I have reviewed many gaming headsets, from the likes of LucidSound, SteelSeries, Razer, Plantronics and many more, the best one that has not been beaten is the SteelSeries Arctis 7. It is comfortable, has great sound, an amazing microphone, it is amazing for gaming, music and much more. Now we have a contender for the top the new Sennheiser GSP 370 Wireless Gaming Headset, can it take the top? will it have amazing sound? shall we find out?
First Lets get the boring Tech Specs out of the way;
- Frequency response (Microphone) – 100-6,300 Hz
- Ear coupling – Around Ear
- Cable length – 1,5m charging cable
- Weight – 285 g
- Pick-up pattern – Unidirectional
- Microphone sensitivity -41 DBV/Pa
- Connection – Wireless
- Frequency response (Headphones) – 20-20,000 Hz
- Transducer principle (headphones) – Dynamic, closed
- Sound pressure level (SPL) – 117 DB
Now not everyone has the opportunity to check out headsets before buying them, most stores will not even allow you to return them once you have used them. The worse thing is a lot of stores have targets or promotions and need to push a certain brand over anything else, so you never get all the information you need before making your choice. This is where I come into play, and right before we move to review this new headset, I am going to recommend a few headsets that I know are good, the SteelSeries Arctis 3 and 7 and the Hyper X Cloud Alpha, these are my top recommendations, but now keep reading to see if this headset gets my top recommendation as well.
First things first, as you pop to your local store and you starting checking out all the headsets, how does Sennheiser sell the GSP 370 Wireless Gaming Headset to you?
Well on the front you can see the headset in all its glory, the brand and the name of the headset, Sennheiser has chosen to promote two features 100hrs Battery life and low latency connection. These are great features to promote on the front if you are looking for a wireless headset, 100hrs WoW that is a lot of time, possibly the longest I have ever seen coming from a wireless headset. The Low Latency Connection is more or less the delay in which sound is transferred from the device sending the sound to your audio device speaker/ headset. This is measured in milliseconds (ms), Low Latency equals small delay. If it said high latency run miles, as that would mean long delays and is not worth your hard-earned cash.
On the back of the box, Sennheiser mention again the Low Latency Technology being used, and the 100hrs or battery life on offer, but they also promote the advanced noise-cancelling broadcast quality microphone along with Sennheiser sound quality with exceptional bass performance and acoustic clarity. Everything arrives very well packaged so there is no way your new headset is going to take any damage. In the box, you will get a charger cable (micro USB), some manuals a wireless dongle and the headset.
Now we come to the design and construction of this headset, made using mat finished plastic throughout, with a slither of polished plastic around the earcups and microphone, they do look rather pleasing. The headset is lighter than the Arctis 7, however, SteelSeries use a ski type band for the headset (if you want to know what I am on about check them out here) along with metal construction. The GSP 70 is all plastic, so it is lighter than the Arctis 7, being plastic and lighter does not detract from the quality of this headset in any way.
The headband has just enough padding to rest on your head rather comfortably with plenty of flex. I have pulled the earcups away from each other and twisted them to see if they would break, but mostly to check out their flex, I am happy to say, they are very good. Of course, the headband is fully adjustable so should fit any size head, hopefully.
The earcups are somewhat fixed into a position but do move and up a down a little so they can mould around your head a little better. The Earcups use two types of materials in there construction one being leatherette around the exterior for sound insulation and a suede-like material on the inner parts, to reduce heat build-up and sweating around your ears. The last thing we like is overly hot ears that are dripping with sweat. I have to say they do the job great and are very comfortable to wear for short or long periods of gaming.
On the left earcup, there is a volume wheel, with a nice tactile bump when moving around. On the right earcup, you will find the on and off switch, the microphone, charger port that used micro USB and a battery life indicator. The Sennheiser branding can be found on the headband and near the earcups, they do not look out of place and if someone was wondering what you were using they should have no problem finding out with having to ask you.
The microphone is not detachable or retractable, it is constantly attached and in view. You pull it down to use and push it up when you wish to either mute or not use. It is a rather bulky microphone to what I am used to using. I have nothing as big as this so I wonder why it is so bulky, we find out why a little bit further down when I do some sound tests.
The first thing you will be doing is most likely updating the headset, this is done simply by plugging in the dongle and powering on your headset, windows should detect everything automatically. Download and install the software and for some reason, you need to reboot your system once everything is updated.
You can check to make sure everything is updated through the Sennheiser Gaming Suite, along with altering how the microphone performs, sound presets and equalizer.
In the Sennheiser Gaming Suite, you can control the microphone, like the voice enhancer feature, which changes how your voice comes across, you can choose from off, warm or clear. To listen to each of them I have done some sound tests, you can listen to them below.
Off
Warm
Clear
Then we have the microphone options like
Side Tone – is the audible feedback to someone speaking when using a handset or headset as an indication of an active transmission.
Gain – This amplification of your voice, in many cases to more than 1000 times their original strength.
Noise Gate – is how quickly the filter reacts to basically unmuting your mic once the sound level goes above the opening threshold.
Then you have noise cancellation.
When it comes to sound control, you have 2.0 and 7.1 sound options, however, for some reason, you can not use Windows Sonic or Dolby Atmos for headphones, which is rather upsetting as I really like Dolby Atmos for headphones and I paid for it too.
You can set the Reverberation levels which allows you to change how it feels in physical spaces of the game, I feel it add more echo and I hate it. You can choose from a set of preset sound modes or create and save your own preset with the Equilizer.
So how does it sound, perform and such? Let us cover the sound first as this headset is really impressive, massive bass, with impressive mids and lows when needed. When it comes to Surround Sound within games, the headset provides good accuracy, so you can hear where the bullet came from, or where that person is coming from and act accordingly. However, do not expect the headset to work with Spatial sounds like Windows Sonic and Dolby Atmos for Headphones, as they are blocked through the Sennheiser Gaming Suite once installed. I asked why this was and got told this ‘The Software has its own Surround Processing. Adding additional surround processing such as Windows Sonic or Dolby Atmos would only deteriorate audio quality.’ Then we have the volume level which even though I set to around 80% I felt that the max volume was LOW, a lot lower than any other headset I own, I asked if this was an issue or the norm and I was told this ‘We’ve found some issues with the volume control on the GSP 370 and will have a firmware update available in March 2020. We hope this helps with his volume issue.’
Performance is amazing, however, the 100hrs of battery life is based on how much you use the microphone and the volume of your headset. I managed to get around 85hrs on a full charge with the headset volume around 75% – 80% and microphone only used when required. When it comes to the Sennheiser Gaming Suite, its offers enough for any gamers to be happy with, however, I did find a few issues, Side Tone did not work even though its shown on the screen and neither does slider the Noise Cancellation and I asked why this was and got told this ‘Noise Cancellation is not part of the GSP 370 as of now (thus greyed out). We are working on a software update for the gaming suite that allows for side-tone and Noise cancellation in the future. Side-tone is expected to come with the next update in January/February. NC will probably not be enabled until March 2020.’ Even though they seem to be greyed out, I feel they will confuse gamers, when they do not function and should be removed when using the GSP 370 until they are active and available.
The microphone is amazing, with great noise cancellation even when the option to control it is not available. The three-voice enhancers really do improve the performance of the microphone, and I found myself using warm over off and clear, clear was simply awful.
I was able to play games for a very long period and my ears and surrounding areas where the earcups grip to did not get hot and sweaty at all. I played games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Call of Duty Modern Warefare and a few random indie games. Throughout my whole experience, I only had issues with the sound level and the somewhat not available options within the Sennheiser Gaming Suite, everything else was amazing.
So does it become my No1 choice and taking over the Arctis 7, not yet, the Sennheiser Gaming Suite options need to be implemented and the sound level needs to be improved, maybe in December I might come back to this, or create a new post and you might find this headset as my No1 Choice.
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