Primal RUDE-100 PC gaming headset reviewed

Rude Gameware is a relatively new company that was launched by a team that has been developing for the gaming audience for over 10 years. Their first offering of products included the Primal RUDE-100 PC Gaming Headset, which is part of their Primal Gaming Audio series. The folks over at Rude were kind enough to send us a demo unit to test out. Our opinion? Not a bad start, but they have some kinks to work out for their second wave. Read on for the details.

Overview

Front view of the Rude-100's packaging, with clear view of the detached boom mic.

The headset’s packaging looks attractive, if not a little basic compared to other headsets I’ve purchased before. The printed insert is plastered with expressive statements like “INTENSE GAMING & AUDIO” and touts its bass-boosting rumble features. Sadly, it is yet another product that uses the fused blister package design instead of a more preferable design with plastic “buttons” that press together and is sealed by only a few strips of tape.

Back view of the headset's packaging, showing the various features and specs.

The back of the packaging, however, looks very nice. The aesthetic design has a very punk and rebellious look with its grunge-style artwork. It’s clear that they’re marketing their products for the more hardcore and perhaps offbeat gaming audiences. The primary features and specifications are listed in a neat and order fashion, with a graphic pointing out that the mic is detachable among other aspects.

Layout of everything contained in the Rude-100's packaging - no documentation.

Once removed from the packaging, I was able to take a look at the headset and its included accessories. My first impression was that it looked attractive in its dark greys and silver metal honeycomb-pattern over the earcups. The branding was fairly minimal, with the only logos were “Primal” written on the top of the headband and on the volume control hub. It was also striking how much cabling is involved with this headset. I’ll go into more detail later, but there are a few detachable cables to be dealt with, including a battery pack and a USB cable. There was no documentation included in the package to explain what the batteries or the USB cable is for, which was a bit of a letdown.

Construction

Right view of the headset, showing the metal honeycomb design on the ear cup.

Overall the headset seemed to be made fairly well, but it did have some elements that could have been better.

The headset itself was made of dark grey plastic, with plastic adjustment tabs and a pleather-wrapped headband. The ear cups had a sturdy and attractive brushed nickel-looking steel mesh on the outsides, with a soft felt-like cloth padding for the ears. However it all felt a little too lightweight and a bit on the cheaper side with a lot of molded plastic bits. Lightweight is normally a good thing for comfort, but I’m concerned they may have traded away the weight for lower quality materials so I’m concerned with how well the rest will hold up over time. At least the detached boom mic looked well-constructed with a highly flexible arm and a nicely-padded omni-directional mic at the end.

There is quite a lot of cabling included for just a gaming headset, don't you think?

The generous 8′ of rubberized cable felt sturdy yet flexible, with a rather thick gauging that felt strong enough to last for years—an important thing to look for. Towards the end of the cable is a splitter—one end continues down to the audio jacks, with the other being an additional power source that drives the rumble features. With the choice to use either a USB port for power or a set of AAA batteries when USB isn’t available/practical, they did built some versatility into its design. The battery pack itself felt a bit on the cheaper side, with a plastic latch that looked likely to snap off with enough uses.

The headset jacks are well constructed and clearly labeled.

Past the split between audio and rumbler power was yet another split for the audio jacks. With about 3 inches of cable between the split and the jacks themselves (labeled “MIC” and “SPK”), there should be plenty of spacing to go into an audio card (4 more inches can be achieved by “peeling” the cables apart from each other). However, if you normally plug headphones into an external port like those found on several desktop speaker systems like I do, you may need a more creative cable setup (I lead a male-to-female extension cable from the mic port on my audio card to the headphone jack on my Logitech speaker control hub).

The headset controls are nice to have, but a bit bulky and the switch is for vibrate, not the mic.

Built into the audio cable is a plastic pod with volume and vibration controls. Its design is about the size and shape of an egg that’s squashed and elongated a bit. While it feels a bit more bulky than I would have preferred, it gets the job done and it’s nice to have volume control. There’s also controls for the headset vibration function, including intensity and an on/off switch. The switch itself is a bit confusing, as it only has the label “ON” and “OFF”. Until trying it out myself I initially thought it was a mute switch for the mic, but found it was there to deactivate the vibrate function entirely. Honestly, I would have much preferred it to have been a mic mute switch.

Comfort

The ear cups are soft and comfy—at first. If you have large ears, it may get ugly.

The Primal headset’s initial comfort is excellent. The headset band adjusts with a few easy clicks, and even is numbered so you can remember what head size “setting” feels best for you in case someone adjusts it when you’re not looking. Once I adjusted it to fit my cranium well, I slipped it on. The soft felt-like material that envelopes the ear cups feels nice on my ears. The best way to describe the sensation is that it was like a blanket for my ears, soft and snug without feeling too tight.

The head size adjusters are notched and have numbers so you can easily remember the setting.

However, after some extended usage, it started to become rather uncomfortable. Granted, I have larger ears than average, and they stick out a bit. Because of this, the ear cups are a bit too small for me, and the cartilage on the upper ridge of my ears feel compacted and begin to get sore after 45 or so minutes of wearing them. Because of this, after an hour and a half of gameplay, I couldn’t stand the constant dull ache in my ears and switched to another headset. This will likely not be the same for everyone, but those with larger ears may want to look for another headset with a larger ear cup size.

Audio

The boom mic is detachable and well-designed—it can flex to almost any position.

The Rude-100′s audio quality was alright. It’s perfectly fine for casual gaming, and performed sufficiently during my in-game tests during Team Fortress 2. The headset is rather bass-heavy, so explosions sounded quite satisfying, and I was able to still hear my teammates over the carnage. Overall the headset sounded just fine for gaming.

However, the Rude-100 loses some points for audio clarity. I fired up Winamp and pulled up a few different tunes to try test it for casual listening. It’s high bass may be suited for explosions, but it doesn’t help it for much else—particularly classical music. Everything has a rather “muddy” feel to it. Chimes and marimbas sound muffled, while the drums seem to overshadow them. Granted, this headset was meant for gaming, but it would have been nice if it was a bit more balanced. Adjusting an equalizer helps, but it doesn’t get rid of the overall muddy feeling I’m getting from it.

For all my complaints about the speaker cups, the mic was actually fairly nice. The fact it is detachable is nice, and the flexible arm allows the mic to be positioned anywhere you’d like. The mic quality was pretty good—my recorded speech seemed fine, and others said I sounded good over voice chat. As a note, Rude is proud to state that the headset is officially certified by Teamspeak, if that’s important to you.

Gimmicks

The main gimmick that I’ve referenced a few times already is the headset’s rumble feature. Think about the force feedback rumble that console controllers have provided for years, and place that right next to your eardrums. The result is a unique if a bit odd experience. Basically, the rumble feature is tied to the bass output of the speakers. I’m not sure what actually causes the vibrations (be they miniature drivers or weighted actuators), but it certainly pounds your head a bit more than bass alone.

The vibration function isn’t very enjoyable while listening to music, but during gaming it was actually rather neat. During regular music listening, it tends to be more of a distraction and muffles out the audio (more muffled than normal, anyways). However during a game of TF2, the explosions had an extra kick to them, and made the entire action seem a bit more alive and exciting.

However, in order to even enjoy the rumble feature, there has to be an extra power source going to the headset—thus the need for either the battery pack or the USB cable (which only draws power, and no data). Not a huge deal, but between the added bulk or extra cables to run it can be a bit of a buzzkill. Not to mention the entire thing is a take-it-or-leave-it gimmick. It’s neat, but not really something I’d buy the headset for it alone.

Conclusion

While Rude's Primal headset is decent, we hope to see some improvements for next time.

Overall, Rude Gameware is off to a decent start in the gaming audio marketplace. While it’s a bit on the weak side for music sessions, they are good for what they were designed for: gaming. Decent audio, good bass for explosions, a nice mic, and a vibration function if you feel so inclined made it nice to have for playing TF2. However, considering the cheap plastic-y feeling and the discomfort I experienced over even moderate amounts of use make the headset a bit mediocre in my eyes, especially for the price you pay. At $40-50, I expect better sound fidelity—even my $25 Plantronics headset had better clarity.

The Rude-100 headset is available on its official product site, Newegg.com, and Amazon for about $40-50.