When it comes to headphones, wireless technology is a great boon. Having no annoying cord trailing up your neck is marvellously freeing. It also means you can mosh along to your favourite tunes without any danger of strangling yourself (ahem).
Indeed, you can wander around the house listening to your MP3 collection, as this headset has a ten metre range from the plug-and-play USB dongle which transmits the audio signal. Our tests bore this figure out; in fact, we could even listen in the kitchen downstairs, and our PC is two floors above in an attic room. Now that's pretty impressive.
The XFones are comfortable to wear, as well. They're proper headphones with large cups that fit nicely over your ears, boasting a diameter that would be sufficient for even Noddy's best mate. They don't feel loose, however, and the headset sits sturdily without being overly tight. Overall, the XFones are well designed, with easy to reach controls such as the volume being perched on the outside of the earphones.
But it's the sort of sound they produce that's most important, and the good news is the XFones perform on that front. They handle music adeptly, cleanly picking out details such as whispered vocals that you wouldn't expect to hear through an average set of PC headphones, or speakers for that matter.
There's a bass boost button to give livelier music some extra welly, and it does the job well enough, although it causes distortion to creep in a bit earlier when you turn up the volume. However, you can certainly get a loud enough sound out of them without any distortion, whether the bass boost function is on or off.
The XFones also sport "Dolby Headphone" technology which basically means they can decode and approximate the sound of Dolby 5.1, so you can watch films using the bundled copy of PowerDVD 7 and experience virtual surround sound. They manage to achieve a remarkably cinematic sound, making them particularly suitable for those who enjoy moves on their widescreen monitor.
The main drawback with these Hauppauge headphones is quite simply the price. They're not particularly cheap in the first place, and of course being wireless they require three AAA batteries for power. The battery life is reasonable (about eight hours), although you should invest in a set of rechargeables, otherwise running the XFones is going to be a pricey affair indeed.
