Buy an unlocked Intel 4th gen Core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of
Rome 2: Total War. Click now to learn more. Welcome friends to my unboxing and
review of the Steel Series H Wireless. It's a bit of a spoiler alert thing
here, so if you don't want to know the results of this video, then you better
stop watching now. Oh, you probably do. Anyway, it's the
best gaming wireless headset I have ever
encountered. So, let's start with opening up the box and having a look at
what's inside. Now, Steeler's whole thing with this is lagfree,
uninterrupted wireless performance. And it really
actually is uh more on that in the range
test. So, the first thing we find inside is the H wireless themselves. And then,
well, we'll talk more about those in a moment. Next, we find the base station,
which has a volume knob as well as a button on the front, a back button on
the front, an OLED display that's actually quite vibrant. Then, it has a
little battery port. And finally, on the back, analog in, chat out, power in, USB
in, and because it has a built-in DAC, as well as optical in and optical pass
through, again, utilizing the built-in DAC. Next up, we find all of the cables
that you could Oops. possibly need regardless of where
you are in the world to hook this baby up to whatever you could possibly want.
Now, let's start with the construction and the looks of the unit. The materials
actually feel very premium and it has a much more subdued aesthetic compared to
the recently released Siberia Elites. I think they're targeting the, you know,
the mature gamer. I guess I guess I guess a gamer would have to be at least
mature enough to buy these to be earning their own money because at $300 they are
really, really expensive. but they do
look good. In terms of features, we'll start with the weight. They come in at
around 325 gram, which is about the same as the Corsair Vengeance 2100. They
feature Dolby Headphone, Dolby Digital, and Dolby Prologic 2, so you can use
whatever virtual surround technology you want. Although, personally, I prefer
good old-fashioned stereo. They have compatibility with pretty much whatever
you could possibly want with via the analog as well as digital inputs. So,
you've got PC, Mac, Xbox, PlayStation, phone, AV system, uh whatever, whatever
you feel like. The uh one feature that they're touting as a as a big deal, and
I actually kind of agree with them, is the fact that it has swappable battery
packs. So, it comes with two of these battery packs as well as a charging port
in the base station. So, you get up to 10 hours with with each of them. So,
let's say that's optimistic and you get up to eight hours with each of them.
What you can do is you can actually charge the other one while you're using
the first one and then they charge in a couple hours and you can swap them for
virtually unending battery life. I think that's a really cool feature. And then I
also think their shareport feature is really cool as well. Now because these
are designed to be used not only in front of a PC but also in a living room
and they, you know, they look like something that might make sense in a
living room as more of a multimedia headphone. This is great because you're
not necessarily going to have a whole bunch of sets of wireless headphones. So
now with this little 3 and a half millimeter jack down here, you can bring someone along for the ride and they can
listen to whatever movie it is that you're watching or whatever game you're
playing at the same time as you. I think that's really, really cool. Now, in
terms of comfort, the H wireless fits me like a glove. I actually really really
like them for this. The headband is a little bit narrower than I would
normally like, but the very soft foam on the bottom does compensate for this. And
there's actually that same soft foam on the ear cups. You can see it's an
extremely slow rebound when you press it in. So, there isn't really any breakin
time. They're comfortable right out of the box. The pleather on the ear cups is
also a couple grades above what you will typically find on cheap commodity
headsets and really feels closer to
natural leather than than again most of the other pleather products that I've
encountered. The weight is about the same as the Vengeance 2100, which I
think I already said, but because that weight is closer to the center, closer
to my head instead of being further out, I find that they don't slip around when
I move my head in the same way that the Vengeance 2100's do. That leads us to
our range test. Now, I did five
different spots and then I used the same setup each time. So, I actually had a
laptop and then the USB dongle connected to the base station in my office. Then,
I tried the same room. So it's about a 10-ft maximum. The other side of the
wall, I tried down the hallway. I tried the stair landing. So coming down onto
the next floor, I tried the bathroom on the floor below. And then finally, I
tried the basement. So the H wireless performed better than the Vengeance 2100
and the Astro A50s by a long shot in my
range test. However, unless you're the kind of person who's going to kind of
wander around the house listening to music with your wireless headphones, which some people do, I suppose, that
might not be that relevant. Leading into the listening tests, I want to talk
about the maximum volume very briefly. It didn't get uncomfortably loud um or
extremely loud. It got about as loud as I would go, but it should be noted that
the dial on the back, which can be used not only to adjust volume, but also to
adjust settings on the base station to hear. So, you can adjust them either
here with uh with the knobs and dials, or you can configure and hear certain
settings that you can adjust using the headphones themselves, so you don't even have to get up. Anyway, this is an
independent volume control from your Windows system volume if you're using
the headphones or headset on a PC. So, you could use some software tricks if
you wanted to squeeze a little bit more volume out of them, but I found 60 to
70% was good for day-to-day music listening or or like casual gaming. In
terms of noise isolation, I really do think that's a strong point for these headphones. The faux leather ear cup
covering does help with this compared to the cloth covering that is in use by
both the Vengeance 2100 and the Astro A50s. both of which I was testing at the
same time so I could get better context for each of the products. The I mean
this is important because I hadn't really spent much time with wireless
gaming headphones because I don't really care that much about gaming headphones
for the most part. Um but more on that anyway in the listening in the listening
section. The H wireless is fully driverless on the PC. So I was up and
running in 15 seconds give or take once I plugged it in. There is a software
application that you can use to make adjustments. But because this is a
console optimized product, you can also adjust all the advanced features using
the uh base station or the headphones themselves. So you can adjust your
general volume. You can adjust your Dolby, the relative volume of game
sounds and chat sounds compared to each other. Or there's even a setting to do
that dynamically so that as chat transmissions come through your game
volume can lower a little bit and your chat volume can increase so you can hear
things clearly and you can adjust how much of a shift there is when that
happens. So that's a pretty cool feature. You can also set up um any one
of the preset EQ settings or even a custom EQ if you want, but the control
wasn't very glam granular and generally speaking I like a fairly flat EQ. So, I
just found myself sticking with mostly flat and adjusting things up a little
bit in the mid-range. Finally, you can adjust your input source because it does
have multiple inputs as well as assign profiles for each of those sources with
respect to the EQ, Dolby, chat volume, and all that stuff on a source by source
basis. So, it'll remember all that as you switch between different things.
Which leads us to the listening tests. They were all performed, all three
headsets, using the onboard DAC. So, we used USB connectivity for the best
apples to apples comparison. And this one, I guess I spoiled the surprise a
little bit, but it really is probably the best gaming headset I've ever heard.
Um, it surprised both Brandon and Edel as well. We all had very low
expectations because it is branded as a See, it's look, it's right there on the
box, gaming headset, and they just tend to not be as good as multimedia
headsets. Um, but honestly, I mean, I feel like for an extra $100 over the
Siberia Elites, which were they were good sounding, but they weren't good. I
mean, they were good. Um, these are worth it in terms of audio quality,
audio fidelity alone. And the fact that they're wireless is just a bonus at that
point. And I would really consider saving my extra pennies for something
like this versus the Siberia Elites because I don't personally need
multicolored onboard lights. I mean, I appreciate wireless freedom and I
appreciate great sound quality, but I don't need like 16 whatever million
colors and all that kind of stuff. Now, let's talk about sheer audio quality.
Bass performance at very, very low frequencies. So, this would be my one
criticism. You know, those frequencies that'll tickle your ears and make your
head vibrate, those may feel a fair bit
lacking, but I would still say that bass performance is very good. It's tight and
it's punchy and it's good for general battlefield ambient sounds and great for
listening to music. But if you're one of those people that really enjoys that
rumble, then they might not be quite as appealing to you as they are to me. The
mids are also not as strong as some would like, but I found that was able to
be taken care of with a very small bump to the mid-range using the EQ. And I
would go through and I would probably set that bump on all of my different
inputs. The highs are crisp and clear without being fatiguing to listen to,
which is a bit of a problem that I tend to have even with good headphones just
because um my my hearing is a little bit more sensitive in that range. So, I
quite enjoyed listening to these. Um but you do have to take all of that what I
just said with a grain of salt because while I do have a fair bit of experience
with wired audio file grade headphones,
I don't have any experience with audio filegrade wireless headphones. So, the
only thing I could really compare these directly to was other gaming headsets.
So, I I mean, I guess the pricing is something that doesn't really make
sense. Do these sound so much better than something like Audio Technica
ATM50s? No, probably not. Um, probably similar,
but those are a wired headphone and so I don't have the proper context for
wireless audio file headphones to know if these are a good value at $300. But
what I can compare against is other gaming headsets. So, the Astro A50s to
me are um they don't make nearly as much sense. They're the same price as the H
wireless. They don't really have any features that the H wireless doesn't have, and they just plain don't sound as
good, and they don't have as good range and all that stuff. But where things
start to get quite interesting is comparing the H wireless to the
Vengeance 2100's. If you're a strictly PC gamer, then a lot of the features of
the H wireless might not make sense for you. So, what you're getting is you are
getting noticeably better sound quality. So, that is a thing, but I don't know if it's a twice as much thing. You are
getting the swappable battery feature, which is really cool because the Vengeance 2100 has a built-in battery,
and when you run out, you you tether yourself to your computer using USB, and
you run it as basically a wired headset. Um, you are getting the varied
configurable inputs, including console compatibility. So, it's nice to be able
to switch between those. The 2100 does not have that, strictly a USB dongle.
Um, for me the comfort was better and the overall feel was more premium, but
at twice the price, um, it's, yeah, it's
up to you whether you can justify it or not, especially considering that the
microphone really didn't blow me away on this one. It sounds pretty hollow. It
lacks that that AM radio sound that is typically achievable with a microphone
so close to your mouth. I'll give you guys a listen to it here. This is my
audio test with the microphone on the Steel Series H Wireless. I hope you
enjoyed it. And then I'll talk a little bit about why I feel like with a
wireless headphone or headset, um, the built-in microphone is so important
compared to with a wired solution. Because if you have wired headphones,
even if they have no microphone at all, there are many other solutions. You can
run another wire for a clipon. You can put a mod mic on it. You can put a
desktop mic on your desk. Well, with wireless, the expectation is that you
can move away. You can leave. And so
adding another wire is not a reasonable solution in this case. So I feel like
the the built-in mic has to be good enough. And this one's not that great.
But it's usable. It's not staticky or um
or distorted sounding like the Astro A50s. And they do get major points for
the retractable mic. I hate boom mics. I find they get in the way. I don't like
how they can't easily be adjusted to the very corner of your mouth, which is the
optimal positioning. Um but it just plain doesn't sound as good as the
Vengeance 2100 mic. I do like the mute button implementation on this particular
headphone though. I think I went and turned them off when I meant to turn
them on there. But anyway, you do a quick press of the power button rather
than a hold. And there's an indicator light that is not bright enough to be
distracting, but bright enough to be easily visible that shows you whether
your mic is transmitting or not. So,
thank you for checking out my unboxing sort of and review of the Steeler H
wireless. Don't forget to like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you
disliked it. Leave a comment and let me know. Are they just off their gourd? Is
$300 just plain too much for a gaming headset? Or is, you know, would you be
shopping for something like an Astro A50 or something comparable? And now would
you look at the H wireless and consider it? Especially given that according to
Lionus's review anyway, it's just plain better in every possible way. Would love
to hear what you guys think about that. And last but not least, don't forget to
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