Steelseries Arctis 7 Wireless Headset Review

Up Close

The Arctis 7 come in a quality box with a design that apes that of the headset itself. Inside is an internal cradle which sits on the opposite end of the hue circle to the red and orange of the outer packaging but adds yet further robustness ensuring that the Arctis 7 are guaranteed to be in perfect condition when they arrive. Beneath the headset is the accessories box, which contains the small wireless receiver, a charging cable – if by some miracle you don’t already own a micro USB cable – and jack cable which allows the Arctis 7 to support audio via pads on your console of choice as well as phones and tablets and even lets you play audio when you’re out of charge.

The headset itself is much lighter than you might imagine thanks to some clever design touches. The metal headband is very thin and has a velcro strap wrapped around it which serves as an adjustable height method if you’ve got particularly high ears, a fashion statement thanks to its almost ski-goggle design, and even a post sale revenue stream for Steelseries should you be unhappy with the monochrome stylings and prefer to peruse the Steelseries online shop for some alternate colours. This is very much the love it/hate it feature of the Arctis 7 design. It does the job beautifully and is very comfortable, but aesthetically it’s bordering on gaudy.

On the underside of the ear pieces are all the controls you’d expect to find on a wireless headset. We have a charging jack and input for the 3.5mm cable, a volume control, a chat mixer, microphone mute and, of course, power button. All are easy to differentiate when groping blindly at your ears, and we particularly like that the mixer knob has a slight bump at the central point so it’s easy to know when you’re at ‘default’ settings. If you wish to have a little more control then the Arctis 7 is supported by the Steelseries Engine software, which gives you a little more fine tuning over the audio profile, including compression and Dolby DTS.