If it wasn't clear by now, I love the SteelSeries Arctis 5. It's an insanely comfortable gaming headset, one that can be freely connected to a smartphone and used outdoors too because of its stealthy aesthetics, lightness, practicality, and overall sound quality.

It's loaded with features, such as the ChatMix Dial - a smart little dongle with a rotatable dial that lets you change the volume ratio between in-game sounds and the voices of your friends. I never knew I wanted something like this until the Arctis 5 gave it to me. Other controls, such as the volume dial and microphone mute button, are built into the left ear cup, so you'll always know where they are.

The RGB lighting system looks great and can be configured any way you want, so that's another definite plus, at least for those who care about a bit of the RGB bling. The "Mic Sidetone" is yet another feature I really enjoyed using. It lets you hear your voice through the headphones without any delay for a more natural chatting experience, like you'd otherwise only get if your headphones were open-back - which these aren't.

But most importantly, I love the way the Arctis 5 sounds. Instead of simply bloating the bass and forgetting about everything else, SteelSeries tuned the audio drivers built into the Arctis 5 like you'd usually tune a pair of hi-fi headphones. That resulted in a well-balanced sound that makes just about every music genre sound great, and it does enable you to easily pinpoint the location of your virtual enemies. We're talking eSports-grade spatial positioning here.

The only major drawback is the slight microphone buzz caused by the supplied sound card, audible when you set the microphone sensitivity at and above 80%. Not everyone will hear it and be bothered by it, but it's definitely there. If you own a big Twitch or YouTube channel, said buzz could pose a problem because it can be annoying to the ear when listened to for a longer period of time. However, it will only be audible if you're streaming very quiet games and don't talk much. Also, you can get rid of it almost completely by lowering the microphone's sensitivity below 80%, where it's still loud enough for any kind of usage.

Despite that, I wholeheartedly recommend the SteelSeries Arctis 5 to anyone looking for a great headset. You'll love it while playing games and will like it just as much when listening to music. That's not something that can be said of most gaming headsets out there.