in my unboxing of the steelseries 7h headset i promise to do a bit more of an
in-depth review than i typically do and so i wanted to just give you my
impressions of this headset now that i've had some some time some chance to
game on them uh listen to music on them watch a movie on them and i gotta say
first of all i'm gonna ruin the surprise a little bit i am very very impressed so
we're gonna take a bit more of an in-depth look at them they are extremely comfortable even out of the box now my
my de facto gaming setup is actually a
pair of sennheiser hd555 headphones you
can see these are pretty beat up these have been around the block i've been
using these for a good couple years so they're extremely loose extremely
flexible extremely comfortable well broken in headphones and then for a
microphone i actually just uh drape a pc161 also from sennheiser around my
neck so the microphone comes up to my mouth and then the headphones sit on my
head like this kind of like that yes uh the hd555s i i
found most gaming headsets uh by comparison completely unsatisfactory for
music and just in terms of general audio quality now i've also got some other
points of reference that i want to uh to give you guys here so i have the
steelseries siberia v2 this is their uh
their white model it's a little bit less expensive
actually quite a bit less expensive than the 7h a little bit less expensive
than or quite a bit less expensive again than even the hd555s on their own i have
the steelseries 5h v2 so this is their previous top of the range also with the
retractable mic also has the detachable
ear cups for travel and such
honestly i i didn't like these nearly as
much as i like the new 7h i find out of
the ones in front of me the most comfortable are probably the well-broken
nhd555s and the siberia v2 these are extremely
light and then with a close runner up being the 7h but one thing that i can't
i can't knock it for is the fact that it's brand new whereas i've actually
used both of these extensively this is still
probably only seen about a week of gaming use so it's still a little bit
tight you see how tight that is compared to the the siberia v2 which is quite
loose and the hd555 which are obviously
completely loose because they're so old another point of reference that i do
have for this particular little review is the sennheiser pc350s these again are
quite well used these are a closed headset so that means actually i want to
talk a little bit about what that means so first of all the ones that i
typically use for gaming the five five heads those are an open headset hope and
headphone that means that i can hear my surroundings and my surroundings can
hear whatever i'm listening to on my headphones these do not block sound at
all these go right through to the speakers so anyone around me can easily
hear what i'm hearing one thing that you do lose a little bit with an open
headphone is some of the directionality because it means that the sound coming
out the right earphone is coming out here and you can potentially hear it
through the left earphone so you don't have quite the same uh
directionality that you would with a closed headphone like the pc350 which is
designed completely for gaming this is a purely gamer sku from sennheiser so
let's talk a little bit about what makes the 7h honestly in my opinion one of the best
values on the table in front of me it has a lot of the premium features that
you see on the really high-end headphones headset so it's got these
rotatable earpieces that makes them extremely comfortable no matter how your
head is shaped it's got the detachable thingamajiggy here where you can take
this honestly i don't think this is a very useful feature but i guess if you
travel with your headset a lot it might come in handy i don't so that might be
why i don't don't see the value of it you've got other really cool things too
though you can actually exchange the earpieces so you've got these pleathery ones or the cloth ones if you prefer a
more closed listening experience so that means that much like the pc350s you
cannot hear what's going on in the right ear through the left ear because these
actually form a pretty good seal with your head and make it so that not only
can you not hear your surroundings your surroundings can't hear you and the
sound is very isolated from one ear between the ears so
you can either choose to have that listening experience with the 7h or you
can put on the cloth earmuffs your muffs
uh the clothier pieces and then you can actually have a more opening open
listening experience now i actually very much prefer the hd 555s to the pc350s i
don't like the 350s all that much because i do not like the closed
listening experience but with these i was able to put on the cloth pieces and
i found them quite satisfactory in music
movies and in games now with games
honestly this is a little bit better but it's summer right now and i found my
ears got pretty warm with these and frankly with any
with any sort of plasticky leathery material against my head
now i don't know where else to go with this because honestly it's all subjective like you can talk about
it has a retractable mic it has a detachable cable here actually that's
one thing that was a big problem for me my pc350s recently died because my cats
uh my cats ate them here
this is when they were just little babies but you can see that they have died now
unlike the five five fives which have a detachable plug here which
is pretty hard to take out but you can take it out and you can replace the cable and you can do the same thing with
the 7h because it has a little mini usb cable
uh the pc350s do not have that particular feature i took the whole
earpiece apart and it's all soldered in there it would be quite a bear to
actually replace it
what else do i want to talk about in terms of comparison i think that pretty much covers it basically these
are about 50 bucks less than the 555s that i'm using now they do have a mic
the sound quality is what i would consider comparable to a decent quality
music headphone in terms of music and honestly i very much preferred it to the
pc350s once i was able to replace the
earpieces now
the thing that really impresses me actually is the price range because it's
quite a bit less expensive than anything else that i would consider comparable in
terms of sound quality it blows away any other sort of purely gaming headsets
that i've used in the past now i don't know if you've noticed in some of my blog videos that i
shoot in my office i also have some razer carcarious headphones in there and
those are probably again up with the more comfortable headsets here
but i found the sound quality was not quite
up to par with the siberia v2 when i tested them last time so
i guess this is just seven minutes of me rambling my thoughts on headphones i
just want to say that steelseries has done a fantastic job with this product i
think that at the price point it's pretty much unbeatable and i was very
very very impressed with the steel series 7
h i guess if i'm going to call this a
review i should probably actually talk about some of the other stuff you can get it with a usb sound card which has
been a lifesaver for me my onboard sound died on one of my motherboards and so i
i actually use this the sound quality is i would call it perfectly adequate but
i'm used to using 100 plus dollar sound card and or a 500 receiver to
actually power my headphones so uh yeah it's adequate um it's about what you'd
expect it's it's only a 30 adder i think so it's not that expensive it has a
short cable which has a an on off low
high uh no just on off for the mic and then volume adjustment for the headphones and
then you can actually attach that to an extension cable so if you have a steel
series 7h you can plug right into the back of the keyboard for your audio and
then if you do not then you can just plug right into the back of the computer
it has kind of like chromie accents which i think really look nice and it
has an overall more solid build quality versus uh previous headsets that they've
released i really like the retractable mic
they've really upgraded the look of it versus uh ones that we've seen before so
here i'll show you the one on the 5h v2 it looks like a little like
oh i don't know teardrop looks very strange uh whereas this one
looks more like a professional looking mic
and that's actually kind of similar to the one that they have on the siberia v2
which is also a much newer headset than the 5h v2 and i really do prefer it to
the uh the the mic that sits next to your head
which makes you look kind of ridiculous if you're not actually using it and
you're not actually playing a game so
there i actually gave some of my thoughts on the 7h now i can call this
legitimately a review i enjoyed it it's good