Closer Examination

The biggest difference between the Arctis 5 and Arctis 7, at least as far as used materials and aesthetics go, is the outer headband. Instead of plastic, it's made of silver metal this time around. Thanks to that, it looks prettier and feels even sturdier and more in line with the price. The top of the headband is covered with an elastic fabric that's used on ski goggles, to keep them firmly attached to your head. In this case, it functions both as something that makes the headset look more interesting and a comfortable, stretchable inner headband.


The tightness of the secondary, elastic headband can be changed slightly by adjusting the Velcro straps. Perhaps more importantly, you can also replace it with a different one. SteelSeries offers a wide selection of designs and a couple of designer options made by street artists Lauren Asta and ThankYouX (you're welcome!). All of these will cost you $15 apiece.


If you're willing to dish out an additional $60, SteelSeries will gladly sell you their handcrafted, American-made leather headband. That's a lot of money, but boy, does it look pretty. Regardless of which headband you decide to go with, the Arctis 7 will look beautiful. It is hands down the best, most luxurious-looking gaming headset I have ever had the pleasure of trying out.


The ear cushions don't differ from what we saw on the Arctis 5. In other words, their shape is elliptical (the inner dimensions are 5 by 6.5 centimeters) and they completely surround the ears. SteelSeries covered them with a fabric that's used to make running shirts to make sure they are as soft and breathable as possible. Thanks to that, they're superbly comfortable and much less likely to cause your ears to sweat during prolonged gaming sessions.


If you're so inclined, you can take them off and easily replace them with leather or velour ear cushions, which SteelSeries sells as accessories for $15 a pair, regardless of which ones you choose.


The outer side of the ear cups is covered with a fine layer of rubber and feels very nice to the touch. As I've already mentioned, unlike the Arctis 5, SteelSeries didn't equip the ear cups of the Arctis 7 with an RGB lighting system. The reason for its omission is most likely that you don't want an objectively useless visual detail like that to drain the battery. One might argue that they got rid of a feature and still went with a higher price (compared to the RGB-equipped Arctis 5), but in all honesty, I simply don't care. I see the RGB lighting on a gaming headset, a device you don't see while using it, as a gimmick, and if said headset were wireless, I'd most definitely refrain from using the RGB lighting option to keep the battery going for significantly longer.


On the outer edge of the left ear cup is a microphone mute button and a volume dial. The microphone mute button has a single diagonal marking that can be felt under the finger, which makes it easy to find the mute button without looking. After you press it, it protrudes out of the ear cup, which again makes it easy to find when you want to unmute the microphone.


Close to the volume dial is where you'll find the USB and 3.5-mm analogue audio and standard Micro-USB charging ports. You can use the latter with any Micro-USB cable should you find the supplied one to be too short. The USB port may strike you as unusual-looking and lead you to believe it's proprietary, but it actually isn't. What we're dealing with here is a less common 8-pin Mini-USB port. Why did SteelSeries go with that rather than using a standard and equally compact Micro-USB port? Most likely to get you to buy the replacement cable directly from them should you lose or break it. They're selling it as an accessory for $8. Both cables are obviously detachable and are connected to the headset snugly, so there's no risk of them disconnecting during normal usage.


I like the fact that the head of the microphone also lights up when muted. That way, you can know for sure if it's on or off, and there won't be a chance your teammates will miss something you said into a potentially muted microphone.


As I've already mentioned, the built-in bidirectional microphone, affixed to a rubberized arm, is retractable. You can pull it out and push it back in with absolute ease, with one hand. Not once did it get stuck when I was retracting it or fell out of its resting place when I didn't want it to. Thanks to the way its arm is made, it also stays exactly where you put it.


The right ear cup contains the power button and yet another dial. The clicky power button needs to be pressed for about three seconds in order to turn the headset on or off. The color of its built-in LED will give you a rough idea about the remaining battery charge. If it's green, the remaining battery charge sits somewhere between 50%-100%. Yellow means it's down to 20%-49% and red indicates that it's currently between 10%-19%. If it's red and blinking rapidly, you have about 1%-9% of the charge left and need to plug it in.


The dial on the right ear cup is the so-called ChatMix Dial. It's a clever little feature that lets you adjust the volume ratio between the game you're playing and the voice app you're currently using to communicate with your teammates. Turn it one way and the game will become louder and your friends quieter. Turn it the other way and the opposite will happen. If you leave it in its middle position, in which it subtly clicks into (awesome implementation - you'll never wonder if you adjusted the balance properly), it basically won't do anything; the sound balance will be like you're not using the ChatMix Dial at all.


What sorcery is being used, how does this thing manage to do what it does? It's actually quite simple. When you connect the Arctis 7 to your PC via USB, it adds two separate devices to the list of playback devices in the Control Panel. One of them is called the SteelSeries Arctis 7 Chat and the other the SteelSeries Arctis 7 Game. All you have to do is make the SteelSeries Arctis 5 Game your default playback device to then fire up your voice chat app of choice (Discord, TeamSpeak, Skype, etc.), go to its audio settings, and select the SteelSeries Arctis 7 Chat as the preferred playback device. By doing so, you essentially convince your OS that you use one device for voice playback and a different one for playback of other sounds. The OS doesn't care that both sounds will be played through the same physical device. With all that in mind, what ChatMix Dial does is to simply adjust the volume ratio between what it sees as two separate playback devices. Do keep in mind that it doesn't increase or lower the absolute volume level of the sound - it just changes the volume ratio between two "devices". To adjust the volume, you still need to use the appropriate dial located on the left ear cup.

ChatMix Dial is one of those things you don't realize you need until you get it. It's fantastically useful, and I truly enjoyed the practicality it offered me in my everyday virtual warfare. I'm absolutely positive I'm going to miss it on other headsets, and that's as big of a compliment as I can give it. The Arctis 5 I reviewed a couple weeks ago also offered it, but as a small external device. The way it's implemented on the Arctis 7 is even better - you won't have to look for it around the table, and you'll end up using it even more. Good job, SteelSeries!

Battery Life

SteelSeries claims that the Arctis 7 can offer up to 15 hours of battery life. That's a strange thing to say, seeing I was able to regularly use it for about 25 hours before having to connect it to a USB port in order to charge it. Even if you're gaming for 6 hours per day, you won't have to charge it more than twice per week. Of course, the headset can be charged and used at the same time.

You can keep track of its remaining battery life through the SteelSeries Engine 3 software. It displays a small battery icon with an appropriate number of remaining "bars" rather than an exact estimate in hours and minutes. There's also the option of checking out the color of the power button. Allow me to reiterate, in case you came to this page just to check on how long the battery will last and how one figures out how much of the charge is left - if it's green, the remaining battery charge sits somewhere between 50%-100%. Yellow means it's down to 20%-49%, and red indicates that it's currently between 10%-19%. If it's red and blinking rapidly, you have about 1%-9% of charge left and need to plug it in.

When there's about an hour of battery life remaining, you'll also start hearing two short beeps in the headphones, warning you about it. They sound off often enough that using the headset at that point becomes annoying, so you'll definitely want to start charging it. If there are no sounds playing from your PC, the headset will automatically turn off after 10 minutes of inactivity.

The Arctis 7 can be used in wired mode even with the battery completely drained or the headset itself turned off. In other words, if you plan to pair it with your smartphone and use it on the go, the battery's charge will remain intact.

Wireless Performance

The Arctis 7 comes with a flat, nice-looking wireless dongle you should be able to place pretty much anywhere on the table. It connects to a USB 2.0/3.0 port and uses a standard 2.4 GHz WiFi connection to communicate with the headset. The range is absolutely impressive. My apartment wasn't big enough to test out the effective range as the furthest I can move away from the PC is about 20 meters. I had to go out of the apartment and down the corridor to lose the connection with the receiver. With that in mind, I can freely say you'll be able to use the Arctis 7 from anywhere in your home. For example, you can sit in your living room and have music playing on the PC that's in your bedroom.


The wireless receiver is equipped with two 3.5-mm ports. One of these is marked as "Line Out". You can use that one to plug in your speakers and have them playing whenever the headset is turned off. As soon as you power it on, the line-out port mutes and the sound coming from your PC automatically starts playing through your headset.


The second 3.5-mm port is "Line In". If you have an external sound source, i.e. a smartphone, this is the port you can plug it in to have the music wirelessly delivered to the headset. Both of the aforementioned ports are extremely useful and nice to have.


Upon closer inspection, you'll also notice a button on the right side of the wireless receiver. It can be used to redo the pairing process with the headset. Since the receiver and the headset come factory-paired and never seem to lose track of each other, I didn't have to use this button once.


The wireless receiver has a white LED on its top side. When the LED is on, it means that the receiver and the headset are successfully paired. Unfortunately, once you turn the headset off, the LED starts blinking and keeps doing so until you turn the headset back on. I found it distracting and kept covering it up with papers I had lying around the table. Too bad there's no way to turn it off completely or change its behavior through the software.