Steelseries Arctis Pro Wireless
5 reviews
AVOID SteelSeries - Cheaply Made and Will Break Just Outside Warranty – BE WARNED - stay far away from SteelSeries products. They are made with cheap materials and are designed to break just outside warranty period. Their customer service is appalling and they will not care about your plea, even if it's due to a major design flaw that hundreds of other people have experienced. They just want your money. Expensive products but made on the cheap.
I bought a SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless headset less than 2 years ago. It cost me over $500. It was the more expensive headset I had ever bought, but I justified it as "I'll have this headset for many years, it's an investment". Well here I am, less than 2 years later, and it's broken through no fault of my own. First the 1 year warranty period will go by and everything is great - swappable batteries, good quality audio, good ear cups. But then the cracks start to appear, literally. On both sides it will start to crack near the hinges (as seen in photo). Firstly small, but then they get progressively worse. Then one day - they just snap completely. The earcup detaches itself and is just hanging there loosely by a wire. Effectively useless now.
Upon further research, there are countless Reddit threads of people with the exact same issue. Same cracks, same spots, also around the 2 year mark. Conveniently outside warranty. This is not user error or misuse. This is very clearly a design flaw.
I reached out to SteelSeries about it and referenced the threads of countless other people with the same issue - they didn't care. Very emotionless, generic customer service response - "this is outside RMA warranty period. We can offer you a 15% discount code though" LOL....no thanks. Why on earth would I spend another single cent with you??
Terrible experience. Cheaply made products. Definitely AVOID. Much better and cheaper products out there. Try Razor instead.
Purchased for $500.
Uncomfortable average product that frequently disconnects – Average product, uncomfortable on ears with in ear noise meter (uncomfortable regardless even if they took this out). Priced as a premium product, but has the features, performance and comfort of a sub-$100 pair of headphones.
Purchased in for $499.
Breaks at the same spot regardless of care – I've owned two of these headphones and both have broken in the exact same spot each time. Even after contacting them directly for warranty, they still refuse to accept responsibility - despite it falling within the 2year warranty period. When you google further for examples of breakages with this product you also see other customers suffer the same breakage.
Purchased in at JB Hi-Fi Online Store for $599.
Received a faulty product, and only radio silence from customer support – These headphones sounded pretty great, and the user experience was pretty good however there are some very glaring mechanical and customer support issues. When i received mine, I happily used it for 3 days, though I noticed it getting looser and looser. Upon closer inspection I noticed it had a crack in the plastic on the side (pictured). This crack was positioned such that every time i put it on it would put pressure on it, inevitably rendering it unusable.
A dodgy headset wouldn't be the end of the world, if it was easily replaced, however it's now been 2 weeks of non response from Steelseries in an attempt to get this fixed, and it seems there is little hope that it will get resolved.
Strongly recommend giving your money to a different company with active customer support, especially given the glaring mechanical flaw in the single piece of plastic design of the headband.
Purchased in for $558.
Insanely feature packed, Great Wireless Range, Trash Microphone and Kinda Uncomfortable to Wear – Upon receiving this headset I was impressed with the build quality and accessories included with it...... then I turned it on. I must say at first I was very disappointed with the audio quality and immediately noticed a hissing sound in the background even with nothing connected yet. It takes some good custom EQ settings but these headphones can sound decent when properly configured. I manually set the following through the transmitter settings: +3 for 100hz -1 for 300hz +1 for 900hz 0 for 2.5HKz +3 for 8KHz I also enabled Dolby Atmos for Headphones and I'm now happy with the sound I'm getting. The hiss of course is always going to be there, I believe it's a limitation of wireless tech but it's not bad at all and can be easily drowned out with a bit of background music. The headset has so many features, the transmitter box does a lot and you can even utilise its screen with software to display things like the active speakers in Discord and notifications (this is incredibly buggy atm tho). Now for the Microphone, it's basically unusable. It sounds much worse than most headsets including my $100 Hyper X Cloud II's Mic, and along with that if you move the Mic just a tad too close to your mouth then the Mic will start peaking like crazy - it's laughably bad and I don't know how it's Discord Certified. I use a separate XLR Microphone on my PC so it's convenient that the built-in one on the headset retracts away and lets you disable the LED on it as well, basically unless you're using it for phone calls over Bluetooth you WILL need an external microphone. I had a little trouble using the Mic over Bluetooth as well, it seems to only activate during ongoing calls so I couldn't use it in other apps like the camera and voice recorder. It seems very finicky taking calls with this headset, I usually end up using disabling Bluetooth on my phone as I worry about audio issues which i can't monitor. Using Bluetooth for media seems fine tho, I run my phone through it and once disabling the ability for the headset to mess with volume via the android settings it was fine.
People might have questions about range, I'm very impressed with it. I can use the headset pretty much anywhere in my house without interruptions, it has a little trouble going through multiple walls but it's fine in a bedroom or something while you're in the kitchen - even with the door closed. Because it's lossless as well the audio cuts out instead of dropping in quality when out of range, I personally prefer this but I imagine most people won't. The PC connection uses 2.4Ghz which is similar to Wi-Fi, as long as Wi-Fi can travel through your house fine then you shouldn't have any issues here.
Now this headset is definitely not the most comfortable, it weighs a fair bit and you definitely do notice when you're wearing it but TRUST ME it will get more comfortable after the first 2 weeks of use. I originally wanted to return this headset after being unimpressed with the sound quality but found that I loved it 2 weeks in, my main reason for buying it is because it has a 3.5 mm input which allows me to use it with my GoXLR so I can have real time monitoring on my XLR Microphone, it seems to work well in my setup and I'm addicted to wireless now.
Well that's basically all I have to say about it, I don't use it with a PS4 but I have tried it on an Xbox One and although it's not supposed to support it you can get game audio through to the headset via optical. You can then use a PC or Bluetooth device to join voice chats if needed which is a better solution imo.
Had the headset for about a month now using it for about 10 hours every day while working from home and it's one of the best headsets I've ever used, I do wish it was a bit more comfortable (I may purchase better ear pads for it in the future) but with all the tech packed inside this thing I can't really complain.
Extra Information
ProductReview.com.au has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence our content moderation policies in any way, though ProductReview.com.au may earn commissions for products/services purchased via affiliate links.