LG’s UltraGear Gaming Speaker GP9 allows you to chat to your mates in-game without a headset

Gaming and headphones go hand in hand, especially if you play a lot online multiplayer shooters that require real-time strategising with teammates over chat, but LG now has a solution for those who want to let their lugs breathe. First unveiled at CES and now rolling out across the world, the UltraGear Gaming Speaker GP9 is essentially a soundbar designed to sit under your monitor. LG naturally recommends its own UltraGear gaming monitors as the perfect partners, but any will work. The GP9 is capable of virtual surround sound and can tailor a game’s audio output to its genre. So if you’re playing a first-person shooter, the speaker will emphasise small details like oncoming footsteps, while RTS mode will let you hear sounds from across the battlefield in strategy games. If you connect the GP9 to a PC you will also get the full Hi-Res effect of its built-in Hi-Fi Quad DAC. As for voice chat, the GP9’s microphones utilise LG’s echo-cancellation algorithm to distinguish your voice from in-game explosions and any background racket. Top-mounted buttons should make switching sound modes and adjusting the volume a doddle, and you even get some RGB lighting for good measure. The UltraGear Gaming Speaker is due to go on sale in South Korea and the US in September, as well as select markets in Europe.