Steelseries 7H Gaming Headset Review & Comparison Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,777 words · ~8 min read
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in my unboxing of the steelseries 7h headset i promise to do a bit more of an
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in-depth review than i typically do and so i wanted to just give you my
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impressions of this headset now that i've had some some time some chance to
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game on them uh listen to music on them watch a movie on them and i gotta say
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first of all i'm gonna ruin the surprise a little bit i am very very impressed so
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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
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my de facto gaming setup is actually a
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pair of sennheiser hd555 headphones you
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can see these are pretty beat up these have been around the block i've been
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using these for a good couple years so they're extremely loose extremely
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flexible extremely comfortable well broken in headphones and then for a
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microphone i actually just uh drape a pc161 also from sennheiser around my
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neck so the microphone comes up to my mouth and then the headphones sit on my
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head like this kind of like that yes uh the hd555s i i
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found most gaming headsets uh by comparison completely unsatisfactory for
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music and just in terms of general audio quality now i've also got some other
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points of reference that i want to uh to give you guys here so i have the
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steelseries siberia v2 this is their uh
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their white model it's a little bit less expensive
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actually quite a bit less expensive than the 7h a little bit less expensive
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than or quite a bit less expensive again than even the hd555s on their own i have
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the steelseries 5h v2 so this is their previous top of the range also with the
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retractable mic also has the detachable
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ear cups for travel and such
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honestly i i didn't like these nearly as
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much as i like the new 7h i find out of
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the ones in front of me the most comfortable are probably the well-broken
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nhd555s and the siberia v2 these are extremely
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light and then with a close runner up being the 7h but one thing that i can't
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i can't knock it for is the fact that it's brand new whereas i've actually
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used both of these extensively this is still
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probably only seen about a week of gaming use so it's still a little bit
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tight you see how tight that is compared to the the siberia v2 which is quite
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loose and the hd555 which are obviously
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completely loose because they're so old another point of reference that i do
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have for this particular little review is the sennheiser pc350s these again are
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quite well used these are a closed headset so that means actually i want to
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talk a little bit about what that means so first of all the ones that i
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typically use for gaming the five five heads those are an open headset hope and
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headphone that means that i can hear my surroundings and my surroundings can
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hear whatever i'm listening to on my headphones these do not block sound at
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all these go right through to the speakers so anyone around me can easily
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hear what i'm hearing one thing that you do lose a little bit with an open
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headphone is some of the directionality because it means that the sound coming
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out the right earphone is coming out here and you can potentially hear it
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through the left earphone so you don't have quite the same uh
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directionality that you would with a closed headphone like the pc350 which is
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designed completely for gaming this is a purely gamer sku from sennheiser so
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let's talk a little bit about what makes the 7h honestly in my opinion one of the best
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values on the table in front of me it has a lot of the premium features that
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you see on the really high-end headphones headset so it's got these
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rotatable earpieces that makes them extremely comfortable no matter how your
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head is shaped it's got the detachable thingamajiggy here where you can take
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this honestly i don't think this is a very useful feature but i guess if you
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travel with your headset a lot it might come in handy i don't so that might be
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why i don't don't see the value of it you've got other really cool things too
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though you can actually exchange the earpieces so you've got these pleathery ones or the cloth ones if you prefer a
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more closed listening experience so that means that much like the pc350s you
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cannot hear what's going on in the right ear through the left ear because these
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actually form a pretty good seal with your head and make it so that not only
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can you not hear your surroundings your surroundings can't hear you and the
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sound is very isolated from one ear between the ears so
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you can either choose to have that listening experience with the 7h or you
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can put on the cloth earmuffs your muffs
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uh the clothier pieces and then you can actually have a more opening open
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listening experience now i actually very much prefer the hd 555s to the pc350s i
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don't like the 350s all that much because i do not like the closed
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listening experience but with these i was able to put on the cloth pieces and
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i found them quite satisfactory in music
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movies and in games now with games
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honestly this is a little bit better but it's summer right now and i found my
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ears got pretty warm with these and frankly with any
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with any sort of plasticky leathery material against my head
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now i don't know where else to go with this because honestly it's all subjective like you can talk about
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it has a retractable mic it has a detachable cable here actually that's
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one thing that was a big problem for me my pc350s recently died because my cats
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uh my cats ate them here
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this is when they were just little babies but you can see that they have died now
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unlike the five five fives which have a detachable plug here which
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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
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the 7h because it has a little mini usb cable
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uh the pc350s do not have that particular feature i took the whole
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earpiece apart and it's all soldered in there it would be quite a bear to
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actually replace it
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what else do i want to talk about in terms of comparison i think that pretty much covers it basically these
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are about 50 bucks less than the 555s that i'm using now they do have a mic
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the sound quality is what i would consider comparable to a decent quality
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music headphone in terms of music and honestly i very much preferred it to the
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pc350s once i was able to replace the
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earpieces now
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the thing that really impresses me actually is the price range because it's
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quite a bit less expensive than anything else that i would consider comparable in
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terms of sound quality it blows away any other sort of purely gaming headsets
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that i've used in the past now i don't know if you've noticed in some of my blog videos that i
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shoot in my office i also have some razer carcarious headphones in there and
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those are probably again up with the more comfortable headsets here
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but i found the sound quality was not quite
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up to par with the siberia v2 when i tested them last time so
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i guess this is just seven minutes of me rambling my thoughts on headphones i
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just want to say that steelseries has done a fantastic job with this product i
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think that at the price point it's pretty much unbeatable and i was very
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very very impressed with the steel series 7
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h i guess if i'm going to call this a
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review i should probably actually talk about some of the other stuff you can get it with a usb sound card which has
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been a lifesaver for me my onboard sound died on one of my motherboards and so i
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i actually use this the sound quality is i would call it perfectly adequate but
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i'm used to using 100 plus dollar sound card and or a 500 receiver to
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actually power my headphones so uh yeah it's adequate um it's about what you'd
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expect it's it's only a 30 adder i think so it's not that expensive it has a
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short cable which has a an on off low
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high uh no just on off for the mic and then volume adjustment for the headphones and
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then you can actually attach that to an extension cable so if you have a steel
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series 7h you can plug right into the back of the keyboard for your audio and
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then if you do not then you can just plug right into the back of the computer
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it has kind of like chromie accents which i think really look nice and it
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has an overall more solid build quality versus uh previous headsets that they've
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released i really like the retractable mic
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they've really upgraded the look of it versus uh ones that we've seen before so
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here i'll show you the one on the 5h v2 it looks like a little like
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oh i don't know teardrop looks very strange uh whereas this one
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looks more like a professional looking mic
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and that's actually kind of similar to the one that they have on the siberia v2
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which is also a much newer headset than the 5h v2 and i really do prefer it to
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the uh the the mic that sits next to your head
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which makes you look kind of ridiculous if you're not actually using it and
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you're not actually playing a game so
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there i actually gave some of my thoughts on the 7h now i can call this
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legitimately a review i enjoyed it it's good