Audeze Penrose X Scores Editor's Choice Badge from CG Magazine

"I am a bit ashamed to say that I have never found myself on the cutting edge of audio technology. When it comes to speakers, sound bars, or headsets, I have just never taken the time to really set myself up for the most brain melting of sound experiences. In my day to day life, I find myself frequently listening to the noises produced by cheap ear buds. Well, the fine folks over at Audeze seem to want to disabuse me of my aural inadequacies."

"Looking to the build quality here, this headset is lovely. The subdued black and green design looks classy and doesn’t obnoxiously demand attention. The plastic components are smooth and somewhat soft to the touch while still feeling durable and solidly built."

"Now, this isn’t just a pretty set of speakers; there is some impressive tech in this headset. Audeze touts it’s planar magnetic driver technology as the new standard for clarity and detail as well as high powered Fluxor magnet arrays and Uniforce voice coils to reduce any sort of sound distortion. The attachable microphone is noted as “Broadcast quality,” and the internal batteries should give you about 15 hours of juice after a 3 hour charging period. Additionally, an included dongle allows these little monsters to connect wirelessly via a 2.4 low-latency connection."

"The microphone, however, is not always as phenomenal. So, it attaches easily and intuitively as one would hope, however I found myself needing to do a great deal of fiddling with its position and volume settings to really get the sort of quality I was hoping for. Small changes can make big differences as far as quality and volume here. You certainly can get some high quality recording out of it, but it will take some patience, some practice, and a whole lot of fiddling."