Astro Gaming products look slick, as do the boxes in which they rest in on store shelves, while awaiting new homes. However, while looking good is nice, there's an old adage that states, "Beauty is only skin deep, but good design goes clear to the bone"... or something to that effect.
The sound quality is very nice, with strong bass response and crisp, clean sound from low to high; especially if used in conjunction with the Astro Gaming's MixAmp (sold separately). I found the A30 to be equally adept at playing my tunes, surfing the web or playing games. I used the headset with EnglishCentral.com, testing how well it worked with voice recognition and found that the only two problems I had was the occasional insertion of an "ow" phoneme (which may have had to do with the closeness of the microphone to my mouth) and a lot of dropped "R"s, which, upon close analysis of my recorded playback, both seem to be effects of my particular manner of speaking, rather than any failure of the A30, itself.
The A30 Headset feels very well put-together, with smoothly pivoting joints that don't have wobble or give to them. Once the headband is adjusted and I have them in place, they stay put comfortably without shifting on me.
The quality makes me think that they could stand up to the stress of carrying them with me from my consoles to my PC or on the go, but the included soft-sided travel case means they don't really have to. The travel case opens like a book, has a pocket on the left side for the various accessory cords that come with it and a formed area on the right side that the A30 Headset basically mounts to, keeping it safe in place if you should jostle the case about. When you've got everything tucked into place, just zip the case shut and you're off. There's even a rectangular plastic buckle sort of piece stitched on the back that you could use to attach it to luggage with a luggage strap, perhaps, but as the case isn't mentioned in the instructions, I'm only guessing on that part.
However, these headphones were made to travel, from the travel case they come in to the multiple quick-disconnect cables that can be left attached to ones' PC, console and mobile device (if desired) swapping quickly and easily by simply disconnecting from one and plugging into the other.
