Mad Catz Cyborg F.R.E.Q. 5 Stereo Headset Review
Manufacturer: Mad Catz Interactive
Product Name: Cyborg F.R.E.Q. 5Stereo Gaming Headset
Model Number: MCB434030013/02/1
UPC: 728658032333
Price As Tested: $149 (Amazon | Newegg)
Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Mad Catz.
Mad Catz is continuing to broaden their Cyborg hardware line-up and up next is the Cyborg FREQ 5 stereo gaming headset. It supports both PC and devices so it's not just your stay-at-home gaming headset. It includes both a USB and 3.5mm analog connection. Naturally the USB connection unlocks additional mic/audio adjustment capabilities. The Mad Catz FREQ 5 comes with 50 drivers for deep bass and crisp highs. It is the younger brother of Mad Catz's FREQ 7, which delivers surround sound at a slightly higher price range. Benchmark Reviews will be taking a look at how this stereo headset performs among its numerous competitors.
The Mad Catz Cyborg FREQ 5 inherits the same techy design as everything else in the product family and gives you an option of red, black or white colors. For Mac users, there's also a white/blue version. Mad Catz has never been shy when it comes down to design and they've nailed it with each product release.
The design and functionality comes at a hefty $150, while its older brother, the FREQ 7, comes to about $200. The $150 price tag sits at the upper end of stereo gaming headsets. The same bundle of cash is enough to easily pick up a Dolby Digital surround sound headset from Mad Catz's competitors like Logitech or Corsair, or even Mad Catz's own Tritton brand headsets. Benchmark Reviews will evaluate the functionality and performance of the FREQ 5 to see if it's worth the high price tag.
Features & Specifications
Features:
- Powerful Stereo Sound
- Precision-balanced, extra large 50mm speakers for deep bass and crisp highs
- Tough yet lightweight metal components enhance strength and reliability for extended comfort
- Coordinate your team with the detachable noise-canceling microphone
- Easy to locate on-ear controls: Volume, Mute microphone, Equalizer
- Compatible with MP3 Players and Smartphones (Apple iPhone, BlackBerry and HTC handsets)
Specifications:
- Driver size: 50mm
- Neodymium magnets: N38 Grade
- Diaphragm material: Mylar/PET 50mm
- Voice Coil: Copper Round edge-wound
- Frequency Response: 20Hz - 20kHz
- Cable length: Braided 6.6ft (USB) / Braided 3.3ft (3.5mm)
- Microphone: Detachable
- Cable Support: USB or 3.5mm analog
Closer Look: Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 5
Whenever Mad Catz releases a product, there are always some things you can assume: flashy and innovative design, bunch of hidden features and delighters around customizations, great quality, and, of course, a matching price tag. The Cyborg FREQ 5 seems like a natural next step for Mad Catz. They acquired Tritton a while back, which has a comprehensive portfolio of quality headsets. It makes sense Mad Catz would take their expertise and remodel it into the Cyborg series. The sample Mad Catz provided was red/black themed. There are 3 other alternatives to suit your taste. Personally I think red theme looks awesome.
The FREQ 5 has a solid frame as seen in the picture above. This means the headset is designed to rest and put the bulk of weight at the top of your head and light pressure on the sides to keep it in place. This isn't a headset you want to be rocking your head with. The pros of this design are comfort for long gaming sessions since there's not much stress on your ears. The ear cups are faux leather, guaranteeing sweat-free usage. After a few sessions, I rated the comfort level of this headset to be average. It's suitable for a couple hours but any longer and it's a little stressful. The solid body construction also means it's slightly to the heavier side. Naturally I'm used to my Bose QC15's weight so this might be a harsh judgment.
The ear pieces contain 50mm Neodymium drivers. This guarantees great audio quality with strong vibrant basses and crisp highs. Because this system provides both USB and 3.5mm, you can enjoy these bad boys anywhere. The Mad Catz FREQ 5 is compatible with both PC and Mac.
The Mad Catz FREQ 5 has a detachable microphone roughly 6 inches long. It feels metallic and is very flexible. You can easily make loops with it. At the tip of the microphone is an LED light indicator to let you easily know if your microphone is on or muted. This way you can easily mute and unmute yourself in the middle of gaming.
I tried some voice recordings with the microphone and the results are pretty good. The microphone has noise cancelling functionality and can ignore most ambient sounds. They don't do this by simply lowering the audible volume as with some other microphones. One annoyance however is the microphone always tends to pick up some breathing noises unless you really tuck it under your chin. Because the length is not adjustable, there's no way I can put it off to the side of my face.
Overall the Mad Catz Cyborg FREQ 5 is a solid headset from the initial testing and observations. The design is, as usual, fantastic. I'm definitely looking for a little more functionality though if $150 is the amount I'm forking over. Benchmark Reviews will dive into the finer details of the headset in the next section to see if there's more delighters built in.
Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 5 Detailed Features
In this section Benchmark Reviews will look at the detailed features of the Mad Catz Cyborg FREQ 5.
The first thing to note is the FREQ 5 does not need special drivers to be installed. This increases usability drastically as now you can carry this thing anywhere and instantly plug-and-play for full functionality without setup. The Cyborg FREQ 5 has built-in equalizer settings. It comes with Game, Music, and Chat presets. Using the Game preset as the baseline, Music mode essentially tunes up the bass, and Chat preset tunes down everything and boosts voices. It's sort of useful in games where you're chatting extensively and want to boost voices but keep the volume settings on games equal. Personally I would just use the Game preset and lower game volume.
The volume control is on the right ear piece and is synced with the system sound volume. It's oddly quirky though. Instead of mapping each tick of scrolling to x% volume change, the scroll wheel detects a certain scroll direction and adjusts volume by 10%. What does this mean? This means you can turn the volume knob really slowly, and nothing gets registered. Or alternatively, you can scroll really fast in 1 swift motion in one direction but it only moves 10%. This is a serious usability issue, not to mention that 10% adjustment is often too much. I ended up having to adjust the system volume directly many times. This is just poor design here and they need to update the drivers to get this fixed.
The microphone mute/unmute button is the only button on the headset that I dislike. The other two are extremely intuitive in their positioning, but the microphone button, with no exaggeration, took me 3-4 days before I started reaching for it in the right place. It still doesn't feel right. Functionality-wise it's a simple toggle. The light on the microphone really helps to let you know what exactly you're doing and whether or not the microphone is actually muted so you don't spew off saying something not intended for your Skype audience.
Another small design annoyance is the detachable microphone. Since it's detachable, Mad Catz included a small red "cap" to cover up the connecting jack. Truth be told, by now, 3 weeks into usage, I have no idea where that small cap is anymore, and I doubt if anyone will keep a tiny piece of plastic that's smaller than a penny.
The Cyborg FREQ 5 is a Mad Catz product. That means I'm expecting a lot of cool customization options or fancy knobs and gears somewhere. Turns out my expectations were little too high. Other than the standard bendable microphone, the headpiece length is the only other thing adjustable. You can extend either sides up to a little over an inch, sufficient, but not exciting. I'm not sure what material the frame is constructed out of, but it wasn't all that bendy and was very strong. The plastic also didn't creak and make noises like some of the competitor's products. The quality is great, just lacks a bit of functional excitement.
The way Mad Catz handles swappable connectors (USB/3.5mm) is by having a short wire coming out of the FREQ 5 headset with a custom connector which then can be attached to a USB or 3.5mm cable. The USB cord reaches up to 2 meters/6.5 feet and the 3.5mm chord is 1 meter/3.3 feet. This length is perfect for the respective usage scenarios.
I had extremely high expectations for the Mad Catz Cyborg FREQ 5 gaming headset. However after looking at the finer details, I found myself slightly disappointed. Make no mistake, the product is solid, but the biggest thing is, where's all the cool gadgets that I don't need but want? That's exactly how the Cyborg lineup has been differentiating itself for the past couple years to justify the high price tag (rightly justified if I may) but it's lacking in the FREQ 5.
In the next section Benchmark Reviews will dive into the details of the comfort and performance of the Mad Catz FREQ 5 stereo headset. With the acquisition of Tritton, hopefully this is where the Cyborg will shine again.
Testing & Results
Testing Methodology
Every user is unique in what they do and their needs in a headset. For me, I'm a techy, I play games, watch movies, and listen to music on my Windows 7 PC. Below's a list of some common activities where I use the headset just to give a rough sense of how it was tested.
Games: League of Legends, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Ridge Racer Unbounded, Need for Speed: The Run.
Music: Classical, Symphonies (like Two Steps from Hell), Hip-Hop/Rap, Collection of US/Korean/Chinese/Indie pop
Headsets/Headphones used for comparison: Bose QC15, Corsair HS1, Thermaltake Shock One, Logitech G930, Mad Catz CoD 5.1 Surround Sound Headset
Headset Comfort
The Mad Catz Cyborg FREQ 5 is decently comfortable during use. I wouldn't say it's as light as they advertised it to be, but it's incredibly sturdy for its weight class. The headset has a solid frame that rests comfortably on top of your head. Only minor pressure is applied from the sides. It does get a little tiring after 2-3 hours+ of usage however, where I would typically lay it down for a while. Many of the headsets I own are lighter, though arguably also flimsier. I don't think any match the build quality or look & feel of the Mad Catz FREQ 5 so it's a tradeoff you will have to make.
Audio/Microphone Performance
First of all let's start with the audio presets. The Mad Catz FREQ 5 comes with 3 different settings preprogrammed: Game, Music and Chat. Personally I've found Game to be the best overall setting. A lot of competing products need quite a bit of tuning and setup to get the right audio experience. Take the Corsair HS1 for example, if you simply plug-and-play, the audio experience is quite underwhelming. You would need to install the drivers, start playing around with the software equalizer, save multiple configurations, and then only to lose them when you move to a new computer. The Mad Catz FREQ 5 doesn't have this issue. In fact, it has one of the best out of box settings ready to go. The feature isn't available for the 3.5mm setting but even then the default quality there is fairly good. If we needed to be harsh on the presets, I'd say Music preset tuned up the bass too much and the rest is a little muffled. That's not my preference but it'll favor those who enjoy headphones like Dr. Dre's Beats with heavy emphasize on bass.
These settings are of course only available when plugged in via USB. Volume, equalizer and microphone buttons don't function when using the 3.5mm jack. By default, the stereo output used the "music" preset. It has a good balance of sound with a deep bass as with most headsets out there. Again, I would've much preferred if the audio presets worked while on the 3.5mm jack as well so I can optimize how I hear things depending on where I'm at and what I'm doing.
Overall the audio quality is quite good. Some of the games I play, like League of Legends, really don't work well with surround sound, so a stereo headset is ideal. If I had to rate the quality, I'd say sits at the higher end in terms of audio quality vs. competitors. There is only very minor static even when volume is jacked up way high. For those that enjoy blasting music, you'll love the FREQ 5. I tried listening on max system volume, it was loud enough to be a mobile speaker, but I couldn't notice any distortions. The lack of personalization (since equalizer only has 3 settings) may be a turn off for some people, though I don't feel like it's a big deal especially since the presets shipped with it are generally good enough to cover most scenarios.
Gaming Headset Final Thoughts
Design is probably the biggest selling point for the Mad Catz products. The Cyborg FREQ 5 has several variations. Below is a picture of the solid black version of the FREQ 5. There's a white/blue one that was designed for Mac users, as well as a white version. I don't think I've seen any headsets lately that's as good looking as these. Because they're plug-and-play, I'd say these would make a nice pair of LAN party headsets. There's no carrying case but the solid construction should allow it to easily withstand transportation.
Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 5 Conclusion
The Mad Catz Cyborg FREQ 5 has excellent audio quality. Its 50mm Neodymium drivers guarantee deep bass and crisp highs. Compared to competing products, there's very few that work as well as the Mad Catz FREQ 5 out of the box. Since this is a plug-and-play headset, it requires no software installations, no computer restarts, and can be carried from computer to computer easily. The Equalizer presets that are programmed into the headset help you make on-the-fly adjustments when needed. Some people may prefer their standard "Game" mode, which has a good balance at all levels, vs. Music mode, which further enhances the bass. The noise cancelling microphone quality is also excellent. Through some recordings, I can easily see that the background ambient noises have been eliminated. Overall the performance of the FREQ 5 sets it on the right path for being a top-notch gaming headset.
Design has always been Mad Catz's strength, and it's no different this time. Mad Catz paid a lot of attention down to all the fine details like joints and the microphone to come up with the perfect Cyborg-themed headset. The FREQ 5 comes in a variety of colors for you to choose. Granted the design is probably a hit or miss for most, at least for me it was a definite hit. The braided chord decorations connecting the ear piece to the headset serves no functional purpose other than design. You can tell Mad Catz spent a lot of time perfecting the look and feel of the product, with great success.
The Mad Catz FREQ 5 has a solid frame, with a strong aluminum backbone. Unlike many other plastic shells, the FREQ 5 neither squeaks nor bends easily. Because of the solid construction, the headset weighs more than the average headset on the market. In order to ensure comfort, the FREQ is designed to rest most of the weight on the top of your head, with only slight pressure on the sides to ensure the headset stays in place. Mad Catz paid careful attention to other details as well. For example they used braided chords to help significantly to reduce tangling. Faux leather covers the ear pieces for sweat-less comfort. The construction of the Mad Catz FREQ 5 is more than satisfactory.
Functionality-wise, the Mad Catz FREQ 5 has some ups and some downs. It has a good array of features. The FREQ 5 does not need driver installations, has built in equalizer settings and built in microphone/volume controls. The customization aspect seems a little lacking though for a $150 headset. Even if no "real" functionality is given, I would've expected some more cool gadgets and customizations. Unfortunately this time, Mad Catz did the bare minimum in terms of customization. It's slightly disappointing considering how much fun I had playing with the knobs and gears in their other products. I might've had my expectations a bit too high. There were also some additional quirks such as the skippy volume dial that detracted from the experience.
The Mad Catz Cyborg FREQ 5 can be purchased for $149 (Amazon | Newegg). That's not a cheap price for a pair of stereo headsets. To put this in perspective, Mad Catz's own CoD 5.1 true surround sound headset is only $149.99 during release (though that price seemed to have gone up since it was limited edition). How does this price compare to other top notch stereo headsets? Well, Steelseries has several of equivalent caliber for $130-$140. Then there's numerous under $100 from the likes of Corsair and Thermaltake. The FREQ 5 is definitely priced on the high end.
Hopefully Mad Catz releases a FREQ 9 at some point that sports more cool features and customizations because that's what I'm really looking for when I think about Mad Catz. As for now, the FREQ 5 still has plenty to offer. If you're looking for a stylish headset, driver-free, and compatibility with all devices, then the Mad Catz Cyborg FREQ 5 is for you.
Pros:
+ Excellent stereo sound quality
+ Built-in controls for volume, equalizer and microphone
+ Driver-free
+ Braided cords
+ Flashy designs that come in a multitude of colors
+ Detachable microphone
+ Braided cords
Cons:
- Priced towards the higher side
- Limited functionality when using 3.5mm jack
- Limited ear piece adjustments
Ratings:
-
Performance: 9.25
-
Appearance: 9.50
-
Construction: 8.75
-
Functionality: 8.00
-
Value: 7.50
Final Score: 8.60 out of 10.
Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.
COMMENT QUESTION: Does a quality gaming headset help you in FPS games?
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