The Final Audio VR3000 is looking to blaze a trail as the next great gaming headphone that you can fit in your pocket.

This compact unit is unique in that it is not an over ear set with  protruding mic, but rather a simple pair of earbuds, albeit with some distinguishing design choices. Final Audio claims that even in this compact shape, the VR 3000 can take your gaming to the next level. Let’s see if they were right.

What’s in the Box?

The VR 3000 comes in the classic final audio packaging, featuring a simple white box with a photo of the earphones on the front. When you open it up, it contains a familiar plastic sleeve that features all of your components. This includes your earphones, multiple interchangeable eartips of varying sizes, a carrying pouch - and most interestingly a pair of ear hooks.

Design and Fit

The design of these earphones is predicated on simplicity throughout, sporting a sleek smooth black color all the way around, without so much as even an accent color or logo on the housing. The only details are on the inside housing, where it says the name of the product and denotes whether it is the left or right earphone.

The material is a matte plastic which looks fairly nice on the occasions when it catches the light, and the earphones are extremely light. The shape is an unusual one for this kind of earbud, looking a lot more like a standard IEM, and it contours to the shape of the inner ear very similarly. If you find the right eartips and get a decent seal, these are very comfortable and the light weight especially makes them easy to wear for long periods of time with no discomfort. 

 You can also see this in the ear hooks that come with the unit. These are not the harder plastic type eartips you might usually see with a sport headphone, and are quite soft. They are made of a very similar material to the cable in order to blend more seamlessly, and they come with a little fastening mechanism on either side. They are a little unwieldy to attach, but once on are a very nice touch that function well. 

You can also watch our video review now. See it below.

Key Features

As an earbud tailored directly toward gaming instead of mainly for listening to music, this unit required a bit of rethinking on the part of final audio. This includes the engineering of the individual components themselves, as is evidenced by the unique 6mm driver that is used here. The voice coil is made of ultra high purity copper clad aluminum wire and all components are treated with a super light and low impact adhesive to reduce the weight of all the moving parts. This makes for overall less pressure and distortion.

The output impedance here is a very low 18 ohms, which means that they can be easily driven by any device you could possibly play a game on, and they’ll have ample amounts of power.

Sound Quality

As I stated before, you certainly can use these to listen to music and they won’t sound bad. In fact, listening to music on these was rather pleasant all the way around, but it will become immediately apparent that this is not what they were optimized for. For one, the bass frequencies - usually the crown jewel of any earbud - are a bit thin and choked here, especially if you want to be listening to something really low end heavy like hip hop.

This is mainly a result of one of the best features here, which is the extremely wide stage. A lot of your tracks just probably won’t sound right to you here because the sounds are almost a little bit too disparate. These actually work fairly well if you want to listen to some classical or even opera to get a sense of the wide sound of a big concert hall, but that’s about it. Rather than creating a cohesive mix that blends together like a whole, the VR 3000 is more focused on creating a really wide soundscape, which it succeeds at mightily.

A big feature these headphones seek to correct is the treatment of high and low range frequencies, which are often given big boosts in gaming specific headphones to accentuate the big and exciting moments. However, final audio rightly argues that, especially nowadays, gaming and VR audio is often intended to help immerse you in the environment, and that a more balanced system will achieve this result. 

It’s hard to argue with this when listening to how well the VR 3000 will put you right in the middle of whatever you’re listening to, whether it’s a game or just your favorite movie or TV show. These were designed specifically with binaural produced audio in mind and it shows. The sounds of environments, whether that’s crickets in the distance or the rumble of thunder or enemy fire ahead, are very crisp and clear. Panning information especially is very sensitive and acute, and even movie scenes you’ve watched a hundred times over may gain a different spatial feel here when you listen to them through these.

Summary

While there are many over ear headphones designed specifically for gaming, the Final Audio VR 3000 stands truly unique as an earbud made for this purpose. From the comfortable fit, to the simple design and the total commitment to environmental sound and immersion, it’s hard not to recommend these to anyone looking to step up their gaming or film and tv headphone listening.

You can order Final Audio VR3000 at Audio46.