There's also a standard 3.5mm jack if you want to hook the device up to something that doesn't support wireless. On the left ear cup you'll find most controls and the collapsable microphone. While the device is mostly plastic, it's solid, and the headband has a metal insert making it more stable. The soft foam padding on the ears are light, but do an adequate job of isolating outside noises.

The downside of this design is it tends to cover USB ports that are next to the device on either laptops or desktops - thankfully there's an extension cable included.įrom a comfort and build quality perspective the SteelSeries Arctis 7+ are top notch. Not only does the headset itself support USB-C charging but the dongle used to connect to whatever device you want to use the headset with is now a flat USB-C style dongle.

In my testing I was getting around 25-26 hours before a low battery warning hit. Now sporting 30 hours of battery life, USB-C charging, and 15 minute quick charging capability the headset feels more modern and in-tune with features you'd expect. So how did SteelSeries go and improve on it? By packing even more features into the $170 headset.įirst up is an upgraded battery with USB-C support. It featured a no frills design simply packed with features and quality. Vocal tracks can suffer a little more notably, though-for instance in Falling Apart by Wilco, where Jeff Tweedy’s voice routinely gets a little lost in the guitar and bass.The SteelSeries Arctis 7 headset was one of the best selling and best reviewed headsets of 2017. During louder parts of the song, the dueling guitar parts sound a lot less distinct from each other. In Playing God by Polyphia, the whistling that comes in during the song’s bridge is very hard to hear amidst the crush of the bass guitar. Music sounds mostly fine coming through the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7, but that bass emphasis can get in the way of some music’s subtler details. However, while bass and midrange sound have some definite foibles, the high range frequency response is considerably wonkier, with a huge dip at 5kHz and a big over-emphasis at 7kHz. While the sub-bass is nicely emphasized, the bass comes through up to around 5dB louder than we generally like to see between 100-200Hz, and there’s a pretty significant dip around 400Hz. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 features audio output pretty close to our in-house target, with a handful of notable deviations.

Steelseries arctis 7+