We are almost halfway through 2017 and we have seen some great video games come out last year and this year for the PC like Mafia III, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and the most recent release with Sniper Ghost Warrior 3. In enjoying these next gen games, it’s great to have a set of surround sound headsets to really understand the voice dialogues and have an improved hearing advantage when playing in an open world environment. In this article, we are going to look at the top 3 PC gaming headsets I recommend for playing on the PC for 2017 games and beyond.
Kingston HyperX Cloud Revolver S Headset
From our 2016 gaming headset recommendations, the HyperX Cloud gaming headset was one of our top 5 favorite gaming headsets. This year in our top gaming headsets of 2017 line up, the new HyperX Cloud Revolver S gaming headset from Kingston Technologies makes the list as the next gen cross-platform gaming headset for the PC as well as for the Xbox One and PS4 consoles.
The HyperX Cloud Revolver S headset provides ultimate sound quality with 7.1 Dolby surround sound capability to provide the ultimate benefit of improvement to environment sound quality. Also, on board this headset there is a digital sound card that processes the digital signals outputted from this headset…the headset connects via USB rather than a digital 3.5mm audio jack.
Unlike the HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset from our 2016 gaming headset recommendations, the HyperX Cloud Revolver S has a set of 50mm audio drivers whereas the HyperX Cloud headset had 53mm audio drivers in the cups; but, the Cloud Revolver S is using the next gen directional audio driver technology.
As for the construction of this headset, the top arch support is made out of durable spring steel material to support the high-grade plastic and foam middle arch on the headset…Of course, the audio output cups have foam material just like the other HyperX models to provide long-term comfort. The weight of the headset is considered very light with it being under 1 ib. making it not too heavy to wear for 2 to 3 hours at a time.
The HyperX Cloud Revolver S headset upgrades from the original Cloud headset with 7.1 Dolby surround sound, detachable mic, and volume control box.
The microphone on the HyperX Cloud Revolver S is detachable if you want to just automatically mute that typical “motormouth” online gamer or detach the mic to play whatever music you like on your smartphone, computer, or iPod that is CTIA standard supported. Also, the mic truthfully cancels out any background from being inputted while playing online…so if you got a crowd over making a lot of noises in your home, then it won’t be inputted over another online player’s headset to aggravate their concentration while playing online.
Finally, the HyperX Cloud Revolver S provides a remote volume control box which attaches via 3.5mm jack to USB conversion to the headset which has the options for the user to toggle through the different sound profile modes, turn Dolby audio on and off, control mic output, and control the volume levels.
Overall, the HyperX Cloud Revolver S headset would be great a plug-and-play headset (don’t have to worry about maintaining software or manually setting up the headset and software) for FPS and TPS type games with multiplayer on the PC and PS4 platforms since the surround sound enhances footsteps, gunshots, and other background noises in the game being played more clearly. Also, this headset would also be beneficial to understanding voice chat more clearly as well as character dialogues (especially campaign characters and online players that mumble or not speaking clearly).
Sades SA902 Headset
One of the true “underdog” gaming headsets and the one headset that is the most surprisingly a part of our top gaming headsets of 2017 list is the Sades SA902 Surround Sound headset. This headset also provides 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound quality as the HyperX Cloud Revolver S headset ; but, with slight differences…
The Sades SA902 headset has smaller sound drivers with them being only 40mm versus the typical 50mm from other Surround Sound headsets and the mic itself is not as flexible in which it can bend forward and backwards; but, it is still an omni-directional mic that can be adjusted clockwise or counter-clockwise.
This headset provides a little over 7 feet of braided cable (about 85 inches) that is more than enough length to reach to your PC. There is also a sound control box attached to this cable (not separate) that can mute/un-mute the mic or mute/un-mute the volume on the headset as well as control the volume levels.
The ultimate benefits of the Sades SA902 headset is that it fully cancels background noises with the full earmuff enclosure design (not to mention the foam earmuff design of this headset is comfortable enough and reliable to play for multiple hours). Also, this headset would be a great quality headset for PC gamers on a budget (this is the cheapest headset in this recommendation list) and is very simple to setup (just pop the software CD in, download the latest drivers, and the headset is ready for use).
This headset will work only for most 32-bit and 64-bit PC operating systems from Windows XP up to Windows 10 and the Mac platform (Note: The Sades SA902 headset is not compatible with the PS4, Xbox One, or any other previous consoles).
SteelSeries Arctis 5 RGB Headset
To round out our top gaming headsets of 2017 recommendation list, the SteelSeries Arctis 5 RGB headset makes the final cut in this recommendation list and the most customized headsets on this list as far as tweaking goes.
The SteelSeries Arctis 5 headset provides a set of 40mm S1 7.1 Surround Sound speaker drivers and has DTS Headphone:X built-in to boosting and emulating surround sound similar to 11.1 surround sound making this headset alone work like having 100 home theater speakers around one room.
As far as customization goes, the SteelSeries Arctis 5 can be personalized with the SteelSeries Engine 3 software as far as fine tuning and experimenting with the equalizer (EQ) settings and different presets, tuning noise reduction settings, and changing the illumination colors on both ear cup sides (orange isn’t the only color…there are 15 million choices to choose from).
USB voice chat volume to game volume control box that comes with the SteeleSeries Arctis 5 headset
The neatest part of having the SteelSeries Engine 3 software is that for any game and saved sound settings for whatever game you have can be setup and automatically configured to match for the game environment (usage of the EQ presets)…Whatever saved settings for that game can be saved as a profile in the software that you can come back to in the software when you’re ready to play whatever game and application whether it’s a FPS or Sports game to streaming music and movies
The mic on this headset itself is a retractable and bi-directional type of microphone that can be adjusted anyway possible…it’s flexible and very reliable to canceling background noises (added benefit with tweaking noise reduction levels in the software)
As far as other hardware, there is an adjustable USB game/chat volume control box to control the balance ratio of voice chat volume to the game volume (only compatible for PC usage) and there is a separate 3.5mm cable to hook up to the PS4/Xbox One consoles as well as to your iPhone and iPod.
With the top-of-the-line tech on this headset, it should be a $200+ headset; but, instead is a budget-friendly “universal” headset to have for most platforms.
