The new Astro A50 X headset switches between your consoles and PC using HDMI passthrough

theverge.com:

By Antonio G. Di Benedetto, a writer covering tech deals and The Verge’s Deals newsletter, buying guides, and gift guides. Previously, he spent 15 years in the photography industry.

Logitech’s Astro gaming brand has a new flagship gaming headset that costs more than some whole-ass consoles, and it’s designed to simultaneously play nice across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC with a single button press.

But the $379.99 Astro A50 X doesn’t do all of this with simply plebeian technology like Bluetooth. It uses HDMI passthrough for its expansive connectivity — meaning the beefy charging dock of this headset is designed to be wired up as a central hub for much of your home audio / video setup. I hope you’re prepared to take some expert-level classes on cable management (i.e. lots of YouTube searching) if you’re looking to buy one when it ships on December 20th and not make a serpentine mess of cables out of your home theater setup.

Specs and feature-wise, the brutally futuristic-looking A50 X has 40mm graphene audio drivers that debuted in the Logitech G Pro X 2, a built-in mic capable of 16-bit 48 kHz input, Dolby Atmos support (with a Dolby license), and Logitech’s Lightspeed wireless connectivity. It also has EQ / levels tuning through Logitech G Hub (the first Astro headset to use the parent company’s app), Bluetooth for mixing in your phone audio or connecting to a Nintendo Switch (sans easy swapping), a claimed battery life of up to 24 hours on a single charge, a USB-C port in lieu of the previous model’s Micro USB, and two HDMI 2.1 inputs. Those HDMI ports are the key to connecting your Xbox and PlayStation consoles, and they support up to a 4K / 120Hz signal to pass through a single HDMI-out to your TV or