High-End Gamer Hardware on the Xbox 360 - Onza TE and Astro Mixamp

I've been playing with a couple of interesting bits of hardware over the past year or so, and I think I've finally got enough time with them to give a pretty comprehensive review and recommenedation.

# Razer Onza: TE

First up is the Razer Onza Tournament Edition - this is supposed to be a high-end gaming controller aimed at the hardcore crowd. It's got a bunch of cool features to make your Xbox 360 gaming experience that much more sublime.

The results are a mixed bag, though. I'll run down the things that they changed one by one:

The real problem that keeps me from recommending this to others is the reliability. I've had four of these so far - each time, the analog sticks have started to register movement even when the stick is in the neutral position. Plus, the controller's got two different built-in sensitivity settings, and it seems to pick randomly between them when I turn it on. Sometimes I think it changes even while I'm playing, although this is harder to quantify. It's possible that I just got unlucky, but I've been dealing with Razer directly, and they've so far assured me each time that this one will work. However, it seems like every couple of months I start to experience issues again. The one I have now has lasted the longest, but I've occasionally caught it having the same issue, so perhaps before too much longer I'll be sending it back for replacement again.

# Astro Mixamp 5.8

The Astro Mixamp 5.8 is essentially a wireless headset amplifier. The "base station" plugs into the optical out of your TV or surround receiver, and the other half you carry with you to plug your headset into. Astro sells headsets as well as this device, but I already had a set of Sennheiser PC151's that I opted to use instead.

Holy crap is this thing awesome. The audio quality is exceptionally good, and the device is solidly built and a pleasure to hold and use. I picked up the optional rechargeable battery pack with it, and that was a good call. I can generally play all afternoon without having to charge it. The power port is a standard mini-USB jack, so if I'm ever running low I can just plug it into my laptop (or any other convenient USB port) to keep it running.

The only two extremely minor bad things I could say about it are:

Overall, this gets a huge thumbs up for me, and anyone in the market for a new audio/headphone solution should definitely consider it.