Expert evaluation
Strong Points
- Good music listening — at least if ANC is turned off
- Physical switch controls on / off and noise cancellation settings
- Pulsating RGB lights make a statement
Disadvantages
- When you shine the light, you will hear a hum
- Using ANC negatively impacts audio performance
- Huge cases make these impractical as portable options
- Flashy RGB lights look ridiculous to some people
Our verdict
For PC gamers, The Haymaker is a bling heavy, long battery life, pretty good, pretty expensive headphone.
Price at the time of review
$ 329.95
Best Price Today: Haymaker
out of service
Haymaker is a headphone designed for gamers, but its manufacturer believes its audio playback can compete with similarly priced competitors designed primarily for listening to music. Peak Audio, LLC declares Haymaker to be “the only headphone you’ve ever needed.” So how do these $ 330 headphones get up and running when evaluated as a premium home audio product?
Peak Audio offers a sound profile that goes one step further than a budget can, with bass forward tuning that’s not surprising from headphones originally designed for gamers. The design aims to create a statement with a glossy finish, a unique pattern on the frame, and a brand spelled out with LEDs at the top of the headband. Whether they are good choices for you depends on your reaction to the design and whether its features appeal to you.
This review is part of TechHive’s article on Best Noise Canceling Headphones, which includes a review of competing products, as well as a buyer’s guide to features to consider when buying this type of product. increase.
When you turn on the headphones, the color LEDs on the headband and each earcup will light up (can be turned off).
Peak Audio LLC
Haymaker headphones use Bluetooth 5.0 and are compatible with A2DP, AVRCP, HFP, and HSP profiles. They support aptX, aptX HD, aptX LL, AAC, and SBC codecs. The designer hired Dirac, a Swedish audio company best known for room calibration software, for the final adjustment of headphones.
Haymaker has a 40mm dynamic driver with a frequency response of 20Hz to 20KHz. They exhibit an impedance of 32 ohms, so any mobile device should be able to drive them without problems. A pair of condenser microphones is used for active noise canceling.
Controls and lights
Turn the headphones on and off, and use the physical switch on the back of the left earcup to cancel the noise. It’s easy to find and you can be sure to click when sliding to each position.
Touch controls are also consistent once you feel them. Double-tap the center of H in the left earcup to play or pause. Swipe up to increase the volume, or swipe down to decrease the volume. Swipe from back to front to skip to the next track, and swipe from front to back to return to the previous track. Triple tap the center of the H in the right earcup to turn the ambient sound feature on or off. This will reduce the volume, but the audio will continue. This is a useful feature when someone else in the room wants to have a conversation.
Haymaker headphones provide very good audio performance if you leave active noise canceling off.
Peak Audio, LLC
The procedure provided is a bit vague regarding the control of RGB lights.But I finally came up with the fact that the lights are consistently on and off only when the headphones aren’t in my head... After this review was published, the manufacturer provided a link to this Haymaker YouTube video showing how to turn the headphones on and off and how to change the color of the lights. This makes sense because you need to While doing this, you can put your headphones on your head and stand in front of the mirror to look at the lights and decide which color setting to use.And you can’t do that when they’re on your head..
One of the major drawbacks was the slight high-pitched hum that I experienced after turning on the light. When you play the audio through headphones, the hum disappears, but serious listeners know it’s there and is affecting the playback. Serious listeners, on the other hand, may not be the type that uses lights in the first place.
Battery life and accessories
Peak Audio promises that if active noise active cancel is turned on but the lights are off, Haymaker can provide 26 hours of Bluetooth playback on a single charge. Turning off both features will boost battery life to 43 hours. Using lights reduces battery life to 12 hours. Alternatively, you can play for 30 hours using an auxiliary cable with noise canceling. Finally, if you turn off ANC and listen using the auxiliary cable, you don’t need a battery.
There is also ample space for an alternative pair of earcups. Haymaker comes with a set of synthetic leather earcups and a second set covered with diamond-patterned fabric. The cup is magnetically attached and is very easy to replace. The top half of the case has two spacious zippered compartments for a USB-C charging cable, a 3.5mm audio cable for wired use, and a game controller cable for use with a PC.
Haymaker has all the accessories and comes with one of the most spacious cases ever.
Peak Audio LLC
Audio performance
Peak Audio encourages PC users to install Dirac HD sound software. [Update: Haymaker mildly objected to our use of the word “urge” in this section of the article, telling us that “PC gamers have the option to install DIRAC HD software,” which, according to Haymaker “has two functions for the headphones: one as an audio driver to tune the sound from the computer to DIRAC quality to optimize sound quality, and to activate the PC controller that is provided with the Haymaker.”] The experience requires a PC running Windows. After installing the sound profile, connect the included PC controller cable to your computer’s USB port to experience 7.1 sound or stereo selection. I’m neither a gamer nor a Windows user, so this review doesn’t rate that experience.
The PC controller cable has a button that allows you to mute the cable’s microphone during a gaming session, a volume up and volume down buttons, and a sound effects cycling button that switches audio between stereo and Dirac 7.1 surround effects.
What is unexpected is how well Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 1 can handle the new recording of Sz. 36 Berlin Philharmoniker Orchestra, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Alan Gilbert. Without the exaggerated low end, the high-pitched details of the violin are impressive.
The tight drum sounds of tracks like Free’s 1970 hit “All Right Now” are a little amplified, which is a bit of a detriment to the guitar crunch that had a big impact on the song at the time. Def Leppard’s 1987 Pour Some Sugaron Me eliminates these issues by fast-forwarding to a highly processed drum sound for a quarter of a century. Aggressive low-end tuning makes the track sound even louder.
Conclusion
These evaluations are based on listening with noise cancellation turned off. With ANC, Haymaker introduces a compression layer that can significantly change the experience. Noise canceling works fine, but at the expense of most of the audio playback intensity of a headphone display with ANC turned off. They still make good sounds, but they no longer tend to stand out.
At its best, Haymaker offers a very good value for money. As a pair of straight bluetooth headphones with ANC turned off, they are versatile and sound great. Buyers need to determine if they need the lack of patterns, lights, and portability that accompanies their great sound.
Correction, February 22, 2022: As first published, this review incorrectly reported that the headphones had to be removed from the head to change the LED color. Corrected that description. In the Audio Performance section, we added the manufacturer-provided context associated with the Dirac HDPC software.