The
SLYRs are lightweight and oozing in style and personality, although the ear cups feature a strange shape that, while cool looking, seemed like they might be non-ergonomic and, hence, uncomfortable. Fear not; they feel quite comfortable on and I don't really notice the angled shape when wearing them.
As you can see, the SLYR has an almost futuristic appearance with the angled ear cups. I found that this black and yellow color scheme kept reminding me of Haze, a PS3 FPS from a while back. If you're not a fan of the black and yellow color scheme, Skullcandy also offers the SLYR in an arctic white with black accents and a turquoise blue with orange accents. Yes, I know that turquoise and orange sounds strange, but you should take a peek at them before making any judgments. I think the turquoise SLYRs look cool and edgy.
So, how do they sound? Pretty good, actually. There's not a lot of tweaking to be done here, but there are three different EQ presets: one for a good balance, one for more powerful base and one more for crisp highs. The SLYRs don't have surround sound, but with the Precision Mode (with the crisp highs), I found that I was able to make out the directionality of gun reports and loud footfalls in Call of Duty: Black Ops II pretty decently. Also, the mic worked well for chat. The fact that Microsoft has the chat cord connecting to the controller was a bit annoying, but the wires seemed to stay out of my way; I didn't really notice them much when using the SLYR headset.
The boom mic features an interesting design. When flipped up and away from the mouth, it recesses into the headset and out of the way. And, when in this position, it turns off. To use the mic, simply pull it back down and it turns on. Simple. The mic boom is rubberized and, while not highly posable, can be bent inward a bit. This design feature makes the SLYR headset that much better for carrying around with you; there's no detachable boom mic to misplace and yet the mic can still be turned off and moved out of sight, out of mind and out of the way.
You can also use the SLYR headset as headphones for your iPhone or Android phone by simply using the included headset cord. The removable cord that attaches between the headset and the GMX inline mixer can also plug the headphones directly into your phone. With this setup, you can listen to some tunes and, should a call come in, simply take the call and flip down the boom mic to talk.
When using the SLYR headset with a console, you connect the RCA cable inline with the console's sound, then pluge the headset cord into the mixer and, optionally, the Xbox LIVE chat cable into the mixer. Combined, this puts over 21 feet of cable between you and your console. This means that you can sit back on a couch across the (average size) room from your console and play your game without having the cable dangling in the air. Wireless is great... and expensive, but if you can't go wireless, make sure you have enough wire to make yourself comfortable.
