music mode in addition to selecting the room size. Audi Enhancer to boost the volume level of the headphones Dynamic bass mode that allows us to change the bass level and the cutoff frequency. Audio normalizer to normalize the audio to a certain level and with different operating modes. A mode for adjusting the definition of the voice and the level of noise suppression. Enhanced surround mode.

We continue with the different submenus regarding the configuration of the microphone:

A slider bar volume control. Sampling rate adjustment to 44.1KHz or 48KHz. Xear SingFX that allows us to add different pre-defined tone profiles to the microphone for voice effects and up to 5 echo levels.

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Finally, we come to the section on configuring the RGB LED lighting system in 16.8 million colors. We can select the color of the lighting as well as various light effects such as constant mode, breathing mode and palpitation mode.

Final words and conclusion

The Ozone EKHO H80 are excellent helmets that we have fallen in love with from the first moment, as soon as you see them, you realize that you have in your hands a product with tremendous quality and the feeling only improves as the days go by. they. Ozone promises a very comfortable design for long sessions of use and has amply achieved this. The padding baptized as foam does its job perfectly both on the headband and on the cushions with great comfort and well-achieved exterior insulation. It is not easy to find the pressure point for the best balance between comfort and insulation, but Ozone has achieved a product that stands out and a lot in both directions.

If we talk about the sound quality the feeling is even better, Ozone has been able to install a sound subsystem that works wonderfully and offers premium sound in both treble and bass. I have used them to play, listen to music and watch videos and the result has been excellent on all stages with loud and clear sound. The virtual 7.1 sound system does its job perfectly, outperforming other solutions we've tested with real 5.1 sound. The software allows us to deactivate virtual surround sound and leave them as stereo headphones, something that can be convenient if we are going to listen to music, for example.

Finally, the microphone has not disappointed with a performance that is above the usual in player helmets, we have a unit with a very good capacity to capture our voice clearly, which is also seasoned by the lighting and retractable design.

As a final conclusion we can say that the Ozone EKHO H80 are one of the best options on the market if you are looking to acquire high quality headphones with virtual 7.1 surround sound, for an approximate price of 90 euros they offer us excellent sound, an attractive and comfortable design and a microphone that perfectly fulfills its mission. It is not easy to make such an attractive product amid so much competition in the market for PC helmets.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ VERY COMFORTABLE AND INSULATING FOAM PADDING	- USB CONNECTOR NOT GOLD PLATED
+ VERY COMPLETE SOFTWARE
+ RETRACTABLE MICRO
+ INTUITIVE INTEGRATED CONTROLS
+ 7.1 VIRTUAL PREMIUM SOUND
+ COMPLETE LIGHTING SYSTEM