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Steelseries ARCTIS 7 $99
$99
$149
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Price:$150 %99
ARCTIS 7 - 2019 Edition
Best wireless gaming headset — PC Gamer
https://steelseries.com/gaming-he...19-edition
Price:
ARCTIS 7 - 2019 Edition
Best wireless gaming headset — PC Gamer
- Lossless 2.4 GHz wireless audio designed for low latency gaming
- Best mic in gaming: the Discord-certified Clearcast bidirectional microphone
- Hear stunning detail in all games with award-winning Arctis sound
- Next-generation DTS Headphone:X v2.0 surround sound
- 24-hour battery life outlasts even your longest gaming sessions
https://steelseries.com/gaming-he...19-edition
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Note: You must login (or signup) to steelseries [steelseries.com]get the Black Friday sale price.
Price:$150 %99
ARCTIS 7 - 2019 Edition
Best wireless gaming headset — PC Gamer
https://steelseries.com/gaming-he...19-edition
Price:
ARCTIS 7 - 2019 Edition
Best wireless gaming headset — PC Gamer
- Lossless 2.4 GHz wireless audio designed for low latency gaming
- Best mic in gaming: the Discord-certified Clearcast bidirectional microphone
- Hear stunning detail in all games with award-winning Arctis sound
- Next-generation DTS Headphone:X v2.0 surround sound
- 24-hour battery life outlasts even your longest gaming sessions
https://steelseries.com/gaming-he...19-edition
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38 Comments
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Bonus: Their top end $300+ headset is nearly identical, same mic, just more useless whizzbang 19.2 surround audio you don't need.
[1] https://www.rtings.com/headphones...mi
If you love EDM low end bass that bumps, you will be kind of sad about these. They slightly under-represent that 20hz range that you enjoy, and what you really want there for this to pop is for it to be over-represented in that range. I like that kind of bass sound so I will say that I wish this set excelled more in this area. I believe that the Logitech G933 has better bass response in this same range, so if you are buying just for that - it might be worth a look. Lots of the "audiophile" folks recommended a variety of headphones that perform objectively worse in this same range, so it's not especially bad - I just wish it bumped more. They sound quite good otherwise as far as my subjective tastes go, and you can see that they match the Rtings generated tones pretty well. In game sound on stereo setting sounds great to me. I also noticed that the headphones with the most over-represented low end often had worse mid and especially treble performance - seems there's no such thing as a free lunch in headphones. Also wireless headphones with lots of low end bass cost a lot more (looking at you Bose and B&O)
The wireless is excellent. Most "audiophile" cans are wired, and many need a third party microphone, and some even need an amplifier if their impedance is too high and if your computer's on board sound isn't very good.
The comfort level was a concern at first since it felt a bit snug. I opened it up wider a bit and it loosened slightly. Wore it for hours at a time over the last few days, no irritation and it's not too warm. My head is pretty big.
The mic sounds pretty good, it's got a nice mute button on the left ear cup, and a red light on the mic tip that you can see while wearing that indicates its muted state which is useful. Mine has some issue with noise gating what I think might be fan noise, so I need to figure out something for this, you can hear it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/steelser...h=a7
It's not a problem with push to talk style gaming, just longer speech with quiet in between. Nonetheless it should be better, but I'm not sure if it's just mine so take it as you will. I REALLY like that it tucks into the housing when I don't want it. HyperX, Sennheiser, Logitech, and others all have external boom arm style mics which I would rather not have. Your preference, as usual, is king here.
The SSE3 software works fine, but you can also use a variety of 3rd party EQ's if you want to. I used the Peace APO equalizer to see if I could get more bass, as it had more fine grained control. I couldn't add more good sounding bass but it worked just fine otherwise. I did try the 7.1 DTS Headphone X, and disliked it in the Witcher 3 and Batman: AK, but it actually sounded pretty nice in Rise of the Tomb Raider since that game has support for DTS 7.1. For games that don't support it, it's better off, and it sounds bad for music in my opinion. Check if you have a game that can utilize it as you will probably ignore it otherwise.
A lot of "audiophiles" swear by open backed headphones over closed back like this style, but be aware of the strengths and weaknesses. Open back means a large spacious sound stage that can make the speakers sound further away from your ears and it's often taken as better for audible location cues in competitive shooters and the like. Open back headphones are all objectively worse in the low end bass though, and they also leak tons of their audio out and allow lots in as well, all of which are bad for me as I play at night near people and I would like bass better than these if anything, not worse. I didn't have a problem locating enemies audibly in PUBG, these are a big improvement from my old on-ear style headphones.
I was concerned after all of the negativity that I could have bought something worlds better for the same or less money, but it isn't clear that that is accurate. If you want wireless, and a decent mic, a reasonable price, and decent sound quality, this is a good buy and I recommend them as long as the drawbacks I mentioned aren't a big deal for your usage.
Possible audiophile oriented closed back wired alternatives might be the Beyerdynamic Custom Game at $162, the Sennheiser Game Zero at $129. I cant vouch for the sound signatures on these as I couldn't find data for them but they appear to be popular. In my opinion it's been pretty frustrating to see such widely varied subjective opinions, many of which contradict each other with broad language. Just my 2c, Rtings has been very helpful here.
If you want to try the open backed style because you want the bigger soundstage and don't care about leakage, you might try the Massdrop PC37X at $119 (it's a Sennheiser Game One variant for a bit cheaper).
I hope this post has been useful, and that I just saved you days of reading information to help you make a decision, or point you in the right direction. To be honest though, if I don't get some rep for this, I'm probably never going to post a lengthy helper post on this site ever again.
Right now I use my $10 hideous Logitech Void Bumblebee from the Best Buy price quirk a while back. I'm considering the 2019 arctis 7. Will be watching prices over the next few days. Would love to see this $99 price hit ebay today.
My head is large enough where the g933 became unbearably painful to wear while gaming. I'm hoping these can fit looser?
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Right now I use my $10 hideous Logitech Void Bumblebee from the Best Buy price quirk a while back. I'm considering the 2019 arctis 7. Will be watching prices over the next few days. Would love to see this $99 price hit ebay today.
My head is large enough where the g933 became unbearably painful to wear while gaming. I'm hoping these can fit looser?
https://www.rtings.com/headphones...es
That comparison shows the clamping force and weight, but it's the older Arctis 7. I've never used the old one, and I do see that SteelSeries is saying that they tweaked it for comfort, but I can't say how much of a difference it has made from the old ones: https://steelseries.com/blog/arct...edition-69 the band is steel, and felt fine when I pulled it wide open to loosen it a bit, seemed to work fine.
933's pinched too much and were uncomfortable. The foam wasn't that great against my skin. They were alright but also felt cheap for the price you pay for them. Sound was good but not stellar. Returned for old version of Arctis 7's at the time.
7's were pretty good. They were light and sounded pretty nice. They had much better range than the 933's. I could go downstairs and get a snack/drink and still hear/talk. They died during a firmware update.
I got the Plantronics 800 after. It was cool to try out Dolby Atmos for headphones. It seemed to work correctly. They were better than the 933's and it was difficult to figure out between the 7's and 800's. Eventually, I wanted a more closed backed headphones so I wouldn't disturb others.
Nest, I tried the Turtle Beach Stealth 800's. They were just terrible. I wanted to like them since the name had been around since the 90's with sound oriented hardware. The foam/leather on the headphones felt cheap. The dealbreaker was the lack of signal when you far from the USB. It would crackle and make noise. I was barely 5-10 feet away from the USB receiver and there was a lot of static and noise. Returned the next day. Fastest return out of all the headphones.
After that, I went back to the Steelseries 7, but at this point they had released the version 2. I am going to stick with this new version. I've also ordered an addition pair so I don't have to move them from my computer to PS4 which is downstairs.
For the record, I have had the 433's and Hyper Cloud II's. I liked both at the time that I had them. 433's would be bad nowadays but I would still recommend the Cloud II's for a budget wired system.
I don't know if they changed it.
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