The Sonar 5.1 comes with few amenities: just the headset itself, a user manual and software/driver CD. The manual has very detailed instructions in well-written English with screenshots and diagrams throughout.


The Sonar uses over-ear cups that are well-padded as well as a soft padded headband. The USB cable is plenty long enough, probably overkill in fact; it's three meters or almost ten feet. There is a control box about three feet down the cable from the headset that contains volume up/down, mute and mic on/off buttons. There are also two LEDs to indicate power/activity and mic on/off.


The ear cups allow for a lot of adjustment: they swivel up to 90° and can change their angle by a small amount. The headband also has a large amount of flexibility; it easily stretched to accommodate the wide box that the headset came in.


The boom mic is attached to a swivel point that turns on the left ear piece. The boom itself is also highly articulated and can be positioned in nearly any direction just like a flexible-head straw. The arms of the headset can extend a full two inches to fit nearly any size head.

Let's install the Sonar software and do some testing.