![]() At eight inches long, four inches wide, and an inch tall, this is a hefty piece of hardware to toss on your desk. The new A50 makes the base station an installation in its own right. A total waste of space, made necessary only because Astro wanted to accommodate optical in/out and 3.5mm sources in addition to USB. Measuring maybe four inches square, it was a massive bit of hardware with literally two buttons: Dolby On/Off and a redundant power switch. With most wireless headsets transitioning to USB dongles in the last few years-see the G933 and Corsair’s Void Wireless for examples-Astro’s old A50 receiver was comically oversized. That’s the other big change for this year’s A50: the inclusion of a hunk of plastic that’s part display stand, part information relay, part charger. It’s a small touch, but one that’s made the new A50 a go-to favorite since our review unit arrived and made my other wireless headsets seem archaic by comparison.Īnd speaking of the base station…well, I guess it’s time to talk about the base station. I never have to fiddle with the power switch, never have to worry about whether it’s on and ready to go. It’s seamless, and probably my favorite feature about the new A50. Lift it up and put it back on and by the time you’ve done that, it has probably paired back up with the base station and is ready to play audio again. But the new A50 detects movement, so if you set the headset on a desk for 30 seconds it’ll automatically shut off. ![]() The previous A50 (and most wireless headsets) would automatically turn off if it didn’t detect any audio being played for a certain amount of time-say, five minutes. I also found myself leaving the A50 in a perpetual “On” state, thanks to a more invisible improvement: internal gyros.
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