Victrix Gambit Gaming Headset Review

The Victrix brand is in an interesting place. Starting out as an esports-specific company offering high-end audio and controller options for the most serious of serious players, things have changed a little with their acquisition by PDP. Their latest pair of offerings still retain the esports focus, but they’re aimed at the mid-range, giving serious players a step up on their equipment as they shoot for the top of the Halo Infinite leaderboard. If it leads from the sofa to the esports arena, then even better. Enter the Victrix Gambit.

The Victrix Gambit is available in either Xbox and PC, or PlayStation and PC flavours, with a healthy 16 hour battery life and Dolby Atmos integration. It offers both wired 3.5mm connectivity – which it includes for tournament play – and wireless via a USB-A dongle, which if we’re honest is the best of both worlds. It only misses out on Bluetooth, so if you’re a mobile gamer without one of those handy headphone sockets then this isn’t the headset for you.

Victrix gear is generally purple or black, and the Gambit keeps the company’s appearance up with a mostly black colour scheme with purple highlights. They’re smart looking with each earpiece embossed with the Victrix logo, though they lack the cool lighting of the original Victrix AF-ANC headset. The purple cabling connecting each driver is visible through the headband, and though aesthetically they’re quite attractive it all feels very plasticky in the hand.

They creak as you pick them up, and while twisting them around didn’t result in any snapping or noticeable weakening of the material they don’t feel as well built as you’d hope for a headset that costs $129.99/£99.99. The benefit of the largely plastic build is that they are light, allowing you to wear them for hours and hours or gaming goodness. I completed the Halo Infinite campaign while wearing them and they remained comfortable throughout. If you can look past how they feel in the hand, once they’re on your head they’re going to stay there.

The ear cushions are suitably soft and thick, with the over-ear design needing that to keep the sides of your head happy. There’s purple stitching detail around each of them as well which is a nice touch, and does make it look like a more premium product. The other comfort equipment is a split piece of cushioning in the headband. It’s made of memory foam and it’s thick enough to prevent the headband from becoming painful, and it’s otherwise fairly unremarkable.

You’ve got a large boom mic on the left earcup that rotates up and out of the way when you’re not using the Gambit, though as it’s not removable you may not want to wear this for your day to day commute. It’s gifted with a pleasing amount of tension, and you could angle it more or less up your nose if you really wanted to, or further away if you’re one of those thoughtful players that doesn’t want to make their party chat sound like a worrying phone call. Its delivery is natural and manages to cut out a decent degree of external noise as well, helping it to live up to its tournament branding.

All of the other controls are easily accessed while the headset is in situ, with the volume dial a distinct outcrop on the right earpiece. It’s nice to find a company that doesn’t ascribe to the ‘two identical dials directly next to each other’ layout so many others do, and the rubberised game/chat roller is all the way over on the front underside of the right earpiece, providing a tactile way to access the control. It is unusual finding it located towards the front of the earpiece, but it does ensure that there’s no way you’ll be knocking it when using any of the other controls.

Besides that there’s a power button, and a mic monitoring button, with repeated presses cycling through three settings. It definitely suffers a little from the series of beeps used to identify each preset, relying on a combination of your memory and the moment by moment monitoring, and there’s plenty of headsets out there that give a more useful indication of what setup you’re using via voice feedback. Still, it’s nice to have the option there as a physical button, rather than having to dive into external software or hardware options.

So they’re light and comfortable, but plasticky and feel a little bit cheap. The remaining question then is how do they sound? Victrix has seen fit to ensure that the Gambit headset is a resoundingly great-sounding headset. Utilising 50mm drivers isn’t always a guarantee of quality, but Victrix has tuned them well, giving an expanded soundstage and a healthy dose of bass that ensures that blockbuster games like Halo Infinite and Guardians of the Galaxy sound absolutely fantastic. There’s a good amount of bottom-end heft, similar to HyperX’s Cloud lineup, but you might miss the ability to alter the EQ to suit more competitive play.

The Victrix Gambit Xbox edition comes with a lifetime activation for Dolby Atmos, and that’s key to how good these sound when gaming on Microsoft’s console. As virtual surround sound options go it’s tough to argue with Atmos, and the enhanced audio location can give you a real edge in a game of Overwatch or PUBG. It’s also pretty special when watching movies or TV, or when listening to music. The strings in Bonobo’s Polyghost were enveloping, with the Gambit delivering them in such as way as to make you feel part of the music. Diving into the rest of the Fragments album was time well spent with the headset in tow. There’s clearly been a lot of time spent on the audio output, and it’s a clear step up from Victrix’ original offerings.

The Gambit is entering a hugely competitive part of the headset market at its $129.99/£99.99 price point, not least because it includes Microsoft’s own Xbox Headset which matches it in a number of key ways while coming in cheaper. There’s also Turtle Beach’s Stealth 700 which again swaps the cabling for additional Bluetooth and has a longer battery life, but misses out on an included Dolby Atmos sub. While the Gambit’s audio is excellent and the controls are intuitive, I’d choose one of those headsets over this one.