Microphone Performance

The microphone of the SteelSeries Arctis 1 Wireless was tested by connecting it to my PC and a couple of Android smartphones. To review the microphone's sound and compare it to other similar headsets, I used the Adam A7X speakers and Shure SRH840 headphones (both fall into the studio monitor category). I connected them to the Audiolab's M-DAC, a high-quality digital-to-analog converter that functions as an external sound card when connected to a PC. Testing was done in Discord, Skype, and Audacity, and I also used Audacity to record the sound from the microphone. The sound was recorded with microphone sensitivity set to 100% and was not postprocessed or edited in any way.

For reference, this voice recording was made with the Rode NT-USB, a high-quality studio microphone:



This is the sound recorded by using the detachable microphone the SteelSeries Arctis 1 Wireless is supplied with:



The Arctis 1 Wireless uses the same microphone capsule as the Arctis 7, which you can easily hear if you listen to the following sample.



Overall microphone quality is in line with what you'd expect from a wireless gaming headset, meaning it's perfectly fine for all kinds of in-game communication and casual chatting with your friends, but too compressed to be used for more serious tasks, such as YouTube voiceovers or live streaming. The same can be said for most other wireless gaming headsets on the market, which you can hear by checking out the following samples. If you want a higher quality wireless microphone, you can always go with the Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless (reviewed here) or splurge for the Sennheiser GSP 670 (reviewed here). Even the top-of-the-line Arctis Pro Wireless uses an identical microphone to the Arctis 1 Wireless.