Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “NEW PlayStation PULSE Explore – Dope or Nope?”.
What’S going on guys, it’s your average consumer now I know that this thing’s been getting a ton of attention. Lately the PlayStation portal uh, but it’s not the only thing Sony dropped. They also released this guy. The pulse explore earbud. So if you don’t want a giant gaming, headset can go ahead and pick up these and it’s the first that we’ve seen from Sony in this kind of design.
But let’s talk about it now we always know when there’s a new PlayStation, there’s, probably a headset, to go with it funny enough. The portal got the same treatment uh, but this isn’t only going to work for the portal uh. This is also going to work with your PS5, your PC, your Mac, your phone. It can connect with all of the things which makes it pretty special overall, the design.
Here, it’s interesting, it’s very PlayStation. 5. It fits right, along with the design language. They even have like the little collars that the PlayStation 5 has. It’S got. This L shape, depending on how you look at it.
I will say it is extremely important to find the right ear tip. I feel, like I say this in almost every earbud video, because I had a hard time having these sit well in my ear until I started changing around the ear tips – and I found the one for me – I’m usually a medium, but I found that the largest One works the best for me that also impacted sound quality, but we’ll get to that a little bit later. Now this extra piece that sits on top, you get a few extra controls. So you have your volume controls right here and underneath that you have your PlayStation link button and accessing those buttons isn’t too hard, but I will recommend kind of keeping your thumb here and pressing on it. Otherwise, if you’re just trying to press on those buttons, it’ll come right out of your ear, it’ll move it around so make sure you hold it in place and then try to press those buttons. Now, when it comes to controlling the volume, if you’ve got it connected to like your PS5 as you press, the volume controls you’ll see the notification on your PS.
On top of your TV, letting you know, your PS5 is volume’s changing. But if you have these paired to just about anything else else, it basically separates the volume the volume controls will increase or decrease the volume of the earbuds, but you’ll still be able to control the volume separately on the other device. So that’s how volume works and beneath that you have your link button where you can toggle between different devices. If you have multiple adapters, we’ll talk a little bit more about that later uh, but that’s pretty much it.
That’S the overall tour of the earbuds themselves. Now another thing we got to factor in the design of is the travel case, so the travel case is, you know, a little bit on the larger side, it’s bigger than like your standard airpods case, but these are bigger. Earbuds and you’ve got the sliding mechanism. So it’s definitely amongst the biggest cases that I’ve seen this year. I like when they’re on the table, though, and you try to slide them open, there’s not enough. They don’t stick to the table. Feet probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. Considering most cases you kind of it’s clamshell, you pop them open these slide, where it’s designed, so that your thumb rest here no problem and you just pop them out.
I don’t know, maybe, if you’re sitting at a desk and you just want to slide them open and grab them. What do you guys think? Could it have used some feet or some like rubberized texture? Let me know in the comments not to mention. It also has a link button, so when the earbuds are inside of here uh you can pair them up with the device you want by just pressing that button. Now the question is: are they comfortable? Like I mentioned before, I had the right ear tips in.
I did not find them too comfortable. I felt like they were moving around a lot, so it’s really important to make sure you have the right size since I got my right size in they stay in place very well, and it’s not like these rest in any weird way that you know it would Apply apply any kind of pressure or cause ear fatigue. I’M fine with these. I think you can do long gaming sessions with these without any issues. Well, these have for the first time in a PlayStation, headset planar magnetic drivers and that’s something you find in high-end headphones. I don’t think it’s ever been done in a pair of earbuds, so it’s a first here and the sound quality is legit. These sound, really good, but there’s no software or anything to go along with these earbuds. So if you’re somebody who really wants to take advantage of the plar magnetic drivers in here, you won’t really be able to tweak or mess around with it, but these sound really good. When I’m playing games, it’s pretty immersive all right.
So I’m going to throw on ghost really quick yeah the way this just hearing the wind move across that it sounds super realistic. Now this also does support the 3D audio, so I’ve got that enabled what’s nice is that you can adjust the 3D profile as well. This is like the only real tweaking that you can do with the device uh, so you can go in here, adjust it to what feels more comfortable for you now.
The thing is: how does this compare to a gaming headset for something a little bit more serious? Like Apex, please tell me we have Apex on here. We do all right, fellas buckle up we’re going to be here a while hold on. Are they adding cross progression? To my account count right now? Am I one of the special few? Oh let’s, let’s go. Oh, this is a big moment.
You guys you have no idea well, this couldn’t have come at a better time. Let’S go yo. Anybody got a mic now. The only thing that sucks is that there isn’t a mute button on the actual headset, so you still have to press the mute button on the controller yo fellas.
How how’s this mic sound to you. Mine sounds good. Okay, cool cool cool, oh snap, it sounded great. Could hear everybody coming my way you guys heard the well! You didn’t hear my teammate said my mic sounded clear: uh, we’ll throw a little mic test into all right so right now this is the mic quality that you get straight from the earbuds.
Now, what’s special about these is that they’ve got a special noise, cancelling algorithm for the mics, so you should be able to eat stuff like chips and have that not come through. Let’S test that out, but yeah you should be able to play you might it might sound like I’m eating because I’m eating, while I’m talking, but you shouldn’t, be able to hear the chips and to be able to eat chips, and you know play a game of Apex is clutch because people hate when their teammates are chewing in their ear. You know it’s crazy. I lowkey hate mic tests when you put them into like review videos because always sound like absolute trash, but like for the application, like those guys said, I sounded just fine. They said I sounded great uh when you’re on the phone with someone mics sound fine, I’m not a fan of mic test, but you heard it for yourself now in a more competitive game, where there’s like footsteps, you got to listen out for gunfights. You got to pay attention to like the direction of it. It was just completely fine. I knew exactly where fights were happening.
I knew when somebody was coming up behind me. At no point did it feel like I was at a disadvantage with these versus like a full-blown gaming headset. So, overall, I’m very very happy with these. Now when it comes to music, I think these also sound really good.
I was a little concerned at first because I was wearing those wrong earbuds. I was like the base like where’s the base. It was non-existent compared to like my airpods and then I found the right tips. I know I sound like a broken record, but it impacts. So many facets of like using the device, so you got to make sure you got the right tips on now. Like I said, you can’t tweak these anything just the 3D settings from the PlayStation uh, but I feel like for the average person somebody who’s not going to dive too deeply into that kind of stuff plug and play. These are legit. So this is missing a couple things like I mentioned with the mute button on a PS5 you’re fine on your portal, you’re fine.
You just got to press the button on the actual controller, but if you’re using it on like a PC or something that might make it a little bit more challenging uh. Since you don’t have quick access to a m button, or maybe even a mic, that you can retract or something so that is something to consider if you plan on using this a lot for maybe gaming on a PC. Now, speaking of playing on like your PC, we said it before this can connect to a bunch of different devices. But what’s new here is Sony’s link, adapter and what’s nice here is that you can actually go ahead and pair multiple of these link adapters with your pulse explorers uh.
You can have up to eight of these and you just toggle through them uh. With this link button over here now, what’s also cool about these, is they also connect through Bluetooth and you can have them running at the same time? So if you have your link adapter connected to like your PS5 and you have your phone paired through Bluetooth, you can listen to both audio streams. At the exact same time, you also get a Multi-Device connection through Bluetooth. So if you want to have like your PC paired and your phone paired at the same time, it’ll seamlessly go between the two as well. So one interesting thing I noticed is if you’ve got it paired to your portal. You can’t just toggle between your portal and your PS5.
You can’t just press that button. It’Ll just stick with the portal until you disconnect it and then you have to go and like repair with your PS5 once this is turned off, because it seems to like to stay connected to this guy. If it’s on so turn it off, and then you can pair up with your PS5 with no problem now in terms of battery life, we’re looking at 5 hours of battery life from the earbuds, and you get two extra charges here. So a total of 15 hours. Considering the size, I thought it might be a little bit more than that Dom. Would that hold you down for a full session uh. I feel like that’s about how long a controller lasts, so I’d say so there you go now. These do retail for $ 200. Do I think it’s worth it at that price point I think 150 would have been like a really nice point where it’d probably be flying off shells.
I don’t know how well it’s selling currently um, but at2 $ it’s an investment. I think you’ll walk away. Pretty happy with the experience you can literally go from a gaming session to just grabbing your phone and walking out the house without ever having to take them off because they’re all connected.
If you’re big on the portal this and the pulse Elites that are going to be coming soon are the only Wireless options if you don’t want to go wired through the 3.5 mm Jack, so I think there’s some real value in that. I think the system overall is pretty legit sound is legit could use better battery life, but overall, I’m really really not mad. At these.
You know, I think it’s because this doesn’t have active noise cancellation that I feel like it should be around that $ 150 price point: cuz, usually earbuds at this price point you see that feature, but I mean how many of those earbuds connect to your PS5 right. Not many um honestly Sony makes the other earbud that you can possibly use with your PS5. By the way, do you guys want to see a comparison between the two? Let me know with a comment, but I about wraps it up for this video guys hope hope. You enjoyed it if you did be the cool guy girl that gives it a thumbs up and I’ll catch you guys in the next one. We are still waiting for the pulse Elites. I’M excited for that one to come out. Peace, .