Tritton Kunai for PS4/PS3/PS Vita Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This product was provided to us for review in association with Misco.co.uk. If Seán convinces you to lay down some moolah, it can be purchased from them here. 

The Tritton Kunai for PS4, PS3 and PS Vita is a reasonably good headset. Even though it states that it is for the Sony consoles, it does seem to be compatible with anything that either uses headphone jacks or an RCA cable. This means that if you’re willing to put up with the bulk and brightness of the headphones then you are more than welcome to use it on your phone while out and about or in pretty much any situation where you need or want to use headphones.

First thing’s first; are they any good? Yes and yes. They are fairly comfortable even with my glasses on, the sound quality is quite high, being superior to basic headphones such as the Microsoft Lifechat LX-3000,. The quality of the microphone is also very good and it’s also detachable.

The build quality is fairly high; they are robust, reasonably lightweight and well padded. It also has a good range for adjustment, fitting both smaller heads (children) and larger heads. The plastic isn’t flimsy but it certainly isn’t the most resilient of materials either; though it should be safe so long as you don’t step on them or run it over with an office chair.

The RCA cable is more than long enough to be used in all but the biggest of living rooms; at 4.3 metres (14’), it’s hard for it not to trail all over the place. It is however coated in a hardy plastic that will have to take quite a beating before it gets negatively affected. The length and durability of the cable is only relevant if you are using it with a PS3, PC or perhaps another device that requires USB and left and right audio inputs. For PS4 and Vita you need only the headset and its ~1 meter long headphone cable, which plugs into the Dualshock 4 or Vita as appropriate.

The microphone is detachable, flexible and durable. It is only attachable to the front left side of the headphones, so if you dislike having the cable trail off to your left side then you’re out of luck; hopefully the cable length is enough to not make that a nuisance. It’s easy to knock the mic head out of place and if you need to drink, eat etc. the fact that you either have to bend or remove it can be more awkward than mics that turn on an axis as the mic is either in the way or might need adjusting back to the sweet spot.

There are also detachable “Speaker Tags” on both sides of the headphones. They are kept in place by magnets after being slotted in place but apparently you can buy replacements and custom tags from the Tritton store. Presumably this feature is there so you can have custom tags in place for when you go to LAN parties. Legend is, if you have custom tags people will think you are a badass. You’ll know they think this because as they walk past you they’ll say “Whoa dude, look at that guy’s gnarly headphones. He’s a total badass!” You’ll hear them say this because you won’t be listening to music, because if you were then you won’t be able to hear people talk about how great you are with your custom speaker tags.

The RCA cable is specially made and has a bonus to the volume and mute controls that most headsets have. It has separate volume controls for voice and ingame sound, so it’s never an issue if one volume is louder than the other, you can easily adjust until it suits you. The downside to it being on the RCA cable is that when you use the headphones without it, all of these functions are off limits.

The sound quality is very good, sounds are loud (or as loud as you want it to be), clear, and not distorted by volume like some speakers and headphones do as the volume goes up. It’s not got the extra bass or surround-sound of the more specialist headphones, but it does offer good quality stereo sound. Voice quality is very good too but it’ll vary depending on the quality of the connection and, of course,  quality of the microphone on the other end.

The microphone is flexible, so adjusting it for your friends’ convenience (not picking up you breathing like a serial killer) is easy enough but the quality of the recording is also higher than average. It catches a great deal of noise if you don’t adjust your surroundings appropriately such as loud cars driving past your house. On the PC using Mumble, Skype etc. it can easily pick up background noise if you don’t adjust the recording thresholds while you are using voice activation. Obviously push to talk will always pick up whatever’s going on in the background while the button is held. It could also – seemingly, though it could have been an issue with connection etc – pick up the sounds from its own speakers; but that could be to do with the issue I had.

I took an issue with my Headphones to the tech support, who were prompt and polite. My pair of headphones was working perfectly, but the RCA cable was faulty. Whenever it was plugged into the USB port the headphones would emit a very loud white noise that was mostly unnoticeable when playing games, music etc. but in times of silence was more than a little frustrating. Tech support, while able to identify the problem, didn’t have any replacement RCA cables to give. RCA cables are cheap to replace but as the Kunai’s RCA has built-in features that most people – myself included – would miss, this isn’t really all that helpful.

Ignoring my own issue with the white noise, the Tritton Kunai is a very nice pair of headphones. I find them to be fairly comfortable and the sound quality for both input and output is very good. They are also a reasonably priced mid-range headset; if you want a good quality headset to use with your Sony consoles you wouldn’t go wrong by giving these a go.