Logitech G935 and G432 Gaming Headsets Review

Logitech releases solid updates to its already impressive headsets.

This month, we were given a sneak peak at Logitech’s updated line of gaming headsets for 2019. We’ve spent the last week getting acquainted with two of the premiere entries in their new catalog with the Logitech G935 Wireless 7.1 LIGHTSYNC Gaming Headset and the G432 7.1 Surround Gaming Headset. Each headset is an update to two of Logitech’s most popular models, the Artemis G933 and G430, and include a number of upgrades to bring them up to speed. Let’s see how they made out!

Specifications

Logitech G935 Wireless 7.1 LIGHTSYNC Gaming Headset

• Price: $169.99
• Driver: 50mm Pro-G
• Sensitivity: 93dB SPL/mW
• Battery Life: 12 hours
• Wireless Range:
  • Indoor: 15m
  • Outdoor: 20m
• Connection Type: USB 2.0
• Dimensions (LxWxH): 3.43" x 7.67" x 7.40"
• Cable Length: 6.56ft/2m (Charging Cable), 4.92ft/1.5m (Mobile Cable)
• Weight (w/o cable): 13.4oz (379g)

Logitech G432 7.1 Surround Gaming Headset

• Price: $79.99
• Driver: 50mm
• Sensitivity: 107dB SPL/mW
• Cable Length: 6.5ft (2m)
• Dimensions (LxWxH): 6.77" x 3.22" x 6.77"
• Weight (w/o cable): 9.14oz (259g)

Shared Specifications:

• Frequency Response: 20Hz-20KHz
• Impedance: 39 Ohms (Passive), 5k Ohms (Active)
• Microphone:
  • Pickup Pattern: Cardioid(Unidirectional)
  • Condenser Size: 6mm
  • Frequency response:100Hz–10KHz
• 2-year limited hardware warranty

Packaging

Starting with packaging, both headsets arrive in the usual Logitech grey and blue with big, beautiful product shots. There’s no mistaking these two headsets. The G935 is clearly larger and, even though the picture only shows blue lighting, it’s fully RGB enabled.

Inside the box, both headsets are packaged similarly, wrapped in a plastic sleeve and held in place with a cardboard arm. Folding the arm up frees the headset and reveals the accessories hidden inside. I actually really like this packaging style. It’s easy to retrieve your extra cables and other goodies without unfolding a cardboard jigsaw puzzle. It also makes putting everything away neatly that much easier #reviewerproblems.

Logitech G935 Wireless 7.1 LIGHTSYNC Gaming Headset

Let’s take a look at the flagship G935 first.

Inside the box we have the headset itself, a 2m USB charging cable, and a 1.5m mobile cable for connecting to smartphones and controllers, as well as some documentation. The USB dongle is smartly hidden beneath the magnetic plate on the left ear housing.

Removing the panel on the right reveals the removable lithium battery. And the angels did sing. Every wireless headset should have a removable battery. Use any battery for long enough and its life starts to drop. Here, you can simply swap it out for a new one and make the headset run good as new. The stock battery is also rated for a respectable 1100mAh, which powers it for a good 7 hours or so of use with RGB enabled and at about 80% volume.

Along the left, we also find our controls. You have your on/off switch and volume roller as well as three programmable G buttons. It’s a bit hard to see, but each features a small icon to label its default action. Out of the box, these buttons are used for swapping between EQ profiles, surround sound, and swapping between a lighting presets or disabling RGB entirely.

Inside Logitech’s G Hub software, each of these can be remapped to perform a huge array of functions, from triggering macros to performing actions in specific apps like Discord. You can also save custom EQs to the headset if the default selection isn’t to your liking.

New in this year’s model is the switch to leatherette ear cups. They isolate sound well without completely blocking out the outside world and enhance the already decent bass. The padding is also deep enough so my ears never made contact with the speaker port. They do get a bit warm over time, but it goes with the territory with leatherette.

In the right side of the picture above, you can also see how well hidden the microphone is. These headphones are bulky and “gamer” enough that you probably won’t be wearing them out of the house very often, but on the occasions where you do, you’ll at least be able to keep the mic almost completely out of sight (really, you’ll miss it entirely if you’re not looking for it).

Behind the comfy leatherette is Logitech’s new 50mm Pro-G driver. They’ve gone back to the drawing board with this one, redesigning the entire system to accommodate the 10mm larger driver. They’ve also shifted to a hybrid mesh diaphragm commonly found in audiophile headphones. Their goal with these changes wasn’t just to provide a larger sound – which they do – but to provide accurate low end frequencies that are free of the distortion so common with gaming headsets. We’ll go into more detail in our usage impressions below but they’ve succeeded in delivering a great sounding headphone that I very much enjoyed for any type of content I threw at it: movies, music, games… even high resolution audio files. The G935 provided a detailed sound with bass response best described as tight.

And, of course, we have the RGB illumination. You might argue that it’s not worth having RGB on a headset since you won’t see it when you’re wearing it, but I think the implementation here is tastefully done. You can, of course, turn it off and gain an extra 4-5 hours battery life. If you’re running other Logitech LIGHTSYNC peripherals, it’s also easy to sync your lighting effects across devices and even tie the lighting of your entire group to what’s happening on the screen, which is undeniably neat.

G432 7.1 Surround Gaming Headset

Turning now to the G432, we immediately see that this is a smaller, simpler headset. It’s still over-ear and padded enough to be comfortable over long gaming sessions, but the ear cups are slimmer and the entire design has been simplified. There’s no more RGB. No macro buttons. No nifty hidden mic (though both still automatically mute when tilted up). Instead, what we have is a to-the-point, high-quality wired headset at an affordable price.

Logitech has included several accessories in the box to ensure you’ll be able to connect it any device you choose. The cable is ready-made for consoles featuring a four-pole 3.5mm connection. For PC, you can use the USB dongle which includes a built-in sound card for surround sound functionality and an extra volume boost (Windows recognized the headset immediately in my testing). If you’d rather go analog, they’ve also included a splitter cable to break-up your headphone and microphone jacks.

Compared to the G935, the G432 actually has the edge in some ways. They both feature a similar metal headbands and reinforced plastic yokes, but the G432 uses matte plastic across the board instead of the G935’s mix of gloss. The glossy finish looks nice but picks up fingerprints like nobody’s business, which gives the G432 a cleaner overall look.

The G432’s thinner pads and narrower housings also look better to my eye. It’s entirely possible, likely even, that the added depth on the G935 is necessary to accommodate the redesigned Pro-G drivers which the G432 lacks, but to my eye, the G432 keeps a sleeker look. The blue highlights are also pretty slick, in my opinion. Likewise, that design and lack of battery also make the G432 a whopping 120g lighter, which makes it easier to wear if you game for multiple hours at a time. The padding on the G935 is definitely helpful for this but by three and a half hours, it does make me a bit sore on the top of my head. The G432 suffers none of this.

Microphone Quality

The microphones on both headsets have also been improved from past versions, increasing the size of the condenser capsule from 4mm to 6mm for added sensitivity. The G935 is a particular improvement over the Artemis G933, offering much better clarity and less overall compression while still sounding like a wireless headset mic. The G432 is much better thanks to the wired connection. It lacks a bit of bass but comms come through clear and articulate, isolating out a reasonable level of background noise for mechanical keyboard lovers and parents like myself. I’ve recorded a sample of each below for your aural pleasure:

G432 Mic Sample:

G935 Mic Sample:

Logitech G Hub Software

If you’re using either of these headsets on PC, I would highly recommend downloading Logitech’s G Hub software (and if you’re already using it, make sure to update as you’ll need the latest version to properly recognize all features on these headsets). On both headsets, the software allows you to customize your EQ profiles and adjust the virtual speaker volumes and room settings for DTS Headphone:X 2.0 surround sound.

The G935 is much more fully featured when it comes to customizations. You can adjust your lighting and choose from a handful of presets, including your expected spectrum cycling and breathe effects. You can also set it to sample the screen, changing colors with your content or to act as an audio visualizer.

As I touched on briefly above, you can also remap the three side buttons to any number of functions. Media controls are a given, but there’s also a full macro editor if you’d care to tie some commands to an ear-button. You can also map dozens of different Windows shortcuts they’ve handily added to a list in the System menu.

The most interesting feature here is the addition of “Actions” which control functions in the three available apps, Discord, Overwolf, and OBS. These are practically useful, such as tying a button to cut your Discord audio or toggle streaming.

Moving down the tabs, both the G935 and G432 feature customization for DTS Headphone:X 2.0 surround sound. This screen visualizes the placement of the speakers and allows you to customize the volume of each with a lengthy demo that previews how surround will sound with different types of content. It’s the most effective demo I’ve heard, in fact. Well done to Logitech for making this useful enough to dial in sound before ever launching a game.

Depending on the type of content you’ll be enjoying, choosing a different “room” will change the surround sound algorithm to match. Entertainment is good for movies and music, gaming and sports are exactly what they sound like.

It’s also here that you can adjust your mic and sidetone volumes, as well as enable or disable noise removal. If you’re in a quiet environment, I’d suggest disabling noise removal on both headsets for an audible improvement to vocal capture.

Finally, we have the equalizer. Logitech encourages users to play with the EQs on the G935 especially to dial in their sound. The Pro-G drivers are designed to handle all manner of equalizations well without distortion and, to their credit, even cranking the bass all the way, I wasn’t able to make them sound muddy. I did make some adjustments, as you can see above, to match my own personal taste for music and games.

Overall Impressions and Conclusions

The key difference between the G935 and G432, apart from physical design, is that the only the G935 features the newly renovated Pro-G drivers. You can hear a difference, particularly in loud bombastic moments where the G432 has a more difficult time articulating fine details amidst bass heavy noise. It’s not bad, in fact, I’d say it’s right up there with other headsets currently selling for $99, like the HyperX Cloud Alpha, one of my $99 favorites. Yet, the G935 definitely has the advantage.

As a reviewer, I’m privileged enough to try many different headsets – more than a dozen in the last year, in fact – so I’m keen enough to pick up on some of the finer advantages the new design provides, as well as improvements over the already-good G933 Artemis Spectrum. While the G933 would sometimes allow the bass to overwhelm the mix, the G935 keeps it full but on a leash. The lower frequencies are present but better directed; rather than bulging out over the rest of the soundscape, they’re sent wider to create and all around fuller, more theatrical sound.

DTS Headphone:X 2.0 surround sound is also a notable improvement over the original version which I felt could sometimes become too reverberant. The directionality of sounds has been improved, allowing the algorithm to provide a virtually widened soundscape without sacrificing all-important positionality in games. In movies, I still find dialogue can sound a bit too spread out at times, though this isn’t a hard rule, but I found myself leaving it turned off more than not outside of games.

Taken as a whole package, both the G935 and G432 are solid improvements over their predecessors. They’re not revolutionary, so if you own the prior versions, I’d suggest trying the new models out before deciding to pick one up. On their own merits, though, both are undeniably good.

Going into this review, I expected to be most impressed by the G935, but I actually find myself more excited by the G432. In every way, this feels like a hundred dollar headset selling for $79. It’s well-built, comfortable, sounds great, and is versatile for whatever platform you’d care to use it on., and has darn good surround sound on PC. It would be nice to see the Pro-G drivers used here but for the price, it’s hard to complain, and most gamers won’t have the headsets side by side to notice the difference anyway. In the same way, I think the G935 could easily compete at the $199 level.

The impression I’m left with really boils down to this: both of these headsets feel more expensive than they are. No matter which way you go, you’ll be getting a good headset, but on a sheer value proposition they’re absolute challenges in their price category and the one above it. That’s a pretty great place to be in.

Both headsets are expected to be available at LogitechG.com and via the company's retail partners later this month.