 **whistle** **thump** **typing sounds** **whoosh** **ding** Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Orion Pro ROG gaming headset from Asus. Well, I mean it makes sense that it's from Asus because it is Republic of Gamers. The main difference between the Orion and the Orion Pro is the inclusion of the ROG Spitfire. So the Spitfire is a driverless USB hardware DSP, digital signal processor, which basically means it's a USB sound card. I think the important thing is that it's driverless because it means you don't have to worry about plugging it in and going to the website and downloading the driver. No, no, you just plug it in and it goes. Easy access, immersive 7.1, virtual surround. I'm actually, okay, if you must have surround, personally I prefer just leaving the headphones in stereo mode, but if you want surround effects, I do prefer virtual surround to actually putting more speakers inside headphones. If you're going to run real speakers, then yeah, you probably want dedicated surround speakers, but for headphones, the speakers are so close, the drivers are so close to your ear, you're not going to get the same effect that you get from surround speakers from headphones anyway, and you end up with these tiny little drivers that aren't capable of producing the deep sounds that you want for movies, gaming, music. I mean, basically, drivers that aren't capable of producing deep sounds, you pretty much don't really want them. So the first thing we find inside, because this is the Pro version, is the Spitfire itself, and I'm trying really hard to remove the packaging there. So it comes with a braided cable and a USB connector, and then it just has on the other end a microphone in and a headphone out port. So you could actually use the Spitfire with anything you wanted, you could even change up the headphones you're using. I really like this approach because it drives me crazy when manufacturers lock you into buying an analog headset or a USB headset. This is elegant because it doesn't cost them that much more, it does cost a little bit more to terminate the ends and then do this and do that, but it gives you that flexibility. Maybe you really like this, maybe you upgrade your Orion Pro to a Sagittarius Pro, or I don't know what's coming in the future, but maybe you upgrade it, maybe you want to keep using this. There you go. So on here there's an FPS mode button, a surround button, as well as an amp button, so that gives you hardware access to whatever functionality you might need on the Spitfire. So let's move on to the headphones themselves, and before we do that, let's have a look at this. What the heck is this? Hopefully they say something about what this is. It appears to be, I have no idea, we'll be back. So this guy right here is a cable organizer, which is basically just a rubber piece that has two clips, so you can organize the actually quite long cable. So this must be at least about an 8 foot long cable, so you're able to reach around to the back of your case, or if you don't want to reach to the back of your case, then you can just coil it up, jam it in here, and then have it stay, presumably, sort of coiled up and jammed in here, and not have to think about that. So at the end you find your standard termination, so there's your headphone as well as microphone, so again, options. Gives you the option to plug it into the Spitfire, just like that, or plug it into your front panel audio, or even the back of your sound card. I mean, ASUS, unlike a lot of the headphone companies, actually makes high end sound cards, which might be part of the reason why they care about giving you the option to use their audio products with their other audio products. So now let's get into the headset itself. The top has a nice big cushion on it. This is refreshing to see. It goes all the way from here to here, and is quite soft, although the foam inside here doesn't seem to be quite as thick or supple as the foam on the ear cups themselves. So that's a memory foam ear cup. You can clearly tell from how squishy and soft it is and how long it takes to retract. However, to sort of perfect the fit of these headphones, I would have preferred to see some rotation this way. They do go up and down, but the only rotation side to side here is from the metal pieces here having a little bit of flex on them. I wouldn't have minded seeing some actual rotation. They have a very striking looking ROG logo on the side of each of the ear cups. Looks very, very nice, and I mean, as always, all ROG stuff looks so sharp with a mixture of glossy metal, matte plastic, and red accents. Even the microphone looks just like boss. And I love retractable microphones, so hold on. More on the retractable microphone in a moment. Size-wise, you can go all the way from sort of ginormous head size here. You can clearly see how big that is for me, to pretty much kid size because this is not even close. Like, that's where it sits. My ears are hanging right out the bottom here. So I found somewhere in the middle was about right for me, which makes sense. I wear a medium motorcycle helmet. The retractable mic is, as I said before, awesome. I love retractable mics. It means you can wear it somewhere when you're out and about without looking ridiculous. And hold on a minute. There we go. And it's got a flexible sort of snake wire thing on it so that you can position it exactly where you need it next to your mouth. Actually, my understanding is the corner of your mouth is where it's supposed to sit. I think that pretty much wraps things up. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Orion Pro from Asus. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.