Gadgets

Up with the best

Drop have teamed up with EPOS, Sennheiser’s gaming unit, to produce what many have lauded as the best gaming headset available. A step up from their previous PC37X offering, with newer drivers, these are open-backed headphones. This means you will be able hear what’s going around you, and other people will be able to hear some of what you can, so you may come under fire from people other than just gamers. However, open backed headphones make things sound bigger and better, and audiophiles heartily recommend them. The microphone is also wonderfully clear compared to many competitors. It comes with a bag, a different set of ear pads and cables for separate or combined 3.5” jacks.

Drop + EPOS PC38X Gaming Headset drop.com $170

DAC attack

With a cracking gaming headset like the above, it might also do you ears good to get a DAC system. You could do a lot worse than the Sennheiser GSX1000: This USB driven DAC is beautifully designed, easy to use, and offers the best 7.1 sound simulation we’ve heard so far: the audio positioning is just completely intuitive — characters in the game are to be found exactly where they sound like they are. It has settings for music and movies, although we’re a lot less blown away by this as we are by the 7.1 staging. And it has a separate mixing channel for chat, so you can adjust your chat channel independently of the game audio.

EPOS Sennheiser GSX1000 www.sennheiser.com $230

Octopus’s garden

Blade Runner 2049 fans will be disappointed to learn that although you can now be a Nexus 9, it has nothing to do with replicants. Submarine enthusiasts on the other hand will be ecstatic. We mentioned U-Boat Worx’s previous two-seater offering, the Nemo: they now have the Nexus on offer, which seats up to nine people and can dive down to an astonishing 200 m (20 m shy of the rated depth for a WWII U-Boat). It pootles along at three knots, weighs 12 tonnes and has an 18-hour endurance. The company provides training (or crew), maintenance and tech support, and builds each to customer specifications, which means we can’t give a price, but if you have to ask…

Nexus Submarine www.uboatworx.com Price unknown