I’ve never cared much for the original Xbox headset. What’s the point of playing a game on a 5.1 equipped system if one entire ear is plugged with a headphone speaker? It annoyed me enough to look for an alternative about a year ago: I found a Sanyo universal cell phone headset for $9.99 at Target. It is an in-the-ear bud design and allowed external sounds through; it also has in in-ear microphone, so I don’t need a big boom thingy in my face.

What about the 360, then?

The nice thing about the Xbox controllers is that you have an add on piece that you can pull in and out of the controller for voice. Handy when your voice goes all screwy or want to give other Live players the impression that you’re too po’ to have a headset.

The Xbox 360 controllers are all Live enabled out of the box. Nifty because it makes for a smaller controller but… well. It’s always on. And without the extra piece, there’s no visible mute button or volume control: just a 2.5mm port to plug into. Stealthy, to be sure, but it kills my old headset.

Wait, you’ve seen a mute button and volume control on the new controllers? That’s a half truth. The official Xbox 360 headset comes with a plug that has the volume and mute controls on it; it’s part of the headset and not the controller. My old headset still worked with the new controllers but there was no volume control – mute I could live without but lack of volume control sucked. Get one over anxious 9 year old screaming at his mother and you’ll lose that ear forever.

Then I remembered that wireless phones – not cell phones – headsets usually had to have volume control on them because the phones didn’t support that… maybe… one of those would…?

Yeah, it works.

I got another Sanyo headset from Target, but it was of a slightly different design and not as good as the first one. I went ahead and got another one from AT&T and it fits much better… both of them work well, but one was more comfortable than the other. And they were about $12 each. So there are relatively cheap alternatives to the stock headset, if you find you don’t like it, even in the land of 360.

Whatever keeps me alive 5 seconds longer in Halo 2, right?