• Verified Purchase

Would maybe be OK for occasional GA use, not a professional pilot

• By A Luptak from Pittsburgh PA on Wednesday, April 06, 2016
• Pros: Earcups are very light, ANR is nearly on par with LS Zulus
• Review: My Lightspeed Zulu 2's needed to be repaired, so I took it as an opportunity to try some different headset brands. I've had nothing but Lightspeed products, starting with a pair of QFR passive headsets, then a pair of the 15-30XL ANR. I've always felt Lightspeed offered a decent product and value over the other brands and I never bought into the David Clark mystique. But since my Zulu 2's are only a year old and needed fixed, I'm concerned that they aren't as durable (my old pair of Zulu 1's had about 2000 hours on them before needing fixed)
  
  I'm an airline pilot in a Dash 8 turboprop, so I consider ANR headsets necessary to my job. I can hear the old timers out there now saying "We never had any noise cancelling". But they can't hear me because they DIDN'T have ANR. I've been using ANR since I began as a CFI 10 years ago.Noise is very fatiguing and when you're used to ANR, it's worse. Since these Faros had no reviews, I wanted to see how they were. Especially since they are priced close enough to the Zulus, Sennheiser S1 and AKG AV100 premium headsets for consideration. (Not a fan of in ear, so I won't try any of those.)
  
  I'm a firm believer in "You get what you pay for". I put 20 hours on these in 4 days and I wasn't impressed enough to even consider keeping them. While the G3's are lightweight, thanks to the carbon fiber ear cups, the clamping pressure is very high. While this makes the passive noise reduction better than my Zulus, I did not find them comfortable. One day of 6 hours of flying and I still felt like I was wearing these Faros an hour after leaving the cockpit! If the ear cups were heavier, these would be worse than "David Headclamps".
  
  The ANR seems very comparable to my Lightspeeds, though I still think the Zulus are quieter. The audio fidelity for ATC is a bit sharper than the Zulus, but for music, the G3's are very, very flat. I have a pair of Audio Technica studio reference headsets at home and the fidelity was much like those, but even flatter. No bass at all, making for very thin sound. Even for ATC, it was very thin sounding. I don't listen to music while flying, but tried it out for comparison. Lightspeed is much better in this regard.
  
  The Bluetooth paired quickly and easily with my iPhone 6, though I didn't make any calls with these. The Bluetooth indicator uses a multi-colored LED to indicate operation. It's really bright and could be annoying in a dark cockpit, especially a small GA one The battery box is rather bulky and the cord is short. Maybe in a low mounted GA situation with the plugs under the panel or in the armrest this would be OK, but in an over the shoulder plug, it was rather annoying. I won't complain about the cords being too long on my Zulus again.
  
  Summary: If you're trying to save money on a spare set of ANR headsets for occasional use or passenger use, these are OK. But if you put a lot of time in the cockpit, go for one of the other brands.