this is a product that there's been a lot of Buzz about online this is the
steel series 7h USB Pro gaming headset
and what steel series is going after with this particular headset is
something that is not only great for gaming like their old top of the range
the 5H V2 but also outstanding for music
movies or any other use that you could want from them so this is their highest
end headset to date and it is also their most expensive it's available in both a
USB and non USB version the headsets are
identical in both of those packages however and the only difference is
whether or not it has the included steel
series USB sound card so if I could get the cameraman to come and have a look
I'm just going to show you what steel Series has to say for themselves about
this particular headset so here they show you the specifications so if you
just want to zoom in on that so they can read it as long as it's focused it's
good cuz they can pause and then here there's a bunch of information about as
well and then let's flip around to the back so this headset does feature 50 mm
drivers so that's quite large for a PC
gaming headset it is a Clos type headset
but the interchangeable ear cushions and I'm going to just start unboxing the
headset itself the interchangeable ear cushions actually give you an option
depending what kind of a sound you prefer you can either use the okay oh
these are secured on here you can either either use the pley ear cups that ship
on the headset or you can actually
switch to these cloth GE cups and the
cloth ones are going to provide a more open sounding experience even though
they are closed headphones as opposed to the pleather
ones so you kind of get a little bit of customization and they do include both
options in the package so I'm going to go ahead and
pull the headset off of the package
because it is their most expensive and most premium product to date for a
headset it does look like it okay so
you've got here we'll compare against their previous high-end there are some
similarities but also some pretty significant differences so first of all
you notice that the band for the headrest up at the top is quite a bit
wider versus the old 5H V2 you see that
it's quite a bit wider so you're going to get a more spread out comfortable
feel up on the top of the headset itself
I can tell right away that these are quite closed I can barely hear myself
talking right now with these on which is great for not disturbing others late at
night when you're gaming or listening to music or whatever else you happen to be
doing with your headphones and I put these on the wrong way this is the way
they go uh sorry about that so we'll have a quick look at what we've got
included in terms of accessories first and then we'll have a closer look at the
headset itself so here's another key difference that I noticed right off the
bat
long pause is that the 7h actually has a mini
USB cable here whereas the 5H V2 has a
uh permanently attached cord so that makes it a little bit easier to
transport because they both come apart into three
pieces but now the 7h can actually come apart in three
pieces and keep the cable separate whereas the 5hv 2 came apart into pieces
but had the cable permanently attached
to the one ear cup okay so the actual
accessories included here we go we have the short version of the cable so here's
your headphone and microphone jacks as well as your mini USB right here so this
goes into the bottom of this ear cup just like
that okay doesn't oh it has a bit of a clip on it but you can pull it out with
a firm tug so that's no problem and the reason steel Series has these short
cables is because if you have a supported keyboard with an audio pass
through you can actually plug them right into the keyboard have a nice short
cable and keep it right on your head when you're gaming so it keeps the cord
from like getting in the way and then they also include an extended audio
cable so the extended audio cables if you do have to go around to the back of
your computer that's a nice long cable you'll be able to go pretty much
wherever you need to go with it these are goldplated connectors on both ends
so you don't have to worry about that and they are quite clearly labeled if
you want to come have a look close up here so you can see that this is the
microphone it is also color coded here but on there there's a little headphone
icon and then on this one it just
clearly says mic right on the connector the last piece included and this is
optional so this only comes with the USB version is a USB sound card so you plug
this into a USB port and then without any interaction from the sound card you
can just have audio running off of USB I
mean it's not the best thing in the world but if you want all of your
settings configurable um then and you
can just move the thing from one computer to another it'll actually keep
that consistency if you're if you're that much of a pro another thing that
steel series does provide with their software for the sound card is virtual
surround so they say you've got virtual surround 7.1 you can actually configure
uh how many speakers and exactly where you want them positioned so that's
another thing that pretty cool about the USB sound card and it's not an expensive
Adder I think it only costs another 20 bucks or so so I think that pretty much
covers everything I wanted to say I'm going to go ahead and put the headset
back together really quickly here um hopefully to demonstrate just how easy
it
is there we go that was easy oh you know
what we should also show you know let's just show the headset a little bit closer up so you got your steel series
logo up along the top here on either side you've got these
kind of metall looking steel series logos the ear cups actually rotate like
this which I don't believe was a feature of the 5v2 no it was not so that's going
to give you a more comfortable listening experience whether your heads are
whether your ears are positioned like closer to the back of your head or closer to the front the angle will
adjust itself such that you can be very very comfortable also I didn't talk
about the retractable mic this is a steel series staple uh it's existed on
their high-end headsets for quite a while now but they've refined look at
the microphone a little bit it looks more professional and less kind of like
a big teardrop so that's one another
thing that's cool and let me see what else I have to say about it I think that
pretty much covers it I'm going to be doing probably either a separate video
or uh or I'll do some annotations on top of this video once I have a chance to
listen to it I'll be comparing it against the Sennheiser HD 555s as well
as the Sennheiser PC 350s so thank you for checking out my video on the steel
series 7h USB don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips okay I missed two small
things sorry about that first of all there is an inline volume control and
mic shut off key so if I could just get the camera to have a close look here you
can see it's labeled mic for the button right here and then there is a volume control slider right there very
convenient and last but not least I never did take a close look at the
interchangeable ear cups so you have the cloth ear cup option which is as simple
as just pulling off the pley ones that
are included which uh hopefully I can
figure out now that I'm on the spot I've been shown this before it
wasn't it wasn't difficult when I saw it
so um there we go just get your fingernail under there pop that
up there we go and there's a little instruction here align top with the dot
on the cushion so you can see the one I pulled off has a little orange dot on it
the one that I'm putting on has a little orange dot on it and it says simple as
that I guess let's go ahead and put that
on okay you just snap that right on so
once I have that in place I can actually hear quite a lot more through my left
ear than I can through my right ear and the point of that like I mentioned
before is to give it a more open feeling listening experience versus an entirely
closed experience because this makes a much better seal with your head than a
cloth ear cup does