Once upon a time I played an online game and found myself in need of both a microphone, and unrelatedly, a new pair of closed headphones for general music listening in the office. Seeing as gaming headphones go from $50 to $250, I figured, in the Hi-Fi world, the $200 mark is an excellent entry point, so here we are.
If you're looking for a pair of headphones for music, I'll save you the time on reading the entire review and mention right away that these sound bad. Not in the sense of "lacking A/B/C", but in the sense that music just doesn't sound right through them. However, for the relevance of the review, I'll be looking into them from the target audience point of view (young and/or hardcore gamers), and cover the following:
Package & Externals:
The package is a flashy affair with a layered paint job, and a box-within-a-box packaging. The headphones themselves are partially sealed with some nylon and removable stickers, to further impose the feeling you're unwrapping a fancy piece of gear. Dig in further, and underneath them you'll find another opening, revealing a compartment with a bunch of cables (phone adapter included), a "sound card" with USB, audio-out and mic-in jacks, and a user manual. The manual is pretty straight-forward if not a little dumbed down (the [THIS IS CORRECT/THIS IS INCORRECT] pictures format).
The headphones cable is, unfortunately, permanently attached, so no replacement when that breaks neither any attempts to improve the sound at the hardware level. You do get an extension cord, so (permanent) detachment as a result of an unintended too-long tug is unlikely.
As for the headphones themselves, they're surprisingly true to the pictures and built well with no flimsy parts, except for the retractable mic, which feels a bit loose. Parts intended for fidgeting with, such as the volume ring, have a rubbery strip on them and the cables are nice and grippy. While I'm not a fan of LEDs in any personal audio gear (exactly who you gonna impress playing alone in your room?), the lighting is sharp and uniform across the whole cup.
Interestingly, the headset also has an audio jack to connect an additional set to it. This appears to work well, as well as allow audio input, although sound quality on the 2nd set is slightly degraded by the citcuitry.
Control:
At the "Plug & Play" level, you get a nice set of features straight out of the box. Volume is controlled by a ring located on the right ear cup, with plenty of swivel for fine tuning, and a similar switch-oriented ring for unmuting the microphone on the left cup.
The mic itself is retractable and flexible to allows positioning relative to your mouth, and doesn't move around on its own. It also has another white LED in it that lights up when it's muted (opposed to listening), which at first I thought was a bug, then realized I'm being distracted by the light. When retracted it's hardly noticeable, so overall a nicely implemented feature.
Steelseries does advise you to download its management software, which is also used to update the headset's and sound card's firmware. The software allows you to control the LED colours, DSP, microphone audio modification (noise reduction, compression) and reverb (which doesn't seem to work, even on its loudest settings). It can also be configured to be "game aware", changing the LED colours based on games being played and even on actual game events (such as HP/Mana). Use cases for the feature are rather specific and it should be noted that games require integration with the software to work.
Gaming & Comfort:
To comment on the actual gaming subject, let's first define who are gamers, and what one might want. I see myself as a semi-hardcore case, on my free time playing some single-player titles (TES, GTA), some MMO (Runescape) and high-ranked MOBA (LoL, D+). As the Siberia 650 is priced towards the higher price range in the gaming headset category, I would expect most of the following:
Addressing the requirements by order, the sound isolation is only barely plausible. On medium volume levels, I can hear keyboard strokes, as well as the AC behind me when it's on, and wearing the headphones with glasses leaks in additional sound. The Steelseries Siberia 650 product page actually shows a gaming stage above the isolation remark, which I personally find as plain misleading advertising, let alone quotes from professional gamers using them on stage: The noise output of a few hundred hysterical teenagers (at the very least) is far too much for these to isolate from.
As I mention in the Audio Quality section of the review, the sound is very far from stellar. However, the headphones do appear to bring forward voice and vocals in a clear and accurate fashion, with the microphone recording very well too. The software also reduces noise by default, and so far I haven't heard complaints from fellow gamers over voice chat.
Setup time is practically nonexistent as there's no hinge on the headband to position, and the headphone holds itself well on the head without slipping off. As for comfort, it's a mixed bag: While the padding does not keep in heat and looks impressively large in pictures, in reality, the cups are shallow enough for my ears to hit the barely padded plastic, and for whatever "memory foam" cushions they might've used in there, it feels like simple sponge and that there's not enough of it. While it's less bothersome in attention-hungry online gaming, casual, relaxed games may find you being bugged by the headphones bulk sooner than later.
On reliability, I have not encountered any disconnections, noise, skips or glitches in the sound or microphone. The only oddity I ran into was with the sound card, sometimes not connecting well with the headphone cable, causing the left ear cup to mute. The issue can be fixed with a bit of fidgeting, but I find it increasingly harder to adjust and get the feeling that eventually the USB input plug will someday fail.
Update (11-Dec-2016): The sound card has indeed failed and the unit was sent for repairs. Half a point off for that on the overall scale.
Update (22-Dec-2016): The replacement unit's microphone isn't working (brand new box). Oddly, the earpiece sound quality is slightly better, though I still stand by my original impressions.
Audio Quality:
Well, this is Head-Fi, and unfortunately these are the type of headphones the community tends to open whole cans of whoopass on. I should mention that I've never listened to the Beats or Skullcandy brands, but with this pair I have the feeling I'm getting the general idea...
Starting with the nonexisting tonal balance, the immediate impression is listening to full-size speakers in the bathtub. The sound is undetailed, muffled, with inflated upper bass and highs that clip at about 12k. Low bass is nowhere to be found either. Now, I hold no grudge to headphones lacking frequencies here and there, but these simply distort them. My mindset blind-buying these was that if the $5 VE Monk can sound well, a $150-200 set can't sound worse, but here we are.
Initially I thought there was either a bug or the USB-to-3.5mm adapter was horrible, as I've been plugging them to an amplifier. Sure enough, the Steelseries software immediately suggested a firmware update when I plugged them to the bundled sound card, and after the update (or just by default) a DSP automatically kicked in, which amplified the highs and removed the bathroom soundstage. This is, of course, isn't a real fix and I would've preferred to just have the option to modify the sound myself.
Unto the the subject of equalization, the software presents one of the most bizzare EQ presets I've yet seen: At the very least, one would expect "Bass" and "Treble" presets, but instead there are things like "MMO", "Performance" and "Explosive Action", all having graphs that make no sense and heavily distort the sound further. Funnily enough, there's a "Music" preset, which is a V-shaped graph. At some point I tried building one myself, but for all I hear there's little I can salvage from the headphone's cheap drivers. An argument can be made here, that some gamers like boomy, flashy sound, but I beg the differ, due to the simple fact that games I play regularly suddenly sound unfamiliar and distant, requiring a re-adaptation period.
One of the key selling points for these (and apparently a lot of other gaming headphones) appears to be 7.1 Dolby. This is, of course, done at the software level, which I was skeptical about to begin with. Sure enough, turn it on in the software and you'll hear what appears to be an attempt to position frequency ranges at different points in the soundstage, the execution of which is not only miserably useless, but even further muffles the sound in an attempt to achieve an effect I cannot define: Open-world games are not more immersive and shooters and MOBAs simply have their sound badly positioned.
As I mentioned, I initially connected the headphones to an amplifier for a quick test (Fiio X5+E12A, to be exact), while the package includes what appears to be some sort of USB DAC/Amp that has an headphones-out jack. Obviously there's no point comparing an (at best) $10 tic tac box to anything Hi-Fi, but from plugging some proper earphones to it, I can tell it falls short of a Nexus 5, which is a shame as well. Either way, plugging the Siberia 650 to a good source may slightly improve the resolution and detail, but it won't change the problematic frequency skew.
Summary and Alternatives:
To put the review to a close, let's recap.
The Steelseries Siberia 650 is a "gaming headset", which does well what a gamer might expect and then adds some: Great control tools, good build quality and voice transmission. The Siberia 650 is not, a "professional headphone", and has bad sound quality, low isolation, lacks long-session wear comfort, and for whatever minimal audio performance you might think $150-200 will land you, these will set a new low standard in that regard. The product page quotes these as "One of the best PC gaming headsets", from which - the music lover point of view - I understand that the PC gaming headset market is saturated mostly with crap.
If I had to suggest an alternative, the obvious no-brainer route is getting a proper set of headphones and a mic that has a mute button, the latter costing about $10-15, leaving you a lot of choice room for proper closed headphones. If you still need something with a mic stuck in it, and a paint job, Sennheiser has its Game Zero model, which is a small investment up from the Siberia 650, or go for broke and get the Beyerdynamic MMX 330, which I imagine are the best-sounding "gaming" headphones out there, probably by far.
As for the Siberia 650, I simply cannot recommend them unless you get them at least on a 60% discount.
If you're looking for a pair of headphones for music, I'll save you the time on reading the entire review and mention right away that these sound bad. Not in the sense of "lacking A/B/C", but in the sense that music just doesn't sound right through them. However, for the relevance of the review, I'll be looking into them from the target audience point of view (young and/or hardcore gamers), and cover the following:
- Feeling during fast-paced games - communication, comfort.
- Control, customizability and the software suit.
- General usefulness of the package.
Package & Externals:
The package is a flashy affair with a layered paint job, and a box-within-a-box packaging. The headphones themselves are partially sealed with some nylon and removable stickers, to further impose the feeling you're unwrapping a fancy piece of gear. Dig in further, and underneath them you'll find another opening, revealing a compartment with a bunch of cables (phone adapter included), a "sound card" with USB, audio-out and mic-in jacks, and a user manual. The manual is pretty straight-forward if not a little dumbed down (the [THIS IS CORRECT/THIS IS INCORRECT] pictures format).
(The entire package)
The headphones cable is, unfortunately, permanently attached, so no replacement when that breaks neither any attempts to improve the sound at the hardware level. You do get an extension cord, so (permanent) detachment as a result of an unintended too-long tug is unlikely.
As for the headphones themselves, they're surprisingly true to the pictures and built well with no flimsy parts, except for the retractable mic, which feels a bit loose. Parts intended for fidgeting with, such as the volume ring, have a rubbery strip on them and the cables are nice and grippy. While I'm not a fan of LEDs in any personal audio gear (exactly who you gonna impress playing alone in your room?), the lighting is sharp and uniform across the whole cup.
(Headset plugged in with the mic pulled out)
Interestingly, the headset also has an audio jack to connect an additional set to it. This appears to work well, as well as allow audio input, although sound quality on the 2nd set is slightly degraded by the citcuitry.
Control:
At the "Plug & Play" level, you get a nice set of features straight out of the box. Volume is controlled by a ring located on the right ear cup, with plenty of swivel for fine tuning, and a similar switch-oriented ring for unmuting the microphone on the left cup.
The mic itself is retractable and flexible to allows positioning relative to your mouth, and doesn't move around on its own. It also has another white LED in it that lights up when it's muted (opposed to listening), which at first I thought was a bug, then realized I'm being distracted by the light. When retracted it's hardly noticeable, so overall a nicely implemented feature.
(The LED ring is covered by rubber for easy gripping)
Steelseries does advise you to download its management software, which is also used to update the headset's and sound card's firmware. The software allows you to control the LED colours, DSP, microphone audio modification (noise reduction, compression) and reverb (which doesn't seem to work, even on its loudest settings). It can also be configured to be "game aware", changing the LED colours based on games being played and even on actual game events (such as HP/Mana). Use cases for the feature are rather specific and it should be noted that games require integration with the software to work.
Gaming & Comfort:
To comment on the actual gaming subject, let's first define who are gamers, and what one might want. I see myself as a semi-hardcore case, on my free time playing some single-player titles (TES, GTA), some MMO (Runescape) and high-ranked MOBA (LoL, D+). As the Siberia 650 is priced towards the higher price range in the gaming headset category, I would expect most of the following:
- Sound isolation.
- Wide soundstage.
- Clear voice input and output.
- Short-to-none setup time.
- Simple use and control.
- Comfort and no wear fatigue (heat).
- Reliability (no bugs, no skips).
Addressing the requirements by order, the sound isolation is only barely plausible. On medium volume levels, I can hear keyboard strokes, as well as the AC behind me when it's on, and wearing the headphones with glasses leaks in additional sound. The Steelseries Siberia 650 product page actually shows a gaming stage above the isolation remark, which I personally find as plain misleading advertising, let alone quotes from professional gamers using them on stage: The noise output of a few hundred hysterical teenagers (at the very least) is far too much for these to isolate from.
As I mention in the Audio Quality section of the review, the sound is very far from stellar. However, the headphones do appear to bring forward voice and vocals in a clear and accurate fashion, with the microphone recording very well too. The software also reduces noise by default, and so far I haven't heard complaints from fellow gamers over voice chat.
Setup time is practically nonexistent as there's no hinge on the headband to position, and the headphone holds itself well on the head without slipping off. As for comfort, it's a mixed bag: While the padding does not keep in heat and looks impressively large in pictures, in reality, the cups are shallow enough for my ears to hit the barely padded plastic, and for whatever "memory foam" cushions they might've used in there, it feels like simple sponge and that there's not enough of it. While it's less bothersome in attention-hungry online gaming, casual, relaxed games may find you being bugged by the headphones bulk sooner than later.
(The headset in action)
On reliability, I have not encountered any disconnections, noise, skips or glitches in the sound or microphone. The only oddity I ran into was with the sound card, sometimes not connecting well with the headphone cable, causing the left ear cup to mute. The issue can be fixed with a bit of fidgeting, but I find it increasingly harder to adjust and get the feeling that eventually the USB input plug will someday fail.
Update (11-Dec-2016): The sound card has indeed failed and the unit was sent for repairs. Half a point off for that on the overall scale.
Update (22-Dec-2016): The replacement unit's microphone isn't working (brand new box). Oddly, the earpiece sound quality is slightly better, though I still stand by my original impressions.
Audio Quality:
Well, this is Head-Fi, and unfortunately these are the type of headphones the community tends to open whole cans of whoopass on. I should mention that I've never listened to the Beats or Skullcandy brands, but with this pair I have the feeling I'm getting the general idea...
Starting with the nonexisting tonal balance, the immediate impression is listening to full-size speakers in the bathtub. The sound is undetailed, muffled, with inflated upper bass and highs that clip at about 12k. Low bass is nowhere to be found either. Now, I hold no grudge to headphones lacking frequencies here and there, but these simply distort them. My mindset blind-buying these was that if the $5 VE Monk can sound well, a $150-200 set can't sound worse, but here we are.
Initially I thought there was either a bug or the USB-to-3.5mm adapter was horrible, as I've been plugging them to an amplifier. Sure enough, the Steelseries software immediately suggested a firmware update when I plugged them to the bundled sound card, and after the update (or just by default) a DSP automatically kicked in, which amplified the highs and removed the bathroom soundstage. This is, of course, isn't a real fix and I would've preferred to just have the option to modify the sound myself.
Unto the the subject of equalization, the software presents one of the most bizzare EQ presets I've yet seen: At the very least, one would expect "Bass" and "Treble" presets, but instead there are things like "MMO", "Performance" and "Explosive Action", all having graphs that make no sense and heavily distort the sound further. Funnily enough, there's a "Music" preset, which is a V-shaped graph. At some point I tried building one myself, but for all I hear there's little I can salvage from the headphone's cheap drivers. An argument can be made here, that some gamers like boomy, flashy sound, but I beg the differ, due to the simple fact that games I play regularly suddenly sound unfamiliar and distant, requiring a re-adaptation period.
(One of the moronic EQ presets)
One of the key selling points for these (and apparently a lot of other gaming headphones) appears to be 7.1 Dolby. This is, of course, done at the software level, which I was skeptical about to begin with. Sure enough, turn it on in the software and you'll hear what appears to be an attempt to position frequency ranges at different points in the soundstage, the execution of which is not only miserably useless, but even further muffles the sound in an attempt to achieve an effect I cannot define: Open-world games are not more immersive and shooters and MOBAs simply have their sound badly positioned.
As I mentioned, I initially connected the headphones to an amplifier for a quick test (Fiio X5+E12A, to be exact), while the package includes what appears to be some sort of USB DAC/Amp that has an headphones-out jack. Obviously there's no point comparing an (at best) $10 tic tac box to anything Hi-Fi, but from plugging some proper earphones to it, I can tell it falls short of a Nexus 5, which is a shame as well. Either way, plugging the Siberia 650 to a good source may slightly improve the resolution and detail, but it won't change the problematic frequency skew.
Summary and Alternatives:
To put the review to a close, let's recap.
The Steelseries Siberia 650 is a "gaming headset", which does well what a gamer might expect and then adds some: Great control tools, good build quality and voice transmission. The Siberia 650 is not, a "professional headphone", and has bad sound quality, low isolation, lacks long-session wear comfort, and for whatever minimal audio performance you might think $150-200 will land you, these will set a new low standard in that regard. The product page quotes these as "One of the best PC gaming headsets", from which - the music lover point of view - I understand that the PC gaming headset market is saturated mostly with crap.
If I had to suggest an alternative, the obvious no-brainer route is getting a proper set of headphones and a mic that has a mute button, the latter costing about $10-15, leaving you a lot of choice room for proper closed headphones. If you still need something with a mic stuck in it, and a paint job, Sennheiser has its Game Zero model, which is a small investment up from the Siberia 650, or go for broke and get the Beyerdynamic MMX 330, which I imagine are the best-sounding "gaming" headphones out there, probably by far.
As for the Siberia 650, I simply cannot recommend them unless you get them at least on a 60% discount.
