Closer Examination, Build Quality and Comfort

Due to extensive similarities between the GSP 500 and GSP 550 in terms of design and construction, I have no choice but to rehash some of the stuff from the GSP 500 review. There's just one obvious point of differentiation—while the GSP 500 is black with a couple of red details, parts of the GSP 550 frame are painted olive green. The same color can be found on the microphone's boom arm.


The Sennheiser GSP 550 is a massive headset. Its earcups are huge, and the same could be said for the headband. However, this headset is about 40 grams lighter than the GSP 600 because the ear cups are perforated. Regardless, 358 grams is still nothing to laugh about. The inner side of the headband is padded with a thick layer of foam covered in mesh fabric.


The GSP 550 has perforated ear cups, which makes it an open-back design. At a certain angle, you can clearly see the speaker drivers through the metal mesh. Sennheiser generally opted for a combination of robust, flexible plastic and a couple of metal parts, such as the silver element that connects the ear cup to the headband, and the shiny black ring that surrounds the joint of the pivotable microphone. Two additional olive-green stripes have been put on the arm of the microphone.


Forming a nice seal with both sides of the head, the massive ear cups completely surround the ears. They are entirely made out of fabric, and their ear cushions feel great and do a good job of ensuring a high level of wearing comfort. Weight distribution of the headset is also excellent, and I didn't feel any discomfort after using it for five or more hours without taking a break.


Despite its size, the GSP 550 is extremely flexible, which means it will survive a fall from the table, or similar mishaps. Even though the headset is predominantly encased in plastic, overall build quality is excellent. There are no creaks or anything else of the sort.


One feature not present outside of these Sennheiser gaming headsets (GSP 500/550/600) is the ability to adjust the tension of the headband, which changes the clamping force. There are two sliders that can be moved left and right. By moving these, you actually change the tension of the "invisible" inner metal headband the sliders are attached to. The tightness of the grip increases as you increase the distance between sliders. Meaning, if you want this headset to be as loose as possible, which was my preferred setting as it resulted in good wearing comfort, the sliders should be positioned as close to each other as possible, as in the second photo above. We already saw this exact solution on the Turtle Beach Elite Pro Tournament. It worked great there and works great in the case of the Sennheiser GSP 550 (and GSP 500/600) as well.


The ear cups can move in various directions to adjust to differently shaped heads. They can also be adjusted in "height", moved along the headband. Unfortunately, there are no markings on the headband, which would make it easier to figure out whether their height is adjusted equally. You'll have to play with it a bit to figure out what works best for you.


The right ear cup contains a large wheel that acts as a volume dial. Its circular motion is silent and quite refined, so I had no trouble making even the tiniest of volume adjustments. If you rotate it all the way in a counterclockwise direction, sound will be muted completely. It's a great volume dial—accurate and easily accessible.


Staying true to their gaming headset design, Sennheiser integrated the microphone mute function into the microphone itself. If you don't want it to pick up any sounds at all, you can simply pivot it upward. The first photo shows it in the position where a faint "click" can be felt and heard, which will tell you that the microphone has been muted. All you will have to do to use it again is pull it down until it lands in front of your mouth, and start talking. The microphone's range of motion has been implemented in a similar fashion to the volume dial, both in terms of smoothness and accuracy. Once you put it where you want it to be, it will stay in that exact position until you manually change it.


The microphone capsule seems quite large, and I'm expecting it to sound just as good as it did on the GSP 500/600.


The rubberized cable is detachable, but you won't want to use another cable in its place as it has the USB sound card. The sound card itself isn't any larger than an ordinary USB flash drive. It contains a single button to turn 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound on and off, and a red/white LED for whether 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound is on or off (red is off, white is on). The sound card is at the end of a 1.7-meter-long cable, which is quite weird as it means it will most likely be down on the floor unless you make a concentrated effort to keep it somewhere within reach. An odd design choice, to say the least.


The second supplied cable is a simple Micro-USB cable used to connect the sound card to an available USB port. You can of course use any other Micro-USB cable in its place.