Music lovers and gamers alike can become rather hot-headed when wearing over-ear headphones for too long. At Gamescom 2019, HP has announced new additions to its gaming portfolio, including a pair of gaming headphones that feature both active and passive cooling.
"My ears are burning" generally means that you think someone may have been talking about you, but for headphone-wearing long-haul gamers it can be an uncomfortable real-world problem. HP's Omen Mindframe gaming headsets include Frostcap technology to help cool things down, and the latest model has just been announced at Gamescom 2019.
Frostcap shapes up as thermoelectric coolers placed inside the earcups, which cool the aluminum speaker grille that sits near the wearer's ears. Heat inside the acoustic chamber is then moved out, so maintaining a comfortable temperature.
The new Omen Mindframe Prime model also incorporates a new graphite heat spreader in the cushions to take heat away from the skin on the side of a gamer's head.
Elsewhere, HP says that gamers can look forward to 7.1 surround sound courtesy of Xear technology from C-Media, noise-cancellation that blocks out ambient background noise while allowing the wearer's voice to be clearly heard, and full control of settings through the Omen Command Center software (including RGB LED lighting on the housing).
Each earcup is home to a 40 mm driver, and the headphones have a frequency range of 15 Hz to 20 kHz, 95 dB sensitivity, 32 ohm impedance, and total harmonic distortion of less than two percent. A rotating boom houses the microphone, which has a frequency range of 100 Hz to 10 kHz, -38 dB sensitivity and 3,300 ohm impedance.
The Omen Mindframe Prime headset is expected to go on sale this month in Europe for €199.99, with US availability following in January 2020 for US$199.99.
Source: HP