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Steelseries 7H Gaming Headset Review & Comparison Linus Tech Tips

2010-07-22
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 chance some time some chance to game on them 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 HD 5 5 v 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 drape a PC 161 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 the HD 5 5 5 sigh I found most gaming headsets 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 to give you guys here so I have the SteelSeries Siberia v2 this is their 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 quite a bit less expensive again then even the HD 5 v 5s on their own I have the SteelSeries 5 hv 2 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 liked the new 7 H I find out of the ones in front of me the most comfortable are probably the well broken in HD 5 5 5 s 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 you 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 HD 555 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 PC 350 s 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 halfs of 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 earphones so you don't have quite the same directionality that you would with a closed headphone like the PC 350 which is designed completely for gaming this is a purely gamer skew from Sennheiser so let's talk a little bit about what makes the 7 H 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 much 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 make me 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 plethora ones or the cloth ones if you prefer a more closed listening experience so that means that much like the PC 350s 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 7 H or you can put on the claw your muffs your muffs the cloth earpieces and then you can actually have a more opening with open listening experience now I actually very much prefer the HD 5 5 5 s to the PC 3 50s I don't like the 350 s 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 plastic e 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 PC 350s recently died because my cats my cats ate them here this is when they were just little babies but you can see that they have died now unlike the 5 v 5s 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 7 H because it has a little mini USB cable the PC 350s 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 5 v 5s 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 PC 350 s 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 a comparable in terms of sound quality it blows away any other sort of purely gaming headsets that I've used in the past and I don't know if you've noticed in some of my vlog videos that I shoot in my office I so have some razor Carcharias 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 the 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 SteelSeries 7h I guess I'm gonna 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 ID on one of my motherboards and so I actually used this the sound quality is I would call it perfectly adequate but I'm used to using one hundred plus dollar sound card and/or a $500 receiver to actually power my headphones so yeah it's adequate it's about what you'd expect it's it's only a $30.00 adder I think so it's not that expensive it has a short cable which has a an on-off low high 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 SteelSeries 7/8 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 chrome accents which I think really looked nice and it has an overall more solid build quality versus previous headsets that they've released I really like the retractable mic they've really upgraded the look of it versus ones that we've seen before so here I'll show you the one on the five hb2 it looks like a little like I don't know tear drop looks very strange and whereas this one looks more like 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 5hv 2 and I really do prefer it to 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 me seven each now I can call this legitimately a review I enjoyed it it's good
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