What is going on, everyone, I am Mike, welcome back to
Tech 24/7 TV.
I am so glad that you are back with me today because we are
reviewing the Arctis 7P headphones.
Now, these are what I would call premium headphones
designed to elevate your gaming experience on the
PlayStation 5 (PS5), PlayStation 4 (PS4).
They work with the Nintendo Switch, Android.
Heck, they're even going to work with the iPad Pro if it
has a USB-C port on it so in today's video, we're going
to review these headphones, see how they fit,
how they sound, what I like, what I don't like.
And at the end, I'll tell you whether you should buy them.
Let's get started.
As I mentioned in the beginning, these are the
Arctis 7P headphones.
These are from Steelseries.
And they're about one hundred and fifty bucks depending on
where you find them.
I was lucky enough to find them in stock at Best Buy.
I'll put a link down in the description below in case you
want to pick a pair up for yourself.
Now, these headphones, since they are from
Steelseries, they come with the expectation that they're going
to be made for gaming and that they sound good.
Now, spoiler alert.
They are both of those things.
But there are some drawbacks to them, in my opinion.
High level, they have a 24 hour battery life and I was able to
experience roughly 24 hours of listening time over the course
of five days.
And I think that's pretty much acceptable to me.
Now from a feature standpoint, this is where these headphones
are going to excel.
It's very easy to get a customized fit
for these headphones.
You're simply going to put them on and they're going to rest on
your head based on this band here that's on the top.
Now, if you have a smaller head or a larger head, there is this
elastic band that has Velcro, excuse the Velcro here.
You can go ahead and loosen this and then kind of get a
customized fit to make this elastic band looser
or tighter.
Now, once you're wearing the headset, it can be very
easy for you to adjust any of the buttons that are on here.
Now, on the left in your cup, there is a mute button
for the microphone.
There is a nice dial to turn up or turn down the volume.
Unlike some of the headphones I've seen here where they have
a rocker button in that rocker button really makes it, I say,
an imprecise way of adjusting the volume.
In addition to the volume jog dial, there is a mini USB
port here which is used for anything that you want to get
audio using the three point five millimeter jack.
There is an AUX jack if you want to go ahead and type in
audio from another source and then there's going to be a
micro USB plug to charge it.
Now, I think this here is probably gonna be one of
my biggest gripes.
You know, these are 150 to 200 headphones and you're still
using a micro USB cable to charge these headphones in 2021
I think it's really unacceptable.
And as gamers, we should demand more for the company
Steelseries, what are you doing?
Now, the retractable mic, as I mentioned, here it is on
the left hand earcup as well, and when you have the
headphones muted, there is an LED that is red lit letting you
know that obviously you are muted.
Now, if you're looking for microphone samples, I'm going
to put the timestamps right above so you can check that out
if you want to.
On the right ear cup, there is the side tone button and the
side tone button is used to get a mix of in-game audio and
your microphone audio as well.
And then there's the power button.
Now this power button pulls double duty.
Not only does it power on the headphones, but depending
on the battery life that's remaining in your headphones,
you'll see a different color light.
So it lets, you know, approximate how much battery
life is in here.
So that was nice as well.
Now, once you put these on, like I mentioned,
is very comfortable, these ear cups are made of a
memory foam material.
You could see this, that the memory foam takes about a
second or two to go ahead and expand off your ears.
And these ear cups can be removed and replaced if
you wanted to.
Very simple to pull off just like that.
I would say that these ear cups are about an inch deep.
And if you're someone who typically has problems with the
you know, how part of your ears hitting the ear cup, you might
want to check these out because these are definitely going to
give you, I think, a better fit than most.
Now, in order to use your Arctis 7P headphones with your
gaming platform, you'll need to plug in this USB dongle,
which obviously is included.
Maybe you have an older device,
like a PlayStation four.
Maybe you don't have a computer that has a USB port.
There is a cable included inside the box, which is USB-A
to USB-C which will allow you to go ahead and use it.
Now, let's say you want to use this with a switch.
You can plug this directly into the bottom of your switch,
which is going to be nice.
Or if you want to go and use it while docked inside
the cradle, you'll have to use that cable that I talked about
just a moment ago and then plug this into the bottom
of the cable.
Now, the headphones do have a good amount of flex in them.
In the ear cups will rotate in 90 degrees, allowing you to go
ahead and fold them almost completely flat.
Unfortunately, there is not a carrying case included, but if
you find one, let me know in the comments below because I am
looking for myself.
Steelseries does have an app that runs either on Mac
or Windows, it allows you to customize the gaming experience
with these headphones.
Let's go ahead and plug in the dongle.
We'll check it out.
Now that I have the app downloaded and the headphones
plugged in, I'm going to go ahead and click on
the headphone name.
Here we see information about my headphones.
If I wanted to re-pair these headphones with another dongle
or vice versa, that can all be done right here by
clicking this button.
If I change the equalizer, either all the bands or using
one of the presets that can be done right here.
If I want to change the microphone volume, I want to
get Real-Time previews.
That's done right here.
And then I can change the power down options.
Additionally, I can change the compression ratio for voice to
make it either sound more compressed or less compressed.
Now, the real power here comes in the ability to go ahead and
add default configurations on a per application basis.
So you see here, this is my default configuration.
I click on music and you see that I have this configured
just a little bit differently for a default configuration.
What I'm listening to music.
So when that app is opened up, the headphones will function
a certain way.
So that is actually really nice where I can customize the sound
for those headphones on a per hour basis, per game basis and
really fine tune and drive a person's experience every
chance there is.
Now, the bad thing here is that it only is Mac and
PC compatible with.
There's no iOS app, there's no Android app and if you want to
go in connected to your computer, you will need to
use the included USB-C to USB-A dongle.
Now, the great thing about these headphones is that when
you're playing games on your five, these headphones do
support Sony's Tempest's audio engine, giving you
3D immersive audio.
Moving on the comfort, I was able to wear these headphones
for several hours per day and not necessarily feel a
tremendous amount of ear fatigue or clamping down on my
head from wearing those headphones that you might see
with some headphones.
There are two things I didn't experience with
these headphones, which I'm glad I did not is one fumbling
around with a dial controls while these were on my ears
with a Sony.
The buttons are too close.
They're all on one side, which I did not like.
The second thing is I didn't have to fumble around with
putting the headphones and readjusting them to my head
like I did with the Sony Pulse headphones was very easy to
place them on my head and get a good seal each and every time
that I use them to move into position three and four.
I received a lot of questions in my previous video asking for
samples of what the audio quality would sound like while
you're playing in-game audio for chat.
So what I did here is I played some watchdogs, Legian,
I recorded the game, I turned on the audio, and then I
uploaded that video clip itself to YouTube and then sync that
clip to what we're watching here now.
I think that the audio when you're playing wirelessly
sounds not as good as when it's directly connected to
the controller itself.
But let me know what you think it now in the comments below.
All right.
So what do you think of the audio?
How is it sound to you?
I think the audio sounds at least on my side.
I do have that Saikat turn on.
It does sound pretty clean in terms of my quality.
I don't hear a lot of
I do have the mic.
You know, the mic is flexible.
I am turning away from my face a little bit, not getting too
many plosives from the PS and the BS.
Now let's switch over to the cable version and you tell me
what you think.
We're into this alive.
Who knows if this is actually even going to work.
So after plugging in the cable directly into a controller,
it seemed like I lost Mike for a moment.
So I restarted the game, restarted the controllers,
and now we should be hearing everything correctly.
I am recording now, so let's play.
Now, the weird thing is that there is no Satan, I can't
hear myself, which I don't think I like, I like
to side tone.
What do you guys think?
Let me know down below.
At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, are the Steel
series Arctis 7P headphones worth one hundred and fifty
dollars?
Or should you spend ninety nine dollars and get the Sony Pulse
3D?
So first thing you need to answer is whether or not you
require 24 hours a better life.
It's a nice to have.
I don't say it would be a must for myself.
If you need that, you automatically should get
the Arctis 7P headphones.
Second.
Maybe it's going to be the fit for you.
For me.
I think these Arctis 7P headphones fit better both from
an ergonomics perspective across my head and then also
from my ears.
I get a better fit and easier fit each and every time opposed
to the Sony Pulse headphones that I kind of have to
finish with, as I mentioned in my first video.
Now, the other thing I would mention is that if you want
that high degree of integration where you're getting the
ability to get your battery status, get your
headphone status all on screen with your PlayStation,
you're only going to find that with the Sony POF
through the headphones.
You don't necessarily get that high level of integration with
the Arctis 7P headphones that you do get.
I ran some problems where I was playing a game and I hit the
mute button on my controller when I was using the
Arctis 7P headphones.
That mute button did not mute my game.
I actually had to use the headphone mute in order for it
to actually work.
So I don't know if that's maybe a software issue for some of
them were Sony's only allowing it to their
first party headsets.
But let me know if you experience that
same problem below.
Now, that's not to say that the artists Seven-Up headphones are
the default that you should purchase, because I
would say that in terms of audio quality,
they sound really good.
I would say, in terms of like quality and a little bit
disappointed in the way that the audio turned out from
using them wirelessly.
I'm not always going to use my headphones wired and feeling
that I have to use them wired only to get better volume.
So more people hear me is not necessarily something I want to
go into now.
For me, I'm already a hundred dollars into
the Sony headphones.
I don't need a second pair of headphones.
I have enough headphones as it is.
I am not going to be selling my headphones to get the artists
headphones though I really like them.
I do say that they are comfortable.
They are probably more comfortable than my Sony Pulse
headphones in my examples where I don't get that pressure on my
head and I don't get that clamping feeling.
Plus it's not really finicky where I need to adjust them
every time I put them on.
Now, let me know what you think about these headphones.
Are you going to pick them up?
And if you are, are you going get the black ones or the white
ones?
Let me know in the comments below.
I am like, this is tech 24/7 TV folks.
I'll talk to the next one.