AceZone may not be a household name in gaming headsets, but the company has been building them for esports tournaments for a number of years. The A-Spire is the company’s attempt to establish itself in the home gaming market, but do its tournament-quality features make a great gaming headset for desk dwellers?
The short answer: yes.
The A-Spire costs $319/£299/€319, which surprisingly makes it AceZone’s cheapest. Above that, the A-Rise for $749 and the A-Live, which is made to order. What does all that money get you?
First of all, one in the first place Wired headphones. The A-Spire relies primarily on a USB Type-A connection from a removable braided cable to connect to your PC. What I mean, first and foremost, is that this headset also offers Bluetooth functionality, although its purpose is to connect to the AceZone mobile app and provide some light listening on the go. The headset comes with a 35-hour battery life, so you can enjoy everything on the go.
A-Spire Specifications
Drivers: 40mm
Frequency response: 20–20,000 Hz
Microphone: Folding microphone arm
Connectivity: USB Type-C to Type-A cable, Bluetooth, 3.5mm jack
Functions: Active Noise Cancellation, Game-Specific EQs (Apex Legends + Counter-Strike 2)
Battery: ~35 hours (Bluetooth connection)
Weight: 270g
Price: $319 | £299 | €319
AceZone would like to point out that this wireless connection is not intended for gaming. Instead, it is recommended that you use a cable connection for the lowest latency and highest quality.
It’s a bit of a strange setup. The wireless connectivity feels a little tacked on, but I want wireless connectivity for this amount of money. It’s good to have that Bluetooth option available anyway. Delve a little deeper into the wired connection and it’s clear that performance and quality in games are the A-Spire’s primary focus.
The A-Spire comes with 40mm dynamic drivers. Not the biggest you’ll find on a gaming headset, they produce extremely well-defined sound. There is a lot of clarity in the upper reaches of the range, which is no coincidence. The headset is tuned to help the user track down pushy enemies, especially in FPS games, and in my experience it really delivers.
There’s one EQ preset called AZ Gaming, which is tuned for most games, and there are two more custom and optimized presets for specific games: one for Apex Legends and one for Counter-Strike 2. These are designed to get the most relevant pick up audio. in every game and provide clear warnings of approaching enemies. I played some Apex Legends to get a feel for the difference the EQ makes, and it’s a subtle change, but I think it’s worth enabling. However, these two EQ modes are locked into the hardware, meaning I doubt we’ll see more gaming support in the future.
There is also a music preset available in the AceZone app. This takes away some of the rough edges of the AZ Gaming preset and the result is a surprisingly good headset for casual listening.
Overall, the A-Spire provides adept audio no matter what you throw at it. But what makes this headset stand out for me is the addition of really decent active noise cancellation. This is a common feature in headphones that you wear outdoors, but less so in headphones that are intended for sitting at a desk at home. I’m told the A-Spire is tuned to cut out sounds you might encounter at home, especially speech, and it does the job well.
Active noise cancellation works wonders and helps me focus on my gaming and work. I can adjust the noise cancellation level in the AceZone mobile app, although I often choose high and do my best to completely block out the world around me. Importantly, it mutes the sound of my mechanical keyboard, and if there’s some music playing in the background, even relatively quietly, you can largely block out the keyboard completely. That’s helped by soft ear cushions and a closed-back design to maintain a good level of noise isolation (passive noise blocking).
The A-Spire is also exceptionally comfortable thanks to its thick earcups and padded headband. I’ve been wearing the headset pretty much non-stop throughout the workday and sometimes into the evening (I’ve lost many hours lately to Project Zomboid and The Finals) and haven’t experienced any major discomfort yet. Like any headset, if you wear it for more than eight hours it can become a little uncomfortable, but compared to the Corsair HS80 Max I used previously, which gave me trouble for longer periods, the A-Spire feels like a big improvement.
The A-Spire comes with a nice black carrying case if you like to take it outdoors, and the headset is designed to fold neatly to save some space. Although with the built-in microphone it’s not the kind of headset I want to take outside often.
The microphone on the A-Spire sounds fantastic. That should be a given at this kind of price point and with this headset’s focus on competitive gaming, but I’m grateful to report that it lives up to expectations. This is a noise-canceling microphone in the form of a bendable boom arm that folds down from the side of the headset and has a small clip on the headband to hold it in place. A small green microphone symbol indicates the direction of the microphone you want to get right, otherwise you risk cutting out your own vocals.
So far so good for the perceived quality of the microphone. I have had no complaints from those on the other end of the line, but more than that, I have even received one compliment about how clear I sound with the A-Spire.
Although the microphone is also the cause of most of my complaints with the A-Spire. First, flip-to-mute is convenient, but the microphone must be in the maximum vertical position to enable the mute function. I would prefer it to activate sooner. Second, there’s no tactile response when muted, which often means I’m never sure whether my sneeze will be heard throughout my Discord call or not. Third, sometimes the foam tip falls off and you have to carefully put it back on while trying not to damage it.
There is a spare in the box, but I wish it was easier to keep it full in the first place. Finally, and this may be more my fault than the headset, the small plastic holder meant to hold the microphone in place when stored upright broke off at one end. This clip is removable and in theory you could replace it, but I don’t think the design is that great to begin with.
Minor complaints individually, but combined these boil down to a microphone arm design that I think could be improved with an updated design.
Above: The AceZone app is extremely easy to use. Bonus: I’m bad at taking pictures of screens without my camera in them.
The other minor complaint of mine is the use of a braided cable. I know they’re rugged and great for gaming peripherals, but they’re scratchy and you can actually hear that feedback through the left earcup while wearing the A-Spire. It’s less noticeable when you turn up the volume, but a non-braided cable would make all the difference in solving this problem once and for all.
But despite my few minor complaints, I think the A-Spire is a compelling gaming headset. The audio quality is perfect for gaming, as is the quality of the microphone, and I don’t find myself dreading wearing it for hours on end.
Buy as…
✅ You are in a noisy environment: The active noise cancellation on the A-Spire is really impressive. It does wonders for both your own gaming experience in a loud environment and for anyone listening to you.
✅ You play Counter-Strike or Apex Legends religiously: For players of these two games, or indeed any competitive FPS, the A-Spire offers a clear and defined audio profile that should help you stay alert in-game.
Don’t buy if…
❌ You want a wireless gaming headset: This headset offers Bluetooth connectivity to connect to the mobile app and listen to music on the go. It is not intended as a wireless headset for PC gaming. Instead, check out the best wireless gaming headsets.
The A-Spire is at the very expensive end of the gaming headset market. There’s also really no getting around how expensive it is, at $319 / £299 / €319. No regular sale is going to knock enough off the price to make it much more affordable over a more traditional wired gaming headset. That’s what kept me stuck. While you don’t get active noise cancellation or the highly customized EQ profiles of the HyperX Cloud Alpha or Razer BlackShark V2, they are a fraction of the price.
Whether the A-Spire is worth it comes down to two things: active noise cancellation and pinpoint accuracy in games.
Let’s say you’re a competitive gamer who’s already spent many hundreds of dollars on a fast refresh rate gaming monitor and matching fast peripherals in an effort to keep latency to the absolute minimum. The type of person who forgoes 4K in favor of 1080p, or turns off all lighting and only uses wired peripherals in case it saves you a millisecond of delay. The A-Spire might be the headset for you.
The other use case is for anyone in a particularly noisy environment. I know gamers who jump on Discord calls on Saturday nights from what sounds like the kitchen of a restaurant. The active noise cancellation on the A-Spire could be of great benefit to both the experience of those types of gamers and those who have to listen to it.
For those who need to be at the top of their game, the A-Spire gets a recommendation from me. Otherwise, there are a lot of other wired gaming headsets worth spending a lot less money on.