When I first heard about the AMBX kit, I knew I had to try one out. To me, this would be the next step into full gaming immersion.

How well does it do the job? Continue reading for a hands-on video and my review of this kit.

First off, what is the AMBX kit? It’s a modular set of accessories including lights, speakers, fans, and more. The unit that I’m reviewing has everything - lights mounted on the speakers, the wall washer (which is basically a central unit where you connect everything), two fans and a wrist rest with built-in rumble. How does the AMBX enhance PC gaming? There is basically two types of support.

First, we have game that have been built from the ground up to use everything that the AMBX has to offer. The lights will light up when the games tell them to. The fans will start when you’re suppose to feel a strong wind. The wrist rumble will shake when it is supposed to. Of course, it’s up to the developer to make good use of these AMBX options. My specific test game for this was Farcry 2. The video below shows this support in action.

Then, we have games that don’t directly include AMBX support. Some measure of support can be emulated by the AMBX software. From what I could gather, this method averages the colors of half of your screen(right/left) and pushes that color to each of the lights. From my experience, I kind of liked this method better than the actual AMBX-enabled games. The emulation will often catch a difference in colors that perhaps the developers didn’t think of when coding it into the game. One example is the shadows - the AMBX software understands that you’re in the shadow because most of the screen will darken. In Farcry 2, I would walk under a tree and the lights would stay blue to represent the sky. The second half of the video will show a couple of games being run through emulation.


These kits also work while watching movies and listening to music. You can even program them to do certain things while you’re working in Windows. It definitly brings a certain mood to movies, I can’t believe something like this isn’t used in theaters. I’ve been using it to watch movies on my PC and let me tell you, it gives you a totally new movie experience.

These LED lights are able to display 16 million different color variations. The fans can spin at speeds of up to 5000 rpm. The wrist rumble… Well, that’s one part that I didn’t like about the kit. The wrist rumble feels like the inferior rumble that we got on the DS. It makes a lot of noise while only weakly vibrating. The fans are the same - they make a lot of noise when they start up. I’m guessing this is the reason why there are different variations of the AMBX kit.

If you already have good speakers, I’d recommend the Starter Kit. The Starter Kit gives you the lights, which are the most important part of AMBX. If you do need a good 2.1 speaker kit, grab the Pro Gamer Kit. This set will give you both the speaker and the lights. I can’t really recommend the Premium Kit, it is expensive and the fans and rumble aren’t really worth the cost difference.

You can get the starter kit for about 130$. The Pro Gamer for 150$ and the Premium Kit for 230$.

Score: (Starter/Pro Gamer)