Must have had a bad battery in your headset. My A50's last 8 hours maybe more and if you need to you can just plug them in while you play. Same thing as having a plug and play on your controller. The A40's are awesome as well and come with the mixamp that can be used with any headset you might switch to in the future. Either Astro headset is a good pick up. If you want to go real wild look into getting Sennheisers.

Couldn't say I never used them. I have had the top of the line Turtle beaches and Astro and I would recommend a wired option on whatever you choose. Batteries are a pain to deal with.