Best PlayStation 4 Headsets in 2018

Up your PS4 audio game with these great headsets.

What you can see is only a part of the gaming experience and for the best time, you need some quality audio.

For the most immersive action you should consider getting yourself a good headset. If you need some help choosing, here are six great choices covering all different budgets.

• SteelSeries Arctis 7
• Sony Gold Wireless
• Astro Gaming A10
• Razer Thresher Ultimate
• Turtle Beach Elite Pro Tournament
• Plantronics RIG 400HS

SteelSeries Arctis 7

The wireless Arctis 7 from SteelSeries is one of the finest pieces of gaming audio you can ever put upon your head. It’s certainly one of the most comfortable thanks to its innovative “ski-band” design which suspends the headset using a taught fabric band.

This allows the weight of the headset to be distributed much better and as such you can wear the Arctis 7 for long periods without getting fatigued. It hooks up to the PS4 or PC via the included USB dongle and features a retractable microphone with noise cancellation.

You lose the 7.1 surround sound by using it with a PS4 over a PC, but you still get a rich, full sound that isn’t overly bass heavy but still allows you to feel the rumble when necessary.

It’s available in a variety of colors for $150, and for more check out a full review over on Windows Central.

See at Amazon

Sony Gold Wireless

Sony has two wireless headsets, but it’s the lower cost Gold that gets our nod. It’s substantially cheaper than the Platinum wireless model while offering much of the same experience.

This is a large headset but also easy to store and travel with thanks to its folding design. The ear cushions are huge and soft and completely cover the ears, while the whole thing is nice and light so you can comfortably play for extended periods.

The party piece is the companion app on the PS4 that allows you to tune the headset specifically to certain games. You’re getting 7.1 virtual surround sound, too, which for the price is astonishing. Just don’t lose the USB dongle, because you can’t buy a replacement. And a new headset will cost you just under $90.

See at Amazon

Astro Gaming A10

Astro makes a bunch of great headsets but its new entry-level model, the A10, is one of the most compelling. For starters, it’s really affordable at around $50, and it’s also wired for folks who prefer that. It’s also made from “damage resistant polycarbonate” so it should be able to take a beating in your gaming bag.

The design definitely fits within Astro’s family, with large cups that cover the ears and nice big comfy memory foam cushions. The microphone isn’t retractable or detachable, but does have a neat trick where it’ll auto-mute when you flip it up against the side of your head.

At this price, you’re not getting much in the way of fancy features or surround sound, but you do get a solid, well made, great sounding headset with an inline volume remote so you never need to take your eye off the game.

See at Amazon

Razer Thresher Ultimate

One of the more expensive headsets here, the Thresher Ultimate for PS4 from Razer is packed with features, quality and style. This wireless headset will deliver you Dolby 7.1 audio for an incredible, immersive experience in your games. It’s crisp and clear and you’ll hear every detail you need.

It provides lag-free audio and voice at distances up to 12m (40 feet) and is designed to be worn by pro-gamers for long periods. The ear cups are large and trimmed in a leatherette material while being super soft and extremely comfortable.

The included base station also allows you to quickly switch between playing on PS4 and PC with the same headset. It isn’t cheap at $250, but it’s called ultimate for a reason. Be sure to check out the Windows Central review of the Xbox One version of this headset.

See at Razer

Turtle Beach Elite Pro Tournament

The Elite Pro Tournament headset delivers stunning, crystalline audio combined with next-level comfort. The headset’s generous cushioning across the headband and earcups allow you to forget you’re even wearing a headset, reducing the physical delta between you and complete immersion.

If you throw in the Elite Pro Tournament’s Tactical Audio Controller, you’ll end up with unprecedented control over your game. Adjust audio levels, surround sound modes, mic feedback and more without interrupting play.

Every aspect of this experience simply screams premium. Turtle Beach has outdone itself with the Elite Pro Tournament headset. It will set you back around $150, or $300 if you throw in the audio controller, which is a lot, but you have supreme sound quality and ultimate control.

See at Amazon

Plantronics RIG 400HS

The only difference between the RIG 400HS (PS4 version) and the RIG 400HX (Xbox version) from Plantronics is the color of the box, the console badge on the box and the color of the tag on the left side of the headset. Otherwise they’re exactly the same and it doesn’t matter which you snag, you can use both with both consoles.

What you get though for $40 is a really comfortable, superb sounding wired headset with inline volume and microphone mute controls. The microphone detaches, too, even if you’re not that likely to use this as a pair of headphones.

The ear cups are trimmed in fabric, thick and delightfully soft and they’re light enough that you’ll not be worried about fatigue at the crucial moment. There’s an awful lot of headset here for very little money.

See at Amazon

PlayStation 4

• PS4 vs. PS4 Slim vs. PS4 Pro: Which should you buy?
• PlayStation VR Review
• Playing PS4 games through your phone is awesome

Amazon

Today’s the day to pick up a new bag for your everyday carry

How many gadgets do you carry with you in a single day? A tablet, laptop, smartphone, headphones, chargers, wearables, fitness trackers, handheld gaming systems…it’s hard to define what’s essential for every day when all your tech is so cool.

Take it all and then some with one of these discounted travel bags.

The AmazonBasics Carry-On Travel Backpack is down to $35, which is the best price we’ve ever seen for this item. It normally sells for around $10 more and received tons of great reviews. It has an internal zippered laptop sleeve, a ton of space in the middle, and a bunch of organizational pockets for important documents, keys, and the like. It’s also designed to be the perfect airplane carry-on companion.

Alternatively, if you’re traveling light, this AmazonBasics Ultralight Packable Day Pack is what you’re looking for. It’ll only run you $11. It’s more of an everyday bag, with enough room for your essentials. As long as you’re not taking the kitchen sink with you, it’ll be perfect for daily use. When you’re done, it can be tucked away into itself for neat storage.

Speaking of everyday essentials, have you seen this one-day Anker Bluetooth speaker sale?

See at Amazon

The beauty and frustration of using Android Auto

Android Auto is a fantastic way to get important content from your phone onto your car dash. But it’s not without problems.

Android Auto is a wonderful way to get the important parts of your phone — navigation, music, phone calls, and (limited) notifications — onto your car’s head unit or as a simplified interface on your phone. It’s super cool, and miles ahead of every car manufacturer’s built-in dash interface. Having said that, Android Auto isn’t without its pitfalls.

I’ve been using Android Auto since late 2015 on both a Pioneer 4100NEX and Sony XAV-AX100 and with six different Android phones from various manufacturers. In this time, I’ve gotten very comfortable with having all of my important phone features in an easy to tap format to use while driving. But I’ve also had my share of issues.

I got 99 problems…

Android Auto is rather complex and some problems have cropped up for me over the past two years. This applies to Android Auto being projected onto car head units, not the interface running on a phone.

Android Auto requires a few components to all work together correctly to actually get an image from your phone onto the head unit. Those pieces are:

• A compatible head unit
• The USB cable from the head unit to your phone
• The wiring of your phone’s USB port
• The Android Auto application on your phone
• The latest version of Google Play Services installed on your phone

If any of those pieces misbehave, you’re in for a bad time. What’s worse is that all of those pieces mean it’s hard to diagnose exactly which one is causing the problems. Worse still, just because Android Auto is working perfectly when you leave your house doesn’t mean you won’t have problems when you’re driving down a highway. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been driving when all of a sudden, my music stops, my head unit is back to its standard interface and my phone is unresponsive.

Buy Sony XAV-AX100 In-Dash Receiver

And no solutions

I get that technology is hard at times, and I can sympathize with Google trying to come up with a solution that it can update on its own when smartphone manufacturers refuse to update phones. But that doesn’t help me when I’m just trying to safely drive to an open mic night and my navigation system goes out 8 times in 20 minutes. Any technology related to driving needs to be rock solid, and over the past two years, I’ve come to the conclusion that using Android Auto on a head unit isn’t.

I haven’t used a car that came with Android Auto in its stock head unit, but Google’s product support forums are filled with issues for those as well. There doesn’t seem to be one single culprit behind the connection issues, just like with the third-party head units. Again, no tech is perfect, but when a user just spent $1,000 on a head unit — or worse, tens of thousands of dollars on a car — it’s only right for everything to work. Especially when the technology is supposed to keep people safe while they’re barreling down the highway.

There may be some hope coming, but it will require even more money from the user. Wireless Android Auto units are on their way, and these will eliminate two of the five pieces that go into projecting Android Auto onto a head unit. But I’m not ready to call these new head units a magical fix until people start getting them installed and get some real world use. On a more subjective matter, none of the wireless Android Auto head units are appealing to me since none have a volume knob or hardware forward/back buttons. It will also be a few years until new cars come equipped with wireless Android Auto.

Again, Android Auto is miles (pun intended) better than any interface that comes loaded on head units. And when it works, it’s fantastic. Over the last two years, I had a mostly seamless experience using Android Auto. But on a tool I need to use when I’m driving, any hiccup could be life threatening. I’m currently monitoring Google’s support forums for solutions, but if there isn’t a solution in the next few months I’m going to move back to a dumb head unit, aux input, a good car mount and the Android Auto app on my phone. The Kenwood unit I’m looking at is simple, has a nice big volume knob, and won’t cause my phone to crash while I’m driving down the highway.

Buy Kenwood DPX502BT In-Dash Deck

Do you use Android Auto?

Have you had your fair share of Android Auto issues? Sound off in the comments below and let me know if you were able to fix them!

How to recover photos from a deceased loved one’s Android phone

The death of a loved one is never easy. Here are some ways to recover their old photos and look back on the good times.

Death is hard to cope with. Wakes and funerals bring a flood of memories — good and bad. Naturally, you may want to look back on photos of those old memories in order to bring yourself some closure. In the old days, you may have had a photo book to look through (and you may have one today), but in the digital age that’s increasingly rare.

All is not lost, though. Depending on how your loved one had their phone and online accounts set up, you may be able to get the photos back.

• Pull the SD card from their cell phone
• Sign into their Google account
• Request the data from a deceased user’s account
• Other options

Pull the SD card from their cell phone

While internal storage has increased in recent years, Samsung — which sells the majority of Android handsets — LG and other manufacturers still include a microSD card slot in their phones. There’s a good chance your loved one was using the SD card to store photos. In that case, take the card out, plug it into your computer, and see if the photos are there. If not, read on.

Sign into their Google account

Your loved one may have left their account information in their will. Or you know their email address and can guess their password. In either case, you can use that information to then sign into their Google Photos library and download their photos.

Did they forget to backup their pictures to Google Photos? First, tell everyone else to start backing up their pictures, then read on.

Request the data from a deceased user’s account

Google lets third parties request the content from a deceased user’s account, but this must be requested by the deceased person’s legal representative. The legal representative must upload a copy of their government-issued ID and a copy of the death certificate. Even then, there’s no guarantee the legal representative will gain access.

If this works, the legal representative would be able to access data from the deceased user’s Drive, Gmail, Blogger, Google+, Google Photos, YouTube and other services. But again, if the deceased user didn’t back up any photos in the first place, getting into the cloud backup won’t do any good.

Other options

Unfortunately, there aren’t many other ways to get into someone’s phone to get their photos. While that’s going to sting, any method that would be used to get into a deceased person’s phone by someone they loved could also be used by an attacker to get into your phone. It hurts, but that’s the reality of the world we live in.

If you can’t recover the photos of your loved one, sit around with your friends and family, crack open some brews and reminisce. And tell everyone to start backing their photos up to the cloud.

How to wake up a PlayStation 4 with your phone

Controlling your PlayStation 4 is now available from your phone

Sony has expanded its horizons by allowing us to now use our phones as a controller for the PlayStation 4. The process is super simple, and extremely convenient. If your controller has died and you really don’t feel like getting out of bed to put your PlayStation into rest mode to go to bed, you can have your phone do it.

This also works for waking up your PlayStation if it went into rest mode while you are in a blanket fort you don’t want to leave!

Get the App

First things first you want to download the official PlayStation App to your phone. This app offers a ton of features, but I’m going to show you how to use it for what I consider one of its most important roles.

See on Google Play

Connect your phone to your PlayStation 4

When met with a blue screen, go ahead and sign into your PlayStation Network.
At the bottom of the screen press the PlayStation Symbol. This will open a little mini-menu.
Select “Second Screen”. This will have you download another app, where you will have the option to continue on the same account you are logged in on the PlayStation App.
A small help screen will show up, take a moment to read through it! Afterwords, connect your phone’s wifi to the same Network your PlayStation 4 is connected to!
Select your PlayStation 4.

Now connect your PlayStation 4 to your phone!

Go to Settings after powering up your PlayStation 4.
Select PlayStation App Connection Settings.
Now select Add device. Here it will show you a code.
Input this code into the app on your phone so the two can fully register to one another.

In the future if you wish to change the devices synced with your PlayStation 4 you simply to to the same menu screen to add or remove devices.

App Controls

Now that you’re all set up go back to your second screen app. The power button in the app will allow you to put your PlayStation into rest mode, or wake it up from rest mode!

How cool is this? Did you have any issues syncing up your devices? Tell us in the comments below!

PlayStation 4

• PS4 vs. PS4 Slim vs. PS4 Pro: Which should you buy?
• PlayStation VR Review
• Playing PS4 games through your phone is awesome

Amazon

Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9 pick up Android 8.0 Oreo update

Available first for users in the UK.

One of the leaders for mid-range Android phones is Honor, and while the company’s latest devices include the Honor View 10 and Honor 7X, two of its older handsets – the Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9 – are now getting welcome upgrades to Android Oreo.

With Oreo, you’ll find your standard array of goodies, such as picture-in-picture, snappier boot times, faster performance, notification dots, and plenty more. On top of this, Honor is also improving its Smart Tips feature to provide better recommendations about how to get the most of your phone.

You’ll also find that the Settings page now only has 11 options to choose from instead of the daunting 28, and there’s also 60 new emojis to check out with Oreo’s new style for them.

Oreo is first coming to the Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9 in the United Kingdom, but it’s expected that the update will expand to other countries soon after.

If you own either of the two phones, what are you looking forward to the most in Oreo?

Oreo rolling out to unlocked Huawei Mate 9 in the U.S.

Android Oreo

• Android Oreo review!
• Everything new in Android Oreo
• How to get Android Oreo on your Pixel or Nexus
• Oreo will make you love notifications again
• Will my phone get Android Oreo?
• Join the Discussion

Every NFL player can get a smart bed to track their sleep

The Super Bowl is almost here, and that means one thing in the tech world besides new ads: conveniently timed sports partnerships. The NFL and Sleep Number have unveiled an agreement that will offer every league player a Sleep Number 360 smart bed. The auto-adjusting design will theoretically improve their rest, of course, but the real star is the sleep tracking. Sleep Number will work with teams to incorporate the players’ habits into their training regimens, so they’ll know whether or not they’re getting enough sleep to make the most of their performance on the field.

The company has already been piloting efforts with the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings.

Sleep definitely isn’t the most pressing health issue the NFL is facing right now — more than a few people would argue the league should be addressing head injuries first. In that sense, this deal is trivial compared to the larger problems looming over American football. Still, it does take the sports field one closer to a truly holistic view of player health where exercise and diet are just two parts of a larger picture.

Source: BusinessWire

The only thing Equifax’s new credit app locks is itself

Equifax still appears to have trouble wrapping its head around the concept of trustworthy software following its massive security breach. The company has launched its promised free credit report locking service, Lock & Alert, but there’s one overriding problem: at least initially, the mobile app associated with it doesn’t appear to work. The New York Times and Ars Technica both report pervasive problems with the app, ranging from the basic login to… you know, locking your credit report. In the NYT’s case, the tester gave up after the locking attempt stalled five times in a row.

A company spokesperson told the NYT that it hadn’t heard of widespread issues, but did say it was working on “isolated problems.” It’s a good thing the company has extended free credit freezes until June 30th, then. You can go the more traditional route until Equifax has (hopefully) sorted things out.

The one consolation: Equifax is avoiding one of the legal mistakes it made early on, when it implied that you gave up the right to sue by using the site that could tell you whether or not you were a victim. Lock & Alert tells you right away that you’ll never be forced into arbitration, and that your ability to lock your credit report won’t change. While Equifax does wave liability for glitches, you won’t be without recourse if the lock itself doesn’t work — once the app behaves as promised.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: New York Times, Equifax

Ads in Instagram Stories are about to get worse

More ads are coming to Instagram. This time, the photo-minded social network is upping the amount brands can put into Stories. Now, instead of one photo or video in an advertiser’s Story, there can be up to three. Coca-Cola, movie studio Paramount and Gap clothing are working with the new tools, but the social network says more brands will have the functionality soon enough. If you’re trying to get through your friends’ Stories quickly, this will probably prove annoying. But, you can always back out to the main feed and tap on each friend to see their evaporating photos and video instead of letting everything auto-play.

Given how popular Stories have become for Instagram — more people use that feature than all of Snapchat last we heard — this isn’t too surprising. And, unfortunately, we should probably expect even more of this stuff coming in the future.

Source: Instagram

‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ is coming on October 26th

Red Dead Redemption 2 will be released October 26th. That gives you just under nine months to round up a posse for Rockstar Games’ next adventure in the Dead West. The developer apologized for the delays — last May it promised RDR 2 would be out this spring, and before that, it was scheduled for Fall 2017 — saying that it’s using the extra time to add some polish to the game. Rockstar didn’t have much else to share, but teased that more information will be coming soon. Until then, enjoy the new screenshots below.

Source: Rockstar Newswire