 Hot Spot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer, more secure, and fully private. Click now to learn more. The Funk HS 260s come in a white box and we, I guess we could do like a sort of pseudo unboxing. There's really not much inside though. They have a fairly bare-bones accessory package, which goes along with the, you know, fairly value-oriented pricing of them. So they come with the headphones, the microphone, which is right here, the cable, which has a black and orange sort of color scheme, just like we've seen with their other peripherals. It's quite long. It's approximately, you know, two Linus arm spans. And finally, replacement pleather ear cups. The pleather ones are easy to swap and take less than a minute per ear cup if you use the right technique, but I really prefer the cloth ear cups on the HS 260. I felt they improved sound quality at the cost of a little bit less noise isolation, but that it was a worthwhile trade-off and apparently Funk thought so too, because they ship by default with the cloth ones. So I went ahead and I left that. I left these off. So what can I say about them? Well, they're a little bit on the heavier side, but then maybe I don't mind them a little on the heavier side. And they're, I mean, they're not unreasonable or anything. They're quite similar to the Vengeance 1400s from Corsair. With all plastic construction, it's a little tough to achieve a premium feel, but I still think they've done a fairly good job there. The soft touch finish helps a lot and a couple of tastefully applied shiny plastic accents also help a little bit, like on the ear cup right here. The ear cups themselves, in terms of ergonomics here, have a tiny little bit of swivel, but no more than necessary. So if you like to fold them flat when you put your headset around your neck, you can pretty much forget about that. The headband is one area where the build quality looks a little bit janky if you twist it around like this, but it actually holds together quite well. Now, this is a cool little ergonomic trick. You can actually plug the mic or the 3.5 millimeter cable into either port on the bottom of the headset, and that's cool. I mean, to me, it's a bit of a fringe case because I think we're mostly used to the cable coming up on the left-hand side and our, you know, cable management schema being built around that, and I generally don't like detachable stuff. It tends to get lost whenever I'm around, but this is something that's very much personal taste, and you guys could completely disagree with me about it. So let me know in the comments. Do you like the flex cable swappable design, or do you just think it doesn't matter at all? The flexible mic, on the other hand, is a big plus in my eyes and gives the HS260 a big leg up on its main competitor, the Vengeance 1400, which has a boom mic that lowers instead. Placement of a flexible mic at the corner of your mouth is much easier than one that just lowers and is whatever sort of distance in front of your mouth as it wants to be, whereas this one you can put wherever you need to. Another great ergonomic choice on these headphones is the inclusion of on-ear controls for both volume and the microphone mute. When you compare that with fussing about trying to find an inline control pod, this is a great step forward and something that we've started to see a little bit more of. Now in terms of fit, they seal adequately on my head in spite of the large, thickly padded ear cups. They're a touch on the heavy side, as I mentioned before, but the good news is that the headband is wide and the padding is thick. With that said, it's a fairly hard foam in here, so it will take some break-in time before it molds to the shape of your head, but once it does, it should pretty much fit like a glove. I wish, comfort-wise, that they actually had a little bit more clamping force out of the box. This would improve bass response to touch and would also allow the headband to put a little bit less pressure on my head, but the flip side of that is that people with larger heads, mine's a medium, would likely be uncomfortable out of the box, and you're better off going with something that feels okay to everyone out of the box and breaks in than going with something that's uncomfortable to people and might cause them to return it. So they get a gold star from me for comfort. There were no obvious problems. Alright, so let's get into listening tests. When I fire up gaming headphones, I'm basically expecting a bass-heavy mess, but maybe everyone is just growing out of that now. The overall sound signature of the HS-260s is actually fairly flat, and Funk was even willing to provide the frequency response curve when I asked them. It's nice to see them be so upfront with the specs of their headphones. This is a significant difference at this point in my mind between Funk and their competition, who simply provide that meaningless frequency response range on the box. Bear in mind, though, that if I were to compare them to audiophile-grade headphones that are available near this price range, such as the ever-popular Audio-Technica ATM50s, which can sometimes be found for as little as a hundred bucks, the HS-260s do fall short. I mean, I think we're a long way away from a headset, an all-in-one type product made by a gaming company, competing at a similar price range with a dedicated pair of headphones from an experienced audio company. I mean, this is, this should be fairly intuitive and is similar to the whole phone versus a dedicated camera conversation. Yes, a proper dedicated device is going to take better pictures than this. I mean, you could even make the argument that it's better to carry a flip phone, a camera, a portable gaming system, a flashlight, a level, I'm sure you see where I'm going with this, compared to a jack-of-all-trades device, and you might be right, but it's not for everyone. I mean, I don't use a headset anymore. I've put on my big boy pants, and I now have a mod mic that I can clip with magic, I mean, a magnet to whatever pair of audiophile-grade headphones I happen to be using at the time, and that works great for me, but the cold hard truth is that not everyone wants that solution, and so for the folks who are only shopping for hundred-ish dollar headsets, I did all of my comparative listening with the HS260s against its competition, the Razer Kraken Pro, the SteelSeries Siberia V2s, and the Corsair Vengeance 1400s. To start with, the HS260 and the Vengeance 1400 sat about in the middle for me in terms of bass boom. They managed to make explosions and other action noises, you know, shake without drowning out everything else, the way that the Kraken Pros did, making those very, very difficult for me to listen to, and very difficult for me to recommend. Compared to the Siberia V2s, they definitely delivered more punch for me, but during my listening tests, I actually made a bit of a personal discovery. I had always wondered what all the fuss was with the Siberia V2s. Sure, they're incredibly lightweight, they're inexpensive, but they always sounded horrible to me. The issue is that they don't seal correctly on my head. There's a gap down here, and they use a one-size-fits-all suspension system, so I can't even adjust them. That makes their bass response absolutely abysmal on my head. By using my hands to actually push them down onto my head, they still don't boom the way that any of the others do, but the bass is quite tight and responsive and not completely absent, so while they're still not a good choice for me at all, I at least get it now. As far as mids go, they were full and not obscured by bass, making them more suitable for music than the Siberia V2s, which even with the manual correction are stronger in both the high and low ranges. And then where highs were concerned compared to the Siberia V2s, the HS260s didn't seem as clear and detailed, but they did sound better than the Vengeance 1400s in this department. Overall, if I had to describe them as like something but different, I'd say they are similar to the Vengeance 1400s, but with less bass oomph and a little more detail in the highs, which is not a bad place for them to be, which leaves us with the mic test. Go ahead and have a listen. This is my microphone test on the Funk HS260. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Okay, I think we're back now. So considering that they come in at slightly more expensive than the Siberia V2s and sound better with a much better mic, and that they sound similar to the Vengeance 1400s and are priced similarly to the Vengeance 1400s with what I'd consider to be a slightly better sounding mic and improved ergonomics with the on-ear controls, the HS260 looks like yet another solid product from Funk. So I think that's pretty much all there is to say. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment in the Linus Tech Tips forum, which is linked below where you can find the pricing for the HS260 as well as other people who want to discuss this headset with you. And as always guys, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.