SteelSeries Arctis 7 - Lossless Wireless Gaming Headset with DTS Headphone: X v2.0 Surround - for PC and PlayStation 4 - Black

Going into these after using the Astro A50s for years, I was expecting a lower quality headset. I was a little surprised at just how well these performed compared to top of the line headsets. The noise cancellation in both the mic and headset are great. The mic doesnt pic up much stray noise (the fan in the other corner of my room never gets picked up) and when you have the headset you hear NOTHING. Sometimes this is a little worrying honestly, as with the A50s i could at least hear loud noises but with these i could even hear my door to my room open and close. With the surround sound, you can tell a slight difference in the sound coming from the two earphones. The right one is more sensitive and footsteps will be louder. This was a non issue for me as i could still hear movement from the left ear cup just fine. Unless youre really into audio and care about specifics in surround sound headsets, it will be a nonissue and people tend to over exaggerate the issue. I will note that if you are using this for the PS4, the dial that lets you choose the balance between game and chat audio will not work. You will have to manually do this in the party settings on the PS4 itself, or in the games menu when you first play a game. Again, this is a small workaround that will probably take 30 seconds to fix whenever you launch a game for the first time. The mic also was a little quiet for me. The mic volume output is a setting thats also in the Party Settings on the PS4. You will have to mess with this for any headset though, so no complaints there. Overall, this headset is really great for the price. If you want perfection then youre going to have to spend the big bucks, but this headset is really close. Id shop from steeleseries again for future headsets

I’ve had them a year and a half now, and for the most part they’ve been great. They’re comfy, the band is fantastic and doesn’t give me headaches, the charge lasts long and when I do need to plug in the cord is long. Great range, I can go into the kitchen and people can still hear me (floor down and halfway across the house). mic is retractable and I haven’t had complaints of mic clarity. My only complaint - six months in they started shutting themself off :| no reason, battery will be fine, I’ll be watching a video or playing a game and out of nowhere I’ll hear the powering down sound and they’ll shut down. Irl turn them back on and they’ll be normal, but it’s a bit annoying when you’re in voice chat and in a game and your headphones shut off and you have to take a hand away to turn them back on.

I was a bit hesitant to spend the money on these as in my experience a lot of gaming headsets are over priced and low quality hardware/software. I really like the software has so many options to tune your sound and create different profiles which I used for testing what worked best for each use (Gaming, Cinema, Music and chat). The quality is great as far as im concerned, even though I was hesitant that Ive seen some pictures of broken parts but after owning these for a few months, Im starting to think it is the user that is mistreating the headphones. I dont treat them like glass but I definitely dont throw mine around in anger or carelessness, mine are on my head or hanging from a stand when not in use. All in all I wouldnt hesitate recommending these to friends and there are so many options out there id say this is definitely worth the money and up there with higher priced headphones. Now for downsides of what ive found so far. There is no documentation on recommended tips for fine tuning your headset, it would be nice to have an explanation of how the features in the software benefit certain sound. For example when gaming in Warzone it is nice to hear footsteps but not have it so loud that when youre in a car or gunfight you cant hear your team mates cause the chat is so low. It took some testing to get this ironed out. There needs to be better documentation on how to optimally configure your headset on different platforms whether it is PC or a consol. Secondly Ive noticed my battery life isnt measure correctly in the app, although I havent tried to uninstall/reinstall or much troubleshooting, It is something Ive seen others mentioned. I have a feeling I could fix it, just havent put time to it but thought it was worth mentioning. (Battery life is great btw)

For those looking to purchase a good headset at a reasonable price (I managed to get these while they were at 99.99), you will be hard-pressed to do better. I have used it for quite some time now and feel comfortable reviewing it so heres some pros and cons: Pros: - Excellent sound quality. When I first purchased them the sound quality was excellent and hardly ever had any issues with it. The only thing I ever got which could be attributed more to the wireless connection rather than the actual sound quality is static that comes up very infrequently, Id say maybe once a month. - Incredibly comfortable. I have had a a lot of headsets and this one is by far the most comfortable I have ever had. The way it fits around my head is great and even when doing incredibly long sessions of having it on (8 hours +), my ears dont feel like theyre being crushed as I have had with other headsets. Whatever youre doing to keep these comfy SteelSeries, keep it up! - Easy to use. I have enjoyed the retractable microphone, the mute button and the adjustable volume dials on the sides of the headset. The only knock I would have on the design of this part is it has been very easy for me to accidentally adjust the volume dials while putting the headset on and make it too loud or too quiet. Not sure what could be done about that from a design perspective as I prefer it over buttons but maybe slightly adjusting the positioning to make it less likely. Cons: - Consistently turns itself off. So the biggest con I have experienced while using this headset is that it will fairly often just turn itself off. Sometimes I can go for a few weeks and not have a problem. Other times, I go a whole month of it randomly shutting itself off while audio is going through every half hour or so. It could just be my headset as I havent looked at other reviews prior to writing this but it is incredibly annoying. - The software for it is bad. Given the issue I had above with my headset, I had done my due diligence and made sure I had the latest software, the latest firmware and double checked any settings on the headset to make sure I wasnt causing the issue. At least, thats what I had hoped to do when I was having various issues with it but the SteelSeries software that ties into a lot of their other products just doesnt work consistently. I have had it constantly crash and bug out when attempting to use it and despite spending several hours trying different fixes both on their forums and not, I have been unable to get it working right. While it could just be my computer, during my research I saw a lot of other people having the same issues I described in regards to the software so I reckon it is more likely just bad software. That being said, I would be wary of that part of the product if you tend to dive deep into configuring settings for products such as headsets that you purchase. All that said, I would still highly recommend this product for anyone looking for a pretty reasonably priced headset (assuming you can get it at the 99 price point I did) but just be wary of it turning itself off every so often and the bad software. If you can get past that, its a great headset!

I could wear these all day and practically forget they are on. The headband cushions the weight wonderfully, and despite my big head, I havent had a problem with the limited adjustability. The biggest complaints in terms of build I have are the two volume dials being a little too easy to accidentally adjust, and that I would prefer a flip up mic rather than roll out style this has, but that hasnt cause any actual problems. Sound quality is quite good, the best wireless Ive had. Im sure for several hundred more I could get better sound quality, but I think these are already at the sweet spot. Battery life is quite decent, enough that I havent really paid attention to how long they last before needing a charge. The signal strength is really where it shines. I can not only go anywhere in my apartment without interruption, I can walk out the door (on the far side of my apartment, with two walls in between) around the corner and down the hall about 30 feet before it finally begins to cut in and out. Other features I appreciate are the line in and out on the wireless transmitter, which is also on a long cord to allow for optimal placement. I also love the 3.5mm output on the headset themselves, allowing me to easily share sound. I actually find this quite useful for linking to my partners headphones when we watch streaming video while chatting with friends over discord, allowing us to cast to our TV without the sound coming over the microphone. Will most people use those features? Probably not, but they are also just the icing on the cake.

I have owned this headset for two years. During this period, Ive used this headset for Chime calls, Discord calls, and PC gaming (primarily FPS games, such as Overwatch). Ive used this headset on Windows, macOS, and Xubuntu. I am far from an audiophile, but I will say that music / videos generally sound really good from these headphones. That being said, the noise cancellation doesnt hold a candle to my Bose QC35s; however, it does the job of cutting down on nearby distractions. The microphone does its job. Its not a studio microphone, so dont expect much out of it for recording high quality audio. I have had issues with it being overly sensitive in some applications by default, but I believe this can largely be addressed in the Steelseries software. I ended up using the headphones without the Steelseries Engine for a bit over a year out of the last two. The surround sound on these headphones works pretty well. Ive been picky about surround sound in gaming since the Halo 3 days, and these have been satisfactory since day 1 in that regard. I play in GM / T500 on Overwatch, and the headset has never been the cause of someone engaging me from an angle that I didnt expect. Based on my written review, you may be surprised that Ive rated the headset with three stars. Ultimately, this rating comes down to unreliable wireless connectivity. Since day 1, Ive had difficulties getting the transmitter to work on most of my PCs USB ports (USB 3.1 & USB 2.0 w/ up-to-date drivers). Eventually, I found one USB 2.0 port that it worked on while plugged directly into my ROG Maximus X Hero motherboard. The headset transmitter lived there for most of the last two years. For a long while, I had to unplug the USB cable and plug it back in in order to reset the transmitter on system reboot due to a bad firmware patch that was pushed by Steelseries (I uninstalled Steelseries Engine once they fixed the issue, hoping that it wouldnt happen again). Recently, though, Ive had a new set of issues with the wireless connectivity. The headset audio occasionally cuts out and back in (for ~2 seconds) every 20-30 minutes despite my transmitter being less than 3 feet away from the headset. Worst of all, after updating my BIOS and reinstalling my OSes from scratch, the transmitter refuses to power on anymore. The light just stays dark, meaning that I cant update any firmware or connect the headset to the computer at all. I have, of course, brought all of the drivers up-to-date and reinstalled Steelseries Engine. Unfortunately this was all in vain. Windows identifies the device as an Avnera AV6031. In summary, this headset lasted me two years. I was (generally) happy with its performance for those two years, but the transmitter has always been fairly unreliable. At this point, its not worth it. Im going to look for a device with a more reliable wireless connection.

All the advertised features (besides stereo sound and microphone) have stopped working for me on Windows 10. I had my suspicions, but the issue didnt become apparent until I was watching Netflix show that had 5.1 audio, and noticed I was missing the center audio channel (I could hear background noises, but there was no dialog). I switched over to my 5.1 speaker system and confirmed the problem was only with the Arctis 7. The headphone software allows you to toggle 7.1 audio on, but offers absolutely no solutions for testing. Windows does not light up the Configure button on either of the Arctis 7 audio devices, so its also impossible to test from there. Since the problem only started after reinstalling Windows 10 after getting a new motherboard / CPU, it seems like the problem is a conflict with my onboard audio system / software. What is Steel Series solution? Uninstall all other audio software on your computer, uninstall any VPN software, then follow a series of troubleshooting steps (remove all Arctis devices from Device Manager, uninstall software, reboot, etc). I tried this the best I could, but it did not resolve the issue. The request to uninstall all other audio software / any VPN software (WTF?) is totally absurd in this day and age and is not happening. Im also not going to spend hours and hours troubleshooting a terribly designed product (I did that way too much when I was younger). --- Beyond the above deal breaker / in terms of the other headset features / quality, its so-so. The audio quality sounded good in 7.1 mode while it lasted, but was not as good as my previous Logitech set. The stereo audio sounds very muddy / tinty; its almost unbearable. Now I only use this headset when my other bluetooth headset is recharging. The build quality is surprisingly good, but the Volume Wheel and Chat Mix wheels are terribly placed; your thumbs naturally rest on them when you don / doff the headphones, frequently causing you to accidentally roll one of the wheels (more on this below). The microphone pull out system and the mic mute button are great. I wish the headset had a basic pause / play button, and maybe even skip forward / skip back buttons. The software has always been a complete nightmare, ranging from frustration, to facepalm design choices: -Why doesnt it have a popup notification via Windows 10 saying the battery is low? -Why do I need to get 3 clicks deep to just see the battery level? I have to: expand system tray list > double click the slow / clunky software > be greeted with a home screen full of advertisements I didnt consent to > click Engine > wait 10 seconds for it to load the battery level. Why cant I right click the sys tray icon (or hover) for the battery percentage? It seems like Steel Series deliberately made you click through their home screen full of ads to get to the battery percentage. -Why is the battery level displayed as a microscopic 3 bar battery icon instead of just giving me the percentage? Or why cant I hover over that little battery icon to get a full percentage? -Why cant I disable the useless (never works) Chat Mix feature? I cant tell you how many times Ive accidentally slid the Chat Mix roll wheel all the way down, effectively muting the device, and wasted a couple minutes trying to figure out the problem. Why do I need to go to insane lengths to get the feature to work in the first place? It seems like Steel Series is deliberately trying to make it extremely cumbersome to switch to another audio device (effectively forcing away the competition).

My SteelSeries Arctis 7 died way too quickly for a $100+ headset. I purchased a set in October 2019, and they broke during June 2021. When they broke, I heard rattling in the left earpiece and no sound from the right. The U.S. warranty expires after a year so I had no luck with customer service reps. Its a fine headset while it works, but clearly the quality is not worth the price tag. The audio output is fine for general usage. Now I saw in other reviews that there may be distortion. Im no audiophile, but I couldnt notice any issues while watching movies or playing games. The mic isnt great, but I really only had issues with it picking up some background noise. Most VoIP services will cut out that noise that the mic picks up anyway. A very convenient feature is that the mute toggle is a well placed button on the left earpiece. Speaking of buttons, the On/Off button needs more documentation as it must do something more than just turn the headset on or off. Sometimes if you dont hold the button long enough to turn it off, I think the headset would go into some sort of sleep mode - I dont know. I never could figure out a consistent way to turn it off after that - I would then keep pressing the button until the light disappeared. It was really strange and quite frustrating if this happened while you wanted to listen to something. The headset also has a physical volume control wheel and Chat/Game audio volume control (cannot speak to how that works). The main volume control wheel is fine, but I noticed after a couple months that it was already loose in its fittings. By far my biggest issue with the headset was the comfort. Wow, its bad. Instead of an adjustable earpiece that retracts into the headband, they use a Velcro strap that is supposed to sit atop your head. My head is fairly thin so the headband would fall in front of my eyes if I moved my head too much. It just could never be tight due to this terrible design choice. The final issue must be the design of the connection from earpiece to the band. My headset broke due to normal use and it must have been from how fragile the wiring and connectors are at least in the left earpiece. As you put on and take off the headset, the earpieces will wobble. So I guess after a year and a half of use, this internal connector for the left earpiece must have snapped which leads to stressed wiring which leads to no sound. I had this headset for a year and a half, and as I stated earlier, I did try my luck with seeing what SteelSeries would do after the warranty expired. They took 2 days to respond to the ticket which felt reasonable, but after I immediately replied back to their email, it took another week and a half and multiple follow-up emails to hear back from them. Just dealing with this ticket was irritating.

I want to preface this by saying I literally just got these, delivered 30 minutes ago, and these are my first impressions. I WILL update over time. I looked at reviews for these and were discouraged by the negative reviews. QC is obviously a little lackluster, and I sat on the decision to purchase these for months. Impulsively, I pulled the trigger for these and I hope I got the good stuff, not the defect. tl;dr (will also update this): They sound decent, would be excellent after EQ tinkering. Microphones hot trash, super quiet to my friends, with a constant beeping (not sure why, but it is an occurrence). Theyre super comfortable. I dont feel them on my head, but when I do, they feel like clouds. Clamp force, quiet. They dont clamp hard, just enough to stay on my head, and not enough to make my ears and head hurt from my glasses pressing into my head. Dials on headset are very sensitive. UPDATE: Upon tinkering, the microphone works! My friends said it sounded crisp, although a little fuzzy, too. Its very directional, which makes putting the mic in the right spot really difficult. The ski band, after proper adjustment, holds the headset on my head well, no changes there. EQ tuning made this thing sound amazing, with no harshness, and clear sound all around. All in all, my opinion hasnt changed, and the review still holds merit, and my recommendation of this set. Right out the gate, unboxing experience is really nice, but not premium feeling. I dont really care about this, just figured it should be known to some with pedantics about this kind of situation. Table of Contents (this is a much longer review than I expected) 1. First impressions 2. Clamp force and fit 3. Comfort 4. Materials, durability 5. Sound Quality 6. Microphone 7. The Et Cetera First Impressions - These headphones are literal plug and play. Before opening the manual (I didnt even pull it out of the plastic wrapping), I plugged in the transmitter, and the drivers were downloaded and implemented right away. I simply clicked the power button on the headphones at first, but having no reaction, I simply held the button and right away, the headphones were connected. And in under 3 minutes, I was using these headphones. Thats really impressive. Clamp force and fit - I have glasses, and headphones hurt me in the long run. And the super nice thing about these headphones right away, is the clamp force. Not too much, not too little. They come off if I violently shake my head (but who does that, anyways), but I can look down, look up, or whatever else without these coming off. They do shift a little, but I didnt adjust these to fit me perfectly, and I probably wont. They sit really nice. Back to the clamp force. Its really loose, in a good way. They have enough force to stay in place, but not enough to put pressure on my head with my glasses. Comfort - Right away, these are super comfortable. Theyre not light, but theyre not heavy. I find myself already forgetting these are on my head, despite my excitement about these. The ear cups are really soft and porous, they literally feel like marshmallows or clouds. I dont feel much on or around my ears, but when I do, theyre very very soft. If I could describe a physical contact interaction with an abstract adjective, quiet would be perfect. Materials, durability - I just got these, so I cant say much here. They feel solid, despite the plastic construct. The ear cups, as aforementioned earlier, are soft, and they feel like premium cloth(?). They feel great on my head and in my hands. A little concerned about the hinge connecting the cans to the headband, but we will see. Again, all speculation as of now, but I will be updating this review. Sound quality - Really good, but not great out of the box. They sound balanced, with highs, mids, and lows all in play. A little more bass could be nice, but Im sure I can adjust that, I do read about EQs a lot. Sometimes the highs feel a little harsh, which, again, probably adjustable. At 100% on both PC and these headphones, these are loud. Not extremely so, but loud enough for me to want to turn the headphones down before I lose more of my hearing. At max volume, everything sounds just as they do at 50%. At low, you start losing a lot of the sounds, and they start blending (but who cranks headphones super low). All in all, pretty grandeur. (Note in update with adjusted sound) The ETC. -The volume dials feel super sensitive, but theyre surprisingly not. Deliberate touch will move the dials and nothing else -Theres also a chat mix dial. Super awesome. To think theres a dial that can replace me tinkering with the volume mixer on pc, or adjusting everyones volumes in discord, is mindblowing, and very much a convenience I wholeheartedly accept.

Alright so this review will be a little bit lengthy as I try to detail as much as I can. Just to be clear, this review is based on my experience with PC ONLY. I dont use this for my PS4 but because it uses its own wireless connector, I would imagine the quality is almost no different than that of the PC. So for starters, the packaging was alright. Nothing extraordinary and it had everything you need for it. The software available for the headset is a MUST, in my opinion. Its not actually needed but its sure as heck a huge boost to audio quality since you can modify it to your hearts content. It has different presets to choose from or you can mess with the equalizer yourself. You also have a wheel on each cup. One is to control the volume and the other to adjust the audio between chat and the game, so the chat volume is louder than the game or vice versa. This has NO LED lights, so if you thought it did, for some reason, youd be dissapointed. I bought this on December 1st and at the time of typing this review, it is December 6th and I have only needed to charge the headset 1 time. I have used it quite extensively. Livestreamed 3 times for 6 hours each and listened to music for another couple more hours and while it still didnt need recharging, it had finally gotten to the lower side. So I recharged it and its quite high in battery life still. Second is the clasp and the ability to adjust the size. The cups are SO soft and are made of this really comfortable fabric; its like a cloud. The clasp isnt so hard and with soft cups, you wont even want to take them off anyway. Now to adjust the size of the headset, you use this ski goggle band...thing. Its basically a strap and im still not too sure how to feel about it since it is my first time using something like this. Im used to simply extending the cups down, but I think im liking the strap a bit since it feels a little more comfortable and its one less component that can break on the headset. Just dont be trying to take it off or youll lose it. Next is the microphone. The microphone extends and retracts into and out the headset, which I always felt is the coolest way to have a mic on the headset. You can press a button on the back of the cup to mute/unmute the mic and you can change its volume on the software. The mic quality is...audible. You can understand what a person is saying clearly, but its sounds closer to potato quality, kinda like a webcam mic but slightly better. Personally I use my Blue Snowball, enhanced with VB Audio software. Finally is the bass. In the software you can increase the amount of bass in the headset. I increased it to the max and you can indeed hear the bass very nicely. Some would say the bass is great. But if you are like me and you know that bass isnt so much about sound, but feeling, then this headset is lacking. You can hear the bass in the music but you cant FEEL it vibrate the cups nor your head. I have an old PlayStation Pulse headset and THAT has bass. I increase the slider to the max on the cup for the bass volume and the headset begins to massage my brain. This headset does not do that in the slightest. Dont get me wrong though, the overall sound quality is exquisite as I can hear things in games in such detail, I never even knew those sounds were ever in there to begin with. The directional audio is very good too as it gives a pretty good idea how far something is as well as the direction its coming from. Final verdict 4/5 stars. Just missing the brain massaging bass for a 5 stars. Oh also this thing uses micro usb as a charger, which we all know is a poop version of the usb, so be gentle when charging.