CM Storm Pulse-R Gaming Headset Unboxing and Review

Hello again Techfans! Today we’re taking a look at the CM Storm Pulse-R Aluminum Gaming Headset from Cooler Master. This is an illuminated design featuring White LED’s on the sides of the headphones coming from the crevice between the earcups themselves and the aluminum plates on the sides. There’s only a handful of illuminated designs on the market, namely the Siberia V2 from SteelSeries and the Afterglow headsets from PDP, giving the Pulse-R a fairly small market to compete with for those looking for a headset that not only provides a solid chat and game volume experience, but lights up at the same time for that certain cool factor. Coming in at an MSRP of $89.99 (and only $83 on Amazon at the moment), puts the Pulse-R in the fairly affordable price range, offering a below triple digit price point with a wired design that’s also fairly high quality.

Outside of the illumination option, the Pulse-R comes with a few other key features including a detachable mic, detachable power cable, and one of the more interesting unique features, the removable and customizable aluminum plates. Both plates can be easily removed using an allen wrench, and can then be spray painted a different color more fitting your tastes, or customized with greater detail featuring a favorite symbol or logo. The Pulse-R already has a nice sleek look to it to begin with, and the ability to customize the plates just makes it all the easier to make sure that the headset’s aesthetics really fit your personal taste. It also helps that form factor wise it’s really comfortable, the ear cups and headband feature cushions that are just soft enough to make prolonged gameplay comfortable, but firm enough to last through extensive use. I was personally able to wear the headset for several hours without experiencing any major discomfort or noticeable ear pain, so this headset definitely wins my approval in comfort factor.

Now of course features and form play second fiddle to the all important and main reason for purchasing a headset, sound and mic quality. While not featuring surround sound, the Pulse-R does boast a great balance for gaming intensive use with a big focus on bass and high’s. While it isn’t necessarily first choice for music or movies (outside of the occasional Michael Bay explosion extravaganza), the Pulse-R manages to allow multiple noises and sound effects come through cleanly all at once. The only aspect gamewise that seems to suffer is in game dialogue, which will often times get easily drowned out in comparison to any other noises characters try to compete against. Chat volume on the other hand comes through nice and clean thanks to the Pulse-R’s noise cancelling microphone. While there is some obvious condensation of a person’s voice, it does a great job of drowning out background noises that aren’t too loud or sharp, making sure that the user can be heard loud and clear to his allies in game.

Overall the Pulse-R is a solid headset for it’s price point, while it doesn’t try to offer any major thrills or big features like wireless connectivity or surround sound, it does offer good sound quality and comfortable performance with the nice little extra of offering an illuminated design. It’s not gonna be replacing anyone’s top of the line headsets, but those of you looking for good performance at below a triple digit price point will find the Pulse-R well worth it.