Asus Cerberus V2 Review

Asus Cerberus V2 Price in India

For prolonged gaming sessions, the Cerberus V2 serves you well because of the padded headband design and ear cushions. The audio works well for gaming, however, not so much for listening to certain-type of music genres.

Asus Cerberus V2 Rating 70100100

Our Verdict

For prolonged gaming sessions, the Cerberus V2 serves you well because of the padded headband design and ear cushions. The clamping force on the headset is enough to ensure that the headset doesn’t fall off with sudden jerks while not imposing too much pressure over your head. The steel frame on one of the headbands keeps the entire headset sturdy. Both the elastic and steel headband form a dual-headband design which offers a comfortable experience of wearing the Cerberus V2. The cushioning on the ear cups are enough to isolate background noise to an extent while being soft on your ears. The detachable boom mic is flexible and rigid enough to maintain whatever position you bend it.

Coming to the headset’s performance, the audio works out well for gaming but not too much for listening to certain genre of music. The lows offer a strong bass and reverb for gunshots and explosions, but when it comes to music, the bass feels overpowered. Of course, this is a subjective aspect. Although you might enjoy a couple of dance and EDM songs with this headset, you won’t enjoy songs with acoustic instruments and vocals. When it comes to voice chat, you will be able to hear your teammates well only when we cranked up the volume to achieve that. The microphone performs really well for voice chat through Discord, but we wouldn’t recommend it for streaming or voice-overs.

The Cerberus V2 is priced at Rs. 5,700 aiming for entry-level gamers. You don’t get any fancy features like RGB lighting or removable ear cups. What you get is a comfortable headset with a modular microphone that will take care of your single and multiplayer gaming sessions. Including support for different devices is a great feature which depends on your usage. If you’re looking for a gaming headset just to use on your PC or laptop or console, and wouldn’t mind the lack of a detachable mic or the dual-headband design, we would recommend the more affordable HyperX Stinger at Rs. 4,599.

PROS

Comfortable design
Good performance to price ratio

CONS

Mic level too low

Asus Cerberus V2: Detailed Review

ASUS has been quite aggressive with their gaming product lineup for a few years. Their Cerberus series saw several peripherals from their side, catering to the lower budget segment. It was a long time since the lineup received a fresh set of products, and their Cerberus keyboard and headset received new upgrades. While we wait for the Cerberus mouse to receive an upgrade, we loved using the Cerberus Mech RGB keyboard which was given a mechanical switch upgrade. The original Cerberus headset had a few shortcomings and by launching the V2, they have taken care of them. Targeted towards the budget gamer audience, the Cerberus V2 now comes with a less tight and padded dual-headband elastic design.

The package includes the headset, in-line microphone and boom microphone along with a couple of cables. The in-line microphone cable is meant for mobile devices and laptops that have a combined port for audio in and out. If you wish to connect the headset to your PC or laptop with separate ports for audio in and out, you will have to use the splitter cable. Let’s have a closer look at the different aspects of the headset.

Build and design
The upgrade in the headband design is a worthy mention since it makes up for the tight and uncomfortable design on the previous headset. The V2 sits comfortably on the head and you can continue wearing it for long gaming sessions. The 53mm drivers are smaller than the 60mm ones on the previous one. However, your ear (small to medium-sized) will fit inside the earcups comfortably. The cushions will enclose your ear, providing additional comfort and passive noise cancellation to an extent. This means background noise from your PC or AC will be dampened to an extent. After wearing it for a four-hour long intense gaming session, the ear cups ensured that things didn’t get sweaty inside. However, this is subjective and might be different to gamers who are prone to sweating easily. Swivelling ear cups is a feature some gamers want on their headsets. The ear cups don’t swivel around so placing the headset around your neck will be uncomfortable. If this is a concern to you, then it could be a deal breaker.

Microphones are an important component if you’re into multiplayer games, a crucial one when you’re playing competitive games. Many gaming headsets include a mic, and it’s really difficult to find good ones. The boom mic on the Cerberus V2 is detachable which plugs into the headset using a 3.5mm jack. It’s quite flexible and you don’t have to beat your head to a weak boom arm. The mic is rigid enough to ensure that the position you bend the mic is maintained. Removing and inserting the mic doesn’t require much force. However, a locking mechanism to notify that the mic has been successfully inserted would have been great.

All the cables are braided and we would have loved it if the headset came with options for different lengths of cable.

Performance
The Cerberus V2 performs really well for what it’s meant for – gaming audio. Explosions, gunshots, vehicles and footsteps, all the sounds were reproduced well on the headset. There weren’t any moments where we couldn’t hear a gunshot or footsteps to give away the enemy’s location. However, we would have preferred a higher sensitivity on the headset because we had to pump up the mic levels to 90% to enable our teammates to hear us clearly. Higher volumes are where the headset started sounding more immersive but when there’s close combat with explosions and gunshots, you are forced to instantly reduce the volume. Although the sound was immersive, the headset doesn’t really have a wide soundstage nor is the spatial sound that good. Music sounds good only on certain genre of music. If you’re the kind that loves music rich with acoustic instruments and vocals, you wouldn’t enjoy them on this headset. But if you’re a lover of bass-heavy rap and EDM music, you will love it. This is because most of the gaming headsets have a strong bass to enhance in-game sounds and as a result, sometimes bass music might also sound overpowered. The bass on the V2 doesn’t sound overpowering during games but it’s a little enhanced than regular gaming headsets.

Background chatter and noise is cancelled out on the boom mic well. This is also because the boom mic is uni-directional. Generally, audio performance on microphones in headsets are average which is the same here. The same is the case with the omni-directional in-line microphone. They perform good enough for in-game chat or even Discord but they aren’t certainly made for Let’s Play videos or podcasts. The recorded voice samples from the mic reproduced a flat signature but the volume level was too low. Compared to other headsets that we’ve reviewed in the similar price range, the HyperX Stinger performed the best. The boom mic on the Cerberus V2 picked up a lot of static when connected directly to the motherboard. On the other hand, the in-line mic performed well on mobile phones.