Steelseries Arctis 1 Review – Cheap Gaming Headset Perfection – TechteamGB
If you are after a cheap gaming headset, this could be the best one I’ve checked out yet. The Steelseries Arctis 1 is a great choice, with a few drawbacks, so lets take a look. But first, if you aren’t already, consider subscribing for more videos like this one every monday, wednesday and friday.
As far as cheap gaming headsets go, this one ain’t bad. Starting with it’s look, it matches the more expensive Arctis lineup pretty well – with a few important differences. On a headset this cheap, as I’ve said before, you have to make compromises. Sometimes those are the build quality, or it’s the audio, but there is always something.
This one has a couple, the first is that build amd material quality. The headset, while looking like it’s bigger arctis brothers, especially the headband is made from incredibly cheap feeling plastics that give me no confidence in the longevity of this headset in the real world. When you open the headset to put it on your head, you’ll notice the insane level of force you have to use to pry it open – it seems the headband may be formed plastic in the centre with little flex available.
Now, happily, that doesn’t transfer into comfort. It’s remarkably good feeling on the head. While the lack of padding up top might get a little annoying after longer sessions, I actually had a pretty good time with this while testing. My ears did rub on the inside of the ear cups a little, but the fabric ear cups were breathable and soft enough that it felt pretty good, if a tiny bit tight on my head.
Interestingly, Steelseries opted for a pretty nice soft touch rubber cable on this, the same kind you’d find on their recent gaming mic, and actually works pretty well here. It’s a 4 pole headset, with a 4 pole to split headphone and microphone jacks adapter in the box too, so should work with pretty much any device you want, whether that’s your phone or pc, or xbox, playstation or switch.
What about audio then? Well, it’s certainly not bad. For the price, they are impressively clear, the bass actually isn’t overdone like a lot of headsets in this category, with good vocals for the most part and decent resolution. I did get a little distortion on some of the mids and highs with high quality flac files, but I’m not using an amazing DAC here, which I suppose will be typical usage for these really. For watching content, these are more than fine, whether that’s youtube videos like this one, or movies, it’s all good.
Of course, they are “gaming” headphones, so how are they there? Well, much like pretty much every other headset they are fine. The distinction between left and right was great for finding footsteps in CS:GO, and like I said comfort is good enough that I didn’t have any issues, and I don’t expect you to either. They even fold the ear cups so you can have them around your neck while not in use, or flat in a backpack for travelling.
Now, are these better than the Corsair HS35’s – a headset I’ve checked out recently, and one that’s £35 instead of the £50 these retail for? Well, not really. I think I do prefer them a little more, but if it was my money, I think the HS35, or the Asus Tuf H3s would get it over these. With that said, they are still a great option, and if they are on sale for closer to the HS35s as they are right now on Amazon UK, then I see no problem with picking a pair up.
Arctis 1 on Amazon: https://techteamgb.co.uk/arctis1
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