The Audeze Maxwell is a gaming headset that everyone should try out – brimming with quality, uncompromising on sound and a stellar battery life, the Maxwell doesn’t compromise when it comes to delivering the best gaming headphone experience
The gaming headset space is getting big and murky with plenty of brands like Logitech, Razer, Steelseries and more trying to get your hard-earned cash by offering new features and ways to make you spend more than £300 on premium gaming headsets so as a gamer, you might be wondering which headset is worth your money – and in comes the Audeze Maxwell.
If you don’t know who Audeze are, the US company are known for selling some of the most premium (and expensive) headphones on the market with a pair of LCD-5 headphones costing more than £4,000 to buy – but with that, Audeze are known for producing some of the best sounding headphones you can buy today.
The Maxwell is Audeze’s venture into the gaming market and it’s fair to say that it has continued its quality from the audiophile space into the gaming space.
Design is one of the Maxwell’s strongest points and in a world of gaming headsets, sometimes they can feel over-the-top with tons of lights, RGB and features you don’t really need.
Audeze has recognised this and instead of trying to cater to that market, it has carried over that premium quality design from its headphones and transferred over to the Maxwell. The Maxwell headset feels amazing out of the box with a premium aluminium chassis that feels weighty and well-built.
You can also customise the placement of the rubber hand band depending on your head size and user be warned – make sure you adjust the band because it can be very comfortable over time (especially if you have a large head like the reviewer) due to the weight of the headset.
There’s no over-the-top design with the Maxwells and no RGB or flashing lights around the headset which is refreshing to see.
The Audeze Maxwell has several features including a USB-C port for charging or hard-wired connection, an auxiliary cable port, volume slider, game/chat slider and AI-noise reduction button – all on the left side of the headset. One of our annoyances is how every button appears to be crammed into one side of the headset with the mixing slider and volume slider being close together.
This can be confusing as we found ourselves occasionally spinning the wrong slider and messing up the sound and would have liked to see these more separated.
The Audeze Maxwell is uncompromising when it comes to sound and is the best sounding headsets we have tried so far.
Audeze uses 90mm planar magnetic drivers to power the sound and you can really hear and feel the difference – whether you’re playing a story-driven game or fast-paced FPS game when you need to hear the enemy coming around the corner.
We used the Audeze Maxwell with a mix of new games including Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Dragon’s Dogma II and Counterstrike 2. The Audeze Maxwell managed to crush any game we threw at it, giving us stunning bass during those big story moments and great imaging when we needed to hear when and where our enemy was.
Our reviewer regularly uses the Audio Technica ATH-R70X and even though the imaging and sound stage wasn’t on par with the Maxwells, the Maxwell is a great alternative when you can’t be bothered with any wires. One thing to note is the Xbox version comes with Dolby Atmos support which is absent on the PS5 version.
One thing that we suggest you do – even if you don’t want to use the Maxwell on the PC – is make sure you update the firmware through the Audeze HQ app. You can also tweak the EQ to a sound that can be much easier on the ears and the updates will ensure that you get the best possible sound from the Maxwell headset.
The Maxwell also comes with a detachable boom microphone that sounds great when being used with Discord and PS5 party chat. There’s also an internal microphone which works but it can sound muddy and not as sharp when you’re using it.
Set-up for the Audeze Maxwell is super easy to sort on the PS5 and the PC with the included wireless dongle which you can plug into a USB-C port or you can use the USB-A to USB-C attachment if you don’t have a dedicated USB-C slot. All we had to do on the PS5 was to head over to the sound options and choose the Maxwell device.
PC was also very easy with everything setting itself up when we plugged in the wireless dongle. Like we mentioned above, the Audeze HQ is a great addition that you can access on the PC to help update your firmware to iron out those bugs and make sure your sound is optimal.
You can download the Audeze HQ app for iPhone and Android phone to connect to the PS5 or Xbox to customise the EQ but you won’t be able to update the firmware.
The Audeze Maxwell boasts an 80-hour battery life which claims to be “unmatched” compared to other gaming headsets. When we tried out the headset, we got around 60-65 hours’ worth of battery life which was slightly under the advertised battery life but the upside is the Maxwell charges fast so you can get back into the action as soon as possible.
The Audeze Maxwell gaming headset is a premium and best-in-class gaming headset that has managed to enter the market and beat off competitors who have sat in the gaming headspace for years.
It has managed to combine brilliant sound, premium-feeling design and battery life which rivals some of the best brands on the market at a price point that rivals some other major headsets.
But still at a price of £319.99 (£349.99 for the Xbox version) it is expensive and compared to our Logitech A50 X review, you don’t get tons of features for your money.
But what you do get is a headset that blows others out of the water with sound and battery life. If you want a wireless gaming headset then you’ll want to massively consider the Audeze Maxwell.
The Audeze Maxwell is available in two configurations – one for PS5 and PC users and another for Xbox and PC users. You can buy both from Amazon right here starting at £319.99 for the PS5 version and £349.99 for the Xbox version.