Sound Quality

The SteelSeries Arctis 1 Wireless uses the same speaker drivers as the award-winning Arctis 7, still one of the best wireless headsets on the market. With that in mind, I can only repeat everything I already mentioned in terms of sound quality in the Arctis 7 review.

You get a very smooth, neutral sound reproduction without any noticeable bumps across the frequency range or attempts to artificially change the sound of your games (or music, but more on that in a minute). When playing games, that translates into precision and a ton of details you may miss if the headset were tuned differently. You'll be able to hear something as grandiose as a building blowing up and as subtle as your enemy crawling in the grass with equal clarity and precision. I kept figuring out the direction and distance of my enemies and their gunfire with ease—awesome! In case you're a fan of exceptionally bass-heavy headphones, you might find the sound signature of the Arctis 7 a bit dull, at least before diving into the system-wide equalizer within the SteelSeries Engine Software and adjusting it to your liking.


Thanks to the strong focus on precision and clarity of the sound, the Arctis 1 Wireless holds its own in pretty much every music genre you decide to throw at it. The built-in drivers can keep up with fast drums, guitars, male and female vocals of all ranges and everything else your playlists may consist of. When considering these for music, don't think about them the same way you'd think about a regular gaming headset. This isn't a headset that's good with games and usable for music. The Arctis 1 Wireless is equally suitable for everything it might be used for, and its aforementioned acoustic qualities are beneficial and pronounced everywhere.

Just like with games, in case you find the bass lacking, which I absolutely didn't, you'll be able to adjust it via the system-wide equalizer. If you don't overdo it, you won't add any audible distortions to any part of the frequency spectrum.


Even though the Arctis 1 Wireless can benefit from a good DAC/amp, it's not something I'd really consider buying unless you already own one. Let's keep in mind this is a wireless headset. If your plans include constantly using it in wired mode, you're better off going with the wired Arctis 1.

The passive noise isolation is great. With the ear cushions being marketed as "airy", I was a bit worried that they were going to leak a lot of sound, but they didn't.