Yapster Blaster Usability Testing
Since we game here at the GDN main office, a lot more so these days, we had ample opportunity to test out the Yapster Blaster. The lightweight headset sits comfortably on the head and has standard adjustable earcup arms so you can find a proper fit. The ear cups are secured to the band through pivot points at roughly the middle 
of the cups but are lacking a forward/back adjustment, as on the Sharkoon Xtatic SR, so I found that the left earcup didn’t fit totally flush against my head. It had a minuscule effect on sound and only allowed a small amount of environmental noise to slip in.
Now I don’t believe I have extremely large ears, I’m certainly not a taxi with its doors open by any measure, however I do have earrings in both ears. I found the earcups to be a bit too small to fit completely flush to my head. The padding on them is a bit thin and they have a sort of faux leather covering. I would have much preferred the thicker, fabric covered ear cups of the Sharkoon Xtatic SR or the SteelSeries Siberia, both offer a larger earcup and more padding which ends up in a better fitting ear cup. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it wasn’t ideal.
Also, the plug for Xbox chat has to attach to the Xbox controller. Often I will lean back and rest the controller on my lap and the adapter and audio jack are then aimed out the back of the controller and jabbing one in the gut. It’s not that it was uncomfortable, on the contrary. However, I was afraid that I would cinch the cable or ultimately break the jack rendering it useless on that controller. I have already offered my thoughts on that to the guys at CompuExpert in that a simple L-shaped or U-shaped jack would change the angle to down (when looking at the top of the controller, or, in the case of the U-shaped jack, would send the cable back toward the front of the controller, where it would be out of the way.
Finally, at first, I had thought there were a lot of cables. The amp plugs into the USB and then out to the RCA audio as well as to the headset which, when gaming on the Xbox 360, is also attached to the controller. What I found was that the cables ultimately were the same length as the standard wired Xbox 360 controller and I just needed to do a small bit of cable management to get it all sorted and be comfortable with it.
Yapster Blaster Final Thoughts
I did mention the unit is $29.99 right? For a pretty much universal set of 
headphones that also offer full chat on the Xbox 360 and PC, it’s a downright steal. The small ear cups and lack of dual-axis adjustment and the jack for the controller knock down a half point on what could have been a piece of hardware that got a perfect score here at GDN. Regardless, this is some of the best sound you can get in the sub-$50 price range and the univeral nature of the rig means you don’t need four different headsets. Its light weight and the look might fool you into thinking the sound will be lacking, you would be wrong. The whole unit performs admirably, even after someone sat on it.
Note: The Yapster headset is also available without the Xjacker amp, however that unit is then only usable on a system that has 3.5mm audio jacks and not the consoles without some sort of adapter. Price is around $20.
