The Logitech G733 headset is designed to be seen. The wireless headset comes in three vibrant colorways, including white, blue, purple, and black – each sporting a funky headband and front-facing RGB lights. Everything about these headsets, from the color pallet to the removable boom mic and programmable “G-Shift” button, makes them an intriguing option for streamers.
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Logitech G733 Lightspeed – Design and Features
The lights and colors on the Logitech G733 Lightspeed are incredibly unique and give the entire headset a playfully faux-futuristic aesthetic. Depending on your peripheral vision, you can occasionally see these lights while playing (especially in dark rooms). Still, it’s a small annoyance compared to other Logitech headsets that put the light strip on the back of the cans.
I reviewed the lilac option and thought it looked great, mixing light and dark purple with neon yellow and green. While that color combo won’t resonate with everyone, there are safer black and white options that still carry a unique aesthetic, due in part to the angular, futuristic look of the plastic.
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The Logitech G733’s strap is remarkably comfortable even for long gaming sessions, and the over-ear design provides a decent amount of natural noise cancellation. However, there’s no onboard active noise cancellation. Much of the comfort comes from the headphones’ weight, a measly 9.8 ounces, which is considerably lighter than something like the Astro A50 at 11.2 ounces.
The headset orientation is a little different from most headsets I’ve tested, as the two buttons and volume wheel are all on the left side of the headset. While it never bothered me, and I reacquainted myself with the orientation quickly, people playing fast-paced shooters may resent losing control of their WASD setup.
The topmost button functions as an on-ear mute and on/off switch. After pressing it, the headset sounds a small beep, and the LED panel briefly lights red for mute or green for output on. The visual feedback is a great touch, and I was happy to see it provided the red/green signal even with the lighting strip turned off.
However, if you’re not satisfied with using that button for muting/unmuting, you can customize it to perform dozens of actions using Logitech’s G Hub software. That is, provided you can get it to work correctly. (More on that later.)
The G733 boasts a 20-hour battery life (or 29 hours with the lights off). It charges through USB-C (with a USB-A thumbstick for connecting to your computer). There’s no other way to connect to devices, so the G733 is restricted to computer use.
Logitech G733 – Performance
First, the good news. The Logitech G733s have good audio, excellent battery life, and tremendous range.
The headset sounds clean out of the box, with a balanced sound that doesn’t lean too hard on treble or bass. Logitech’s equipped it with 40mm “Pro G” drivers, which get very loud and retain quality at high volumes.
The advertised 60-foot range is playing it safe. I was able to walk nearly 100 feet from my computer before the audio started cutting out. While your experience will differ depending on interference, it’s one of the more impressive ranges I’ve ever encountered. And that’s a relief because the USB-A thumbstick you plug into your computer is large. It’s more than an inch long and nearly half an inch thick. While it’s portly composition didn’t interfere with any of my other ports, it came close. I found it a bit annoying on my laptop, where it was just long enough to interfere with a wired mouse when plugged into the right side.
The battery also outperformed its marketed 20-hour life (or 29 hours without lighting). With the lighting on and the volume about halfway, I barely ever burned below 50% charge, even after hours of testing across several days. It doesn’t seem to lose much charge when off, but when you eventually run it below 15%, the lights will cycle the “Breathing” effect in red. By default, the battery shuts off after 30 minutes of inactivity, which can be altered in the settings. I found 15 minutes to be about perfect, but you can set the automatic shutoff to as quick as 1 minute or turn it off entirely.
Unfortunately, most of the Logitech G733’s coolest features are locked behind the Logitech G Hub software, and there’s no need to sugarcoat it – the Logitech G Hub software is a total nightmare. During my testing, I repeatedly ran into serious problems, many of which I was completely unable to resolve, save for switching to a new computer. During testing on one computer, I was unable to access fundamental software features, like the G-Shift button mentioned above, as well as the complete absence of any EQ settings, Surround Sound, or “Assignments.”
Nothing I did, including a total reinstall, fixed my problems with the EQ features. I had to switch to a different computer just to see what I wasn’t seeing. On another computer, these features populated, and I was able to mess with the EQ settings, a Surround Sound pane, the G-Shift toggle, and a vast assortment of “Assignments” that never appeared on my primary testing rig. And these features made a profound difference in my experience.
By default, the bass is a bit flimsy, and switching to Logitech’s Bass Boost preset made the headphones slightly better for music. But these presets don’t go far enough – even the two most different presets (Flat and Bass Boost) don’t fundamentally change the gaming experience. To do that, you’re going to need to get your hands dirty – either by tinkering with the Advanced EQ sliders or the two simplified sliders for Mid and Bass (sorry, no treble here).
The Surround Sound pane (also missing on my first computer) almost suffers from the opposite problem as the Presets. Toggling it on instantly started blowing out the bass, and no amount of customizing returned the bass to normal levels. But it did provide some seriously cool 3D audio for gaming, and I was impressed with how it emulated multi-directional sound. However, when many sounds happened at once (music, enemy fire, footsteps, etc.), the quality noticeably dipped to the point where I wasn’t sure it was worth it.
The Assignments tab (which again was missing from one computer) also fundamentally changed my headset experience. By turning on G-Shift, you can assign a staggering number of actions to the Headset’s top button. These range from toggling the Surround Sound, opening an Emoji pane, or pausing your music. There are also integrations with Discord, OBS, and Overwolf, allowing you to activate actions like Muting yourself in-app or joining voice channels. There’s even an option to create your own macros, which can flip toggles, repeat while holding the button, or start a sequence. Seemingly the only thing it couldn’t easily do was toggle the lights on and off.
I can’t overstate how helpful something like this could be for streamers and how disappointing it is that it just straight-up didn’t work on one of my computers. And while none of the software issues persisted on my second testing computer, I came across scores of similar unresolved issues online while troubleshooting, making it pretty clear my problems weren’t an isolated incident.
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Source: IGN.com Logitech G733 Lightspeed Wireless Headset Review