Mionix KEID 20 Review

Introduction

Published: 11th March 2010 | Source: Mionix | Price: £45.99 | Author: Bryan Waters

Introduction

Yesterday we took a close look at the first of two pieces of hardware from the new Swedish company Mionix, the NAOS 5000 gaming mouse. It was spectacular and only a slightly steep price kept it from walking away with one of the highest scores we've yet given. Today we're going to be taking a look at their headset, the KEID 20.

Headsets have gone from being a slight curio to being one of the most regular items to be found among a gamers collection. As online gaming has become a large part of peoples lives the need to communicate has grown from the early PvP desire to merely taunt, to the need to communicate via your whole platoon or army.

Away from this particular aspect another technology has come to the fore and made a headset a must have item, and that's VOIP. What was once complex and available only to the gifted few has now broken into the mainstream. Free calls anywhere in the world is something we can all appreciate and with it being so easy to do then a good headset means anyone in your family can keep in contact easily.

So what do Mionix bring to the table, and is it oozing the quality we saw from the NAOS 5000?

KEID 20

Just like the NAOS, the KEID is named after a section of our galaxy. Mionix again :

Keid is a triple star system located 16.5 light-years away from Earth and belongs to the constellation Eridanus, the sixth largest constellation. Keid means egg or egg shells and it resembles the central plate on the ear cups. Keid has gained popularity thanks to its proximity to Jupiter It´s easily visible from Earth and shines with a bright light due to its high temperature. Keid has two companions, one of which is a white dwarf that orbits Keid.

The KEID 20 have a couple of nifty features that seperate them out from a very crowded marketplace, and they are the auto-adjusting headband and passive noise reduction on the microphone that actually works. However we'll look at those in more detail on the next page.

Technical Specifications

Taken directly from the Mionix website :

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION
• Type: Circumaural / Full-size stereo headset
• Driver: 50 mm
• Magnet type: NdfeB
• Frequency response: 20Hz - 20 000 Hz
• Speaker impedance: 32Ω
• Sensitivity (@1 kHz): 100dB +/- 3 dB
• Max input power: 400 mW
• Connection type: 3.5 mm gold-plated plugs
• Cable length: 3 m braided cable
• Cable diameter: 3 mm
• Volume control: On cable, from mute to full volume

MICROPHONE
• Frequency range: 300Hz- 3 300 Hz
• Mute Microphone: Yes
• Directivity type: Omni-directional
• Sensitivity (@1 kHz): -36dB +/- 5dB
• Max. Operation Voltage: 10 V

The specifications are everything we'd expect from a headset of this kind of money. Of course it's impossible to compare the speaker specifications to a high-end dedicated audiophile pair, but relative to the majority the KEID look good. We hope the decision to go down to 20Hz doesn't hurt the mid and highs.

Time to see what we're looking at today.