If you’ve had the good fortune to use the Audeze Mobius or even the HyperX Cloud Orbit S, the Audeze Penrose will look very familiar, as it’s nearly identical to those headsets. As previously stated, the Penrose is made entirely of plastic, with a memory foam headband cushion and memory foam ear pads. Its light and flexible headband contributes to the overall weight, compensating for the heavy planar magnetic headphones. Despite the lack of metal, nothing feels cheap; the hinges are firm and sturdy, and nothing creaks as you make adjustments. The Audeze Penrose headset is extremely comfortable. The headphones are quite heavy, but not so heavy that they cause fatigue after a few hours. The headband has just the right amount of tension to keep you secure without being too tight, and when combined with the memory foam ear pads, it’s easy to achieve a good seal. Although using this gaming headset is fairly simple, there are a few things to keep in mind. The Audeze Penrose’s onboard controls are all located on the left headphone, and they’re generally well spaced out to make finding what you’re looking for simple. A mute switch for the microphone and the headset’s power button are located on the left side of the headphone. Along the bottom edge, there are volume dials for mic monitoring and headphone, a button for switching between the headset’s three connection modes, a USB-C port for charging, and 3.5mm audio and microphone connections. Audeze claims that the Penrose can run for up to 15 hours on a single charge, but in our testing, it fell short of that mark. The Audeze Penrose battery lasts just over 13 hours, 7 minutes with a constant peak of 75dB (SPL). This is significantly lower than many of the best wireless gaming headsets on the market, but planar magnetic drivers require more power than dynamic ones, so it’s not surprising that the Audeze Mobius performed similarly. There’s no way to check battery status on the headset or at Audeze HQ, but we charged the headset for about 6 hours before starting the test, and given that Audeze claims a full charge only takes three hours, we started with a full charge.
