I thought I would chime in on this thread again with some 'final' thoughts after having the Maxwell for a year. This is overall a very good gaming headset and I think after mulling over selling it to return to a wired 'high end' headphones and mod-mic combo, I'm going to stick with the Maxwell for convenience and honestly for quality (especially in terms of the mic.)
Prior to this I've used Sennheiser 6/5series headphones and a mod-mic, The Sony Pulse, the Sony Inzone h5 and the Audeze Penrose.
- The Sony Pulse weren't bad for the very low price, decent range, decent noise cancelling mic that won't piss off your teammates, serviceable sound quality, but the battery life was shocking (curious about the Pulse Elites coming out soon).
- The Sony Inzones were just overall bad... terrible terrible range, plasticy weird sounding timbre, overpriced.
- Sennheiser open back + modmic - love the sound, could never quite get on with the microphone though, it's just a straight forward microphone with no noise cancelling and it's just not an option for PS5, unlike say PC where you can run discord with noise cancellation software.
- Penrose - fantastic but flawed sound, usability. comfort and build quality concerns.
Maxwell (Pros)
+ Sound quality is excellent. Great bass and smooth treble. So much better than the Penrose in terms of treble especially (which I found scratchy on the Penrose). Better than my wired 'audiophile' open backs in some ways.
+ Mic is a 9/10. Brilliant AI noise cancelling, and super high quality in general, the best gaming headset mic I've used, and probably the best mic you can use for gaming in general that sits in front of your mouth. Sure you could get a Shure mic and a stand, but it's not going to be always consistently in front of your face. I can't state how much in my experience the competition aren't even close in this regard.
+ Battery life is ridiculous
+ Build quality is superb
+ Look nice
Maxwell (Negatives)
- Mic sidestone static (a nitpick)
- Not the best for footsteps or positioning, but not bad at this either.
- I'm not sure my drivers exactly match, left sounds a little louder in some frequencies, but I say this with the caveat that maybe it's just my hearing that doesn't match on all frequencies.
- Ultimatley too big/bulky to wear outside the house as general purpose headphones
- a bit heavy
- I do just miss open-back headphones
I should say that these are really nitpicks for the price, and for the price this headset is very good. Should there be a Maxwell V2 at any point in the next few years with minor improvements to sidetone, maybe improved driver matching/consistency I would say they could bump the price by another $100 and I would still upgrade in a heartbeat. I feel like they could iterate this model into literally the perfect gaming headset.
I also feel bad criticising it almost because I second guess myself. Is the sidetone issue really that bad? Just because it sounds slightly different to typical sidetone white noise does it actually sound worse? Are the drivers really slightly mis-matched, or are they just so clear and good quality I'm picking up flaws in my own hearing? It's possible.