Having used the Corsair H2100 for just shy of 12 months, these cans are like a breath of fresh air. Naturally, when I first set them up I compare them straight away to the existing headset and all it's problems they had. The Corsair's are a lot cheaper, and do well for the money - but how do the Corsair's fare when you decide to spend over 3x the price for another wireless headset?
The answer is poorly - These SteelSeries cans destroy the Corsair's in almost every single area. The physical construction is incredible. They are light and supremely comfortable, and are made with hard wearing soft-touch plastics and memory foam on the visible pieces. Internally, it's a solid metal band giving a real "long lasting" feel to them.
Inside the box is a plethora of accessories to connect this in any to almost anything you want. There's 2 3.5mm analogue cables, an optical cable, USB, and connectors for console controllers (all current gen supported too) as well as the DAC / Amp box and a power plug + 2 batteries.
Setting them up was very easy. I plugged the receiver box in to the mains, and attached optical to my PC to receive the sound and a 3.5mm analogue to my microphone input on the PC. The box configured the inputs and correct settings for the inputs it detected and I was set, as the headset was detected automatically as soon as I threw a battery in it. I easily adjusted them to fit my weird shaped head and they were instantly comfortable - even some 6-7 hours later in a long gaming session.
In use with music the default settings it chose (no EQ and Dolby Virtual off) sounded incredible. The bass is very strong - headshaking actually, but the mids are nice and warm and not muddled with sharp highs that only have a very slight rollover at the highest volume (that's too loud at any rate to listen too). It's almost studio level grade clarity and you forget it's actually wireless at all. There's no static "hiss" or distortion that I got with the Corsairs at all. Movies and games impress even further. If the movie has Dolby Digital for it's audio track, this is passed through untouched and blows you away. The perceived surround stage sounded very believable, and I could pick out the direction the sound was intended to be coming from. Games were very similar, and the surround track in games was mixed in hardware to create a soundstage similar to Dolby. It can also be turned off if that's not to your liking, but it sounded very good to my ears.
The wireless range goes way beyond the advertised specs, and had zero dropouts. The battery life per-pack (remember there's 2 of them - one is always charging in the desktop DAC) was a solid 12-14 hours.
My only very minor gripes are that the included 5-band equalizer on the receiver isn't very good. Music especially sounded too overly processed in the high's with any of them enabled, but then I've never been a real fan of that anyway. Some do find it ok, so don't read too much into that if it pleases you. The second minor grumble is the included microphone is just OK. The one on the Corsair was significantly better as it sounded almost like you was speaking face to face. I've been told the mic on this sounds more like perhaps a radio DJ over FM broadcast. So it's not awful by any stretch, but sounds a little tinny at times. The noise cancelling is phenomenal though, and is a lot better than the Corsairs in this regard. It's probably not suited to podcast / streaming broadcast use, but then I wasn't expecting it to be. Lastly, the little desktop receiver doesn't support DTS audio - Would have been nice to have that as most Blu-Ray's are DTS only, but it's not a deal breaker (Blu-Ray playback software from Cyberlink mixes it into Dolby Digital for SPDIF pass through on the fly anyway. The headset understands it correctly and shows the Dolby logo).
Overall, those very minor niggles do nothing to detract from my experience of using them. They really do sound as good as the majority of the reviews say. You'll forget they are wireless, as the sound is right up there with decent wired headsets in my book. They justify their high price tag.
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... looking for in a gaming headset - are they comfortable? In short - no
Firstly I will address what is frankly the most important thing anyone should be looking for in a gaming headset - are they comfortable? In short - no. No they are not comfortable to wear.The ear cups are nice and thick but very shallow meaning the space between your head/ears/plastic inside the headset is quite small so you'll end up feeling that all too common throbbing ear pain and hot sensation. HOWEVER I found these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01HWBJETW/ref=cfb_at_prodpgQuite simply these are meant to be a repair kit but conveniently they have a sticky backing to them which I peeled off and fixed to the original ear cups making them bigger (photo provided). This made a whole world of difference. Ever felt warm, soft cushiony breasts softly pressing against your ears? Well that's how this now feels! Not only is the pain now gone but somehow there is a slight vacuum sensation which you'll notice when you put them on and take them off. This also helps prevent outside noise from coming in (as I noticed that was also an issue)So - problem of the ear pain is now solved so on to the sound qualityOverall pretty damn decent. I've had some creatives, turtlebeach, G930's in the past and this lives up to the sound quality I expected. The bass is goooood and the left/right ratio sounds impressive. The 7.1 feels a bit odd though. Something not quite right so I don't often use that very much. Using it via the USB device (there's a thing you need to use but it IS optional) makes functions like lighting, 7.1 and a few other features work but you'll find the max sound volume drop but it's easily tolerated.Now for durability:These actually feel like construction materials to build houses. My old G930s and my turtlebeach felt like a wet paper bag flying through a tornado and they both broke within a short amount of time as I use headsets for a good 12h+ a day. These are really strong and sturdy. If I dropped these on the floor I'd be more concerned about house damage than headset damage so I'm pretty confident these will last a very long time.Adaptability:This headset can pretty much be plugged into all your devices which is nice. A few headsets out there will either be exclusive USB or the audio jack thingy. These can switch to 3 different connection types so even if your microwave has an audio jack you can finally listen to your food sizzling away (not recommended). The fact that I can now switch to any device is actually quite nice as I know this headset can be used with anything I own.It's a shame you need to buy some extra padding to make these worth while but I would recommend these as a gaming headset
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Alexander Schubert
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Komfortables und hochwertiges Gaming-Headset
Reviewed in Germany on 18 October 2024
