1MORE Spearhead VR Classic H1005 Review — Are These Headphones Worth the Money

Gam­ing head­phones can cost from 3 to 10 thou­sand or more. 1MORE Spear­head are pre­mi­um head­phones, so their price tag is clos­er to the top bar. But they have sev­er­al impor­tant plus­es and one sig­nif­i­cant minus. Let’s take a clos­er look and find out if they are worth the mon­ey and who they are suit­able for.

Head­phones have a spec­tac­u­lar design. Pho­to: usa.1more.com

Case and design

Appear­ance 1MORE can be described with the words “typ­i­cal gam­ing”. A bit of futur­ism, chang­ing light­ing, a head­band with a thought­ful fit and large soft cups. These head­phones have it all.

The head­band is a steel frame with a padded faux leather head­band under­neath. Every­thing else is made most­ly of plas­tic. It’s a bit unusu­al for a com­pa­ny that’s made in-ear head­phones before.

entire­ly made of met­al. For exam­ple, Triple Dri­ver and Quad Dri­ver.

The bowls are plas­tic and cov­ered with a soft mate­r­i­al. They are large in size and are able to com­plete­ly close the auri­cle. The cups them­selves rotate to fit the fit, but their mounts are fixed so the 1MORE does­n’t fold up for trans­port. These are def­i­nite­ly home head­phones, more­over, they are wired. They con­nect via USB cable or 3.5 mm jack, and the head­phone cable is dis­con­nect­ed.

VR in the mod­el name does not speak of spe­cial fea­tures for vir­tu­al real­i­ty. This mark only means that the head­phones are com­fort­able to wear with VR head­sets such as HTC Vive Cos­mos or Ocu­lus Rift S.

The left earcup has a micro USB port and a 3.5mm input. Both cables are also includ­ed. A lit­tle high­er on the same bowl are the con­trol but­tons: turn on / off the micro­phone and vol­ume / bass. A slid­er is used for the micro­phone, and the bass and vol­ume are con­trolled by a wheel: in nor­mal mode, it makes the sound loud­er or qui­eter, and if you press the wheel, you will get con­trol over the bass.

The micro­phone is the hole on the right cup. But 1MORE has made an effort to ensure that this does not affect the design. Both bowls have a long tube that runs straight through the plas­tic lid. On the left there is a plas­tic noz­zle, which sym­bol­izes the pres­ence of a boom micro­phone. In fact, it is not in the head­phones, but there is a sim­ple built-in one.

The 1MORE case is not water­proof, so the head­phones are best used indoors only.

Man­age­ment is car­ried out direct­ly from the case. Pho­to by Lewis Leong for techradar.com

Specifications

• Head­phone type: On-ear;
• Fre­quen­cy range: 20 Hz — 20 kHz;
• Max. pow­er: 20 mW;
• Imped­ance: 32 Ohm;
• Con­nec­tor: USB, 3.5 mm jack;
• Micro­phone: Yes;
• Noise can­cel­ing: yes;
• Cable length: 1.3m;
• Weight: 324 g.

Backlight

LED light­ing in 1MORE head­phones is a design ele­ment. The logo, discs on each of the bowls and a plas­tic over­lay for the micro­phone glow. The micro­phone glows only when the sound in it is turned off. This is done so that the user can always quick­ly under­stand that the inter­locu­tors do not hear him.

By default, the back­light col­or is red, but if you install an appli­ca­tion on your com­put­er, you can change it. You can choose lilac, green, white, blue and oth­er col­ors from more than 16 mil­lion options, but only one can be used at a time. But there are sev­er­al modes: con­stant back­light, slow blink­ing or pul­sa­tion accel­er­at­ed or slowed down.

The back­light can be cus­tomized to match your com­put­er’s design. Pho­to by Lewis Leong for techradar.com

Sound

Music sounds good on Spear­head head­phones. Low fre­quen­cies are deep, but not too loud. High fre­quen­cies sound clear. The mid­dle also does not fall through, and tracks of dif­fer­ent gen­res sound full. In heavy mul­ti-instru­men­tal com­po­si­tions, each instru­ment is clear­ly dis­tin­guish­able, and even the max­i­mum vol­ume does not dis­tort the sound.

In record­ings of aca­d­e­m­ic works, a draw­back of the plas­tic con­struc­tion becomes notice­able — touch­ing the bowl with a fin­ger resounds inside the ear­piece, inter­rupt­ing the sound. A slight sta­t­ic noise is heard when the sound is turned off.

In games, an imi­ta­tion of 7.1 func­tions (a sub­woofer and sev­en speak­ers from dif­fer­ent direc­tions). This effect can­not be called per­fect, since some­times sounds are heard from an incom­pre­hen­si­ble angle. But in gen­er­al, it cre­ates a feel­ing of immer­sion in the atmos­phere of the game. If you con­nect a voice con­fer­ence, then the sounds are clear­ly dis­tin­guish­able, and even in it you will not miss the game dia­logue.

Microphone

Most mod­els of gam­ing head­phones, for exam­ple, ASUS ROG Delta and ASUS ROG Strix, use a boom micro­phone, also known as a “gun”. This is a direc­tion­al micro­phone. 1MORE uses the same built-in micro­phone found in con­ven­tion­al head­sets. It is much weak­er and gives a muf­fled sound as if it is being caught from a great dis­tance. In con­fer­ences, com­pared to the ROG series micro­phones, it lacks sound depth and vol­ume. Even in voice mes­sages, there is a feel­ing of flat sound.

Head­phones are best used at home. Pho­to by Lewis Leong for techradar.com

Outcome

Despite the lack of a micro­phone, 1MORE Spear­head is great for gam­ing, watch­ing movies and lis­ten­ing to music. These are excel­lent com­put­er head­phones, which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, should not be tak­en out of the house. Their price is slight­ly over­priced com­pared to their coun­ter­parts, but in gen­er­al, you will not regret this choice.

Pros:

• Good sound qual­i­ty;
• Com­fort;
• Effec­tive light­ing;
• Rugged con­struc­tion.

Minus­es:

• The pres­ence of a wire;
• Omni­di­rec­tion­al micro­phone;
• Lack of pro­tec­tion against mois­ture;
• High price.