ASTRO Gaming A40 TR Wired Headset + MixAmp ProXbox Series X/PC (Open Box)

My expectations were very high for this headset. Other than the fact I dropped some serious coin for it, I believed the hype about it being the best headset I could ever hope to own. Look, it sound is literally just average played through PC or XBOX. Maybe a little better than a generic 20 dollar headset but not a whole lot better. Certainly not Earth shattering or groundbreaking. I can name 4 or 5 other brands I've owned that were stars above better than this. That said, I really bought it for the mixamp. In my opinion the mixamp turns this from a dumpster fire of a sale to a much more manageable train wreck. The mix amp, does what it says its gonna do. I mixes and it amplifies but does NEITHER well enough to impress me. You can play all day long with the software and jog radials trying to get things just right but it never sounds great. Now, please let this be a word of warning. This thing is heavy if you make the mistake of buying the upgrade mod kit with noise cancelling mic and heavy as heck ear pieces and cushions. Just don't do it. People were constantly complaining about my room fan noise keying my mic on discord even with the fan halfway across the loft. No matter how much time I spent on sensitivity settings, I was either constantly keying or clipped. There was not a perfect collection of settings that would make it work as it should. Did I mention this thing is a tank when you have the upgrade pieces and have it on your head for hours? If its not the heaviest headset I've ever owned it's close to it. After a couple of hours I'm constantly repositioning it to keep it from causing pressure points on my hairline. Just wears really heavy. I originally purchased it, along with the noise cancelling mod kit at the end of March, by the middle of July it was broken. Not from drops (never been dropped) not from mishandling or overuse but from regular every day use. Hard to describe this but the ear cushion frames connect to the silver rod that is connected to the head piece that stretches over your head then connects similarly to the other ear piece. These connections on the silver rod allow for the ear to slightly rotate using pressure around the rod so you can adjust the ear piece to the angle of your head. Hard to picture, I know but in essence the ear piece is held to the silver rod by a clamp of sorts that has a screw through the middle that screws through the clamp, through the rod and into the internal flange of the the clamp that is positioned inside the silver rod. So, the tighter the screw, the more pressure on the clamp and the tighter the ear piece gets. Without that screw, the ear piece has no pressure and and cant stay firm which makes the entire headset loose and unwearable. Please just trust me when I tell you, your massive outlay of coin for this headset and the mod kit relies on that single screw. So... sitting in my office chair dodging complaints about my clipping, this time in Zoom btw and my headset falls off my head. Yep, through normal use that screw fell out and is all but impossible to put back in. It screws in but it never stays in place and the headset wont tighten. So, yeah, 4 months after dropping this kind of coin I will have to have it repaired. Now here comes the worst part. Support. I cannot tell you how difficult these people are to reach. There is no support number, no live chat just a web form where you provide your information and hope someone gets back to you. They never do and you MUST follow up with them and complain before anyone takes the ticket and starts working it. I have had to send picture after picture and describe MULTIPLE times what is wrong with it. I'm almost 3 weeks into originally contacting them now and I don't have an RMA number yet, don't even have an acknowledgement that they are even remotely interesting in fixing it. So, 3 weeks on conference calls with my old "trusty" $20 dollar headset. Let me be clear they will NEVER simply pick up a ticket and respond as if you are being helped. You make responses or send info and they will do NOTHING until you email again and complain. Simple things like explaining where to find a specific serial number takes 3 days. I know you want to trust this company, yeah, their marketing is good and they have allot of hype but my hardware is literally junk and their support is akin to asking monkeys in suits to provide quality customer service. They are simply incapable of managing a huge workload- visa vi hundreds if not thousands of RMA tickets being worked at one time. Meaning their equipment has a out of this word high failure rate or they have zero oversite of the monkeys responding to tickets. Clearly expectations have not been met in this case. I'll update this review after I've completed my support nightmare with them and provide you with even more, scary detail. Run away from this thing. Run now.