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At a glance, the Omen Mindframe doesn’t look too unlike other premium gaming headsets with it’s sleek, black frame, thick mesh ear cushions, and suspended leatherette headband. But hidden inside its RGB accented earcups is something that makes it wholly unique to other gaming headsets — HP’s FrostCap technology.
The Mindframe moves heat away from your ears so you can remain cool during prolonged use. It’s a brilliant concept that aims to tackle the age-old problem of hot and stuffy gaming headsets. This headset definitely keeps your head cool, but it’s not perfect.
Buy at Best Buy U.S. works as intended, delivering a light, cool breeze to the ears if you crank it up to maximum chill. Don’t worry, though — it’s not overwhelming, providing a pleasant ear environment instead of acting as a refrigerator for your ears. The cooling effect is prominent when you first use the headset, but after some time it becomes unnoticeable.
The headset’s exterior does become hot over time and if you touch it, you’ll feel the heat radiating from it. Occasionally, you’ll even feel the warmth from the headset on the skin on your neck and behind your ears, and that can bring its own discomfort.
To turn on and adjust the FrostCap tech in the headset, you’ll need to download the Omen Command Center app. Settings include low, medium, and high — though, you’ll only probably alternate between medium and high because the low setting is too gentle to notice. While you can adjust the settings in the app, there are no onboard controls to do it from your headset. That’s a bummer.
The fancy cooling tech adds a bit of weight to the headset, which makes it tedious to wear. The suspended leatherette headband helps with weight distribution, but there is no way to adjust the size of the headset otherwise. The weight of the earcups pulls the headset down. Personally, I found myself constantly putting it back into place.
Otherwise, the frame is surprisingly flexible. You can do a fair amount of twisting and turning without worrying about breaking the headset. The breathable mesh coverings of the earcups are incredibly plush and comfortable.
The headset is wired and can only be connected via USB, a design choice that seems directly influenced by the need to supply power to the thermoelectric cooling hardware inside each ear cup. The cable is braided and a little over six feet long, which serves as enough length to move around comfortably while using it. The only onboard controls are a volume wheel that is placed neatly behind the right ear where you’re not likely to accidentally hit it.
The headset touts RGB lighting, but the customization options for it are pretty minimal. RGB strips around the HP Omen logo on each ear cup can be programmed to only three options: a static color, color switching, and audio. Color switching cycles through six customizable colors and audio pulses various colors to the beat of whatever music you’re listening to. I wish there were audio profile options in the Command Center, but that’s something the Mindframe is lacking.
Luckily, the inherent sound quality of the Mindframe is impressive. With 40mm drivers and 7.1 virtual surround sound, I could hear everything happening in The Division 2 with incredible clarity, and could even pinpoint the exact location from where it was coming from. It handled both the clamor of rapid firing bullets and the more subtle voices of nearby enemies with equal quality. The mic quality is consistent, loud, and audible, but not without the subtle and persistent sound of static that’s only really noticeable if it’s quiet.
Overall, HP’s Mindframe gaming headset delivers on its promise of cooler ears, though I can’t help but notice the cheaper alternatives that handle everything else so much better — such as the Logitech G935. FrostCap technology comes at a high cost and as “cool” as HP’s headset might be, it lacks in some of the features that would warrant the $200 price tag. If HP decides to iterate on the Mindframe’s design in the future and improve on some of the essentials — like an adjustable frame, audio profile options, and onboard headset controls — it could be a considerable, albeit novel, choice in gaming headsets.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.