SteelSeries Arctis 5 RGB Illuminated Gaming Headset Review

<

Editor rating

4.2/5 on June 9, 2018 Reviewed by: Mark Torrent

User’s rating

660 reviews

PROS

  • Comfort
  • Unique aesthetics
  • Great sound
  • Sensitive microphone
  • RGB illumination

CONS

  • The included cable is too long

VERDICT

With a great sound that you can easily fine-tune to your liking and a comfortable design that will make you keep on listening for hours, the SteelSeries Arctis 5 are truly outstanding gaming headphones with unusual aesthetics and a very attractive price. If you’re an avid gamer who isn’t too fond of the typical design of gaming headphones, the SteelSeries Arctis 5 are a fantastic alternative that definitely deserves your attention.

We’ll say it right now: the SteelSeries Arctis 5 are the best for $$$ you’ll spent on any pair of gaming headphones.  SteelSeries isn’t new to gaming headphones, and the SteelSeries Arctis 5 are in many ways the culmination of everything the company has learned over the years.

Design and Build

Gaming sessions can get very long, and if you don’t have the right headphones, they can also get very sweaty. Fortunately, the SteelSeries Arctis 5 feature athletics-inspired performance fabric AirWeave earpads that can keep your ears cool and dry. Another feature that greatly contributes to the overall comfort is the exclusive ski goggle suspension headband, which perfectly contours across your entire head and comfortably distributes the weight of the headphones and eliminates pressure points.

Included with the headphones is a detachable microphone that uses a proprietary bidirectional design to deliver studio-quality voice clarity and background noise cancellation. You can adjust the balance between game and chat volume on the fly using the detachable ChatMix USB soundcard, and you can also control the volume and microphone mute thanks to ergonomic controls on the right earcup.

When it comes to design, the SteelSeries Arctis 5 stand out thanks to the Prism RGB illumination system, which offers 16.8 million colors and the ability to separately control the color of the left and right earcups.

Sound Quality

The SteelSeries Arctis 5 feature 7.1 surround sound and DTS Headphone:X technology, which simulates the 3D environment of the audio’s original mixing stage. Combine this with the S1 speaker drivers, which were engineered to produce detailed, balanced soundscape with ultra-low distortion, and you get a pair of gaming headphones with outstanding sound quality fit for gaming and music listening alike.

Even if the default sound signature of the 7.1 surround sound headphones doesn’t exactly match your personal preferences, you can use the SteelSeries Engine software to personalize the audio of your Arctis in several different ways, from presets to equalizer adjustments.

In their default configuration, the SteelSeries Arctis 5 are impactful yet detailed. The surround sound technology really goes a long way in helping you tell which direction a sound is coming from, leading to greater immersion and better scores.

What’s in the Box?

The SteelSeries Arctis 5 comes with a removable microphone, and an audio cable, which is unfortunately slightly too long for our taste.