[section_title title=”Performance and Testing”]
Performance and Testing
We will now look a little deeper into the performance and additional features of the headset to see what we think of them. For a mid-level gaming headset specifically with premium qualities and specification, we are expecting a fairly moderate level of performance.
We have now had this headset in our possession for a long time and put it through its paces, including real-world testing in a gaming environment as well as magnitude of audio samples to see how this headset stands in audio quality. A variation of bass, treble, volume increments in both increase and decrease stages were used as well as a variation of all to check for any fluctuation in performance or any black areas that suggest to us that the headset could not withstand what we threw at it. The headset and microphone were tested on multiple platforms too in order to see if the multi-platform compatibility was up to scratch. Here is what we found.
Comfort
Comfort is an important factor for any headset, regardless of how long the device is in use, so we scrutinize every headset we receive to ensure it sits right and is comfy from the moment it is placed on your head. The Arctic has 3 points of contact with the head, these being the two earphones and the headband. The headband offers luxurious leather like material that gently sits on top of the head when in use. It is padded to prevent any “band burn”, a term used to describe headset headbands that rub when in use or being removed, but we found after long periods it seems to lose its ‘sponginess’ so leaves you with a little bit of padding and not much else. If you intend to use this for long periods of time without a break, for example on a long voyage, then you may find it a little uncomfortable once the headband has been worn in. We found this happened after about 20 hours of use and made for a dull ache on the head for the remaining test hours. Aside from this, the headband was more than suitable for the job and was very light weight in general. The earphones/cups sit over the ears and do fully cup them to allow for a sealed fit. This fit means that background noise is isolated and you have a fully immersive audio experience. This was an unusual feeling, having mainly used earbuds and ear cup based gaming headsets for so long but wasn’t something I couldn’t get used to. With the actual earphones being adjustable by height and are mounted in a way that let them sit on an angle, they sit much nicer than restrictive and pre-set headphones. Aside from the leather like material sometimes causing my ears to sweat after hours of use, expected as most headsets do, there was nothing more I can find that was negative about the comfort of the P533’s!
Sound Quality
Testing was on a variety of high quality .WAV, MP4 and other HRA files as well as a variation of platforms, from smartphones to PC’s. Specification wise, the P533 seems to be a mid-level headset but it certainly performs much better than the specification lets on to a degree. Once the drivers bed in a little bit, you then get the full experience from these headphones and I really was surprised by the quality. For playing games, the sole intended purpose for this headset, the experience was great. All sounds were crisp and to a nice tone, no annoying off key audio. But we were seriously let down on some aspects where music, even creeping into gaming aspects, was the testing ground and bass was the key part of it. With the headset being boasted as having “Strong bass…”, this was not the case and actually nowhere near it. The bass wasn’t present much and this was the case with two of the same headsets we tested, in case the initial product was defective. This sore point, lack of bass capabilities as advertised for this product, was brought to the attention of our Arctic rep who furthermore explained, “I talked to the technical development and they told me that the P614 is more designed for hearing music and the P533, of course, for gaming…”. With this said, and in all fairness the headset is advertised for gaming, we think that advertising a selling point of a product that isn’t so could cause further complications down the line. Moving on from this issue, the headset performs well and is a potential contender for someone wanting this original style of headset and looking around for something within this price tag.
Microphone Quality
The provided boom microphone, non-removable from the headset, won’t win any awards like its real counterpart but with this said it did offer a usable level of audio capture. We think that the addition of a hiss/spit guard style cover would assist with the general capture capabilities as any ”S” sounds made are a tad brutal. Overall, we are happy with the usability of this part of the headset but were expecting a little more.
