We don’t tend to drift further than 12 meters away from the monitor while we’re gaming. As for wireless range, the transmitter can handle up to 12 meters without dropout, and frankly that’s fine for us. As with all rechargeable batteries, the life does decrease over time, but after almost a year it’s still hanging on and matching us for pace in longer sessions. Steelseries has the max charge time at 24 hours, and that’s true to our experiences from new. It’s also the kind of wireless headset that you forget is actually wireless, because its battery life is always long enough to power one mammoth session and usually a few days of average use before you need to plug in and charge again. There’s a small amount of creaking when you adjust the angle of the headset, but that’s the only blemish on the otherwise exemplary construction standard. There’s a volume scroll, a mic mute, the retractable mic itself, and we’re especially fond of having a game/chat mix scroll wheel on the headset itself instead of having to contend with labyrinthine menus in Windows, Discord, and the game itself. Neither of those things happens, we’re delighted to report. It sounds like the headband would either succumb to the headset’s weight and drop the frame onto your head, or the tension needed to keep it suspended would cut off the circulation to your ears. The Arctis 7 walks a different road entirely, using an elasticated fabric band to suspend the aluminium frame clear of your head. The vast majority of gaming headsets (opens in new tab), like studio headphones and audiophile kit, are built around an aluminium frame, and to negate the obvious discomfort of having a metal band digging into your skull they’re padded with memory foam and finished with soft, squishy materials like leatherette.

We’ll tackle the ergonomics first, because it’s that headband design that differentiates the Arctis 7 most clearly from its peers on a visual level. Features: Retractable noise-cancelling mic, chat mix control, customisable earcup plates and headband

Arctis series 7