Introduction

AceZone is a Danish audio company that was formed less than five years ago and managed to make a huge name for itself in the pro gaming scene already. It was founded by entrepreneurs who have decades of collective experience in the the audio/visual/microphone world, as well as those who have been in the e-sports scene for longer than some people reading this review have been alive. Add to this a talented engineering team, including consultants such as our own former audio editor Frederik, and there is good pedigree in the outfit already. AceZone's founder Christian flew over to meet me in person with review samples of the company's products and managed to leave a very strong impression. I don't usually cover headsets since I haven't been impressed by anything marketed as a "gaming headset" until now.


I figured this photo of some pro CS:GO players participating at a PGL Major was as good a title photo for this review of the AceZone A-Rise as any. The headset you are seeing here is the A-Live which is a special version of the A-Rise that has been used by tournament organizers involved in games such as Counter Strike, Apex Legends, Rainbow 6, Dota II, Rocket League and so on. This in turn means the A-Live is the official headset in events from organizations including PGL, ESL, and BLAST with AceZone having many others on the way. The A-Rise was developed to address the many requests from players and their fans to be able to have a similar gaming audio experience without the tournament monitoring features on the A-Live. There is quite a lot going on here and I would say also that the A-Rise reminds me more of an aviation headset that has been tweaked throughout for pro gaming than a re-badged OEM kit most other companies use. Thanks to AceZone for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp as we begin our coverage with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

Given the AceZone A-Rise review sample was flown in personally, I wasn't surprised to see it was missing the retail packaging. The company's marketing rep was kind enough to take some photos of the product box for me, which I've then edited to include above. We see the A-Rise ships in a 2-piece cardboard box using black and orange colors with the brand logo and full name on the front and sides alike. Opening the box we see thick foam machined to snugly protect the headset carry case, which comes with a QR code sticker that points you to the multi-language user manuals available on the AceZone website.


The carry case is quite good and well above your usual gaming headset case in design and composition. It is relatively large, indicating the headset isn't foldable, and is a hard case in black. There is a deep indent at the top allowing you to hold on to the case easily and AceZone has used this space to add in the brand logo as seen above. The zipper mechanism is sealed to add some dust and spill resistance and the zipper tag itself feels quite sturdy in use. Inside the case is a separate compartment for accessories with the headset placed in the main compartment.


This may be a gaming headset with Bluetooth functionality, but AceZone would rather you use it wired for best performance. As such, we get a black sleeved USB Type-A to Type-C cable as well as a shorter 3.5 mm TRS to 3.5 mm TRS analog single-ended cable in the case. Rounding off the unboxing experience is a spare foam windscreen cover for the microphone—there is one pre-installed on the microphone.