[section_title title=Performance]
Performance
To kick-off the performance section we start with the fundamental draw of the H Wireless – the wireless aspect. Wireless range is certainly suitable for gaming and I didn’t experience any drop outs whilst in the same room as the control box or staying on the same floor. However, when I went downstairs and moved into the kitchen which is roughly on the opposite side of the house the H Wireless would have a sporadic connection and keep breaking out. In the grand scheme of things this isn’t too bad, but the vastly cheaper Geemarc headphones I recently reviewed faired a lot better than this – I could even get into the garden and still retain signal – and this is a shame as the SteelSeries are a phenomenal pair of headphones that should be able to be exploited better.
Sticking with the positives from the previous sentence, the actual listening and sound front of the H Wireless is great. Music listening is likely to be the main benefactor of wireless so your can potter around without losing your stream and across the various tracks and genres I tried, the H Wireless sounded great at all times and never coming up short. Revisiting some electronic avenues from SBTRKT provided a reliable test of the H’s lungs due to an extensive use of harmonics intertwined with snares, heavy bass lines and other electronic wizardry. Bass response is a great and voices remain soulful, clear and always feel like the volume can be turned up without clarity being sacrificed.
Gaming with the H Wireless is great too and at least from a wireless point of view, means you may not snag a cable or have it get in the way of your keyboard by accident. In terms of games themselves, there is the Dolby Headphone EQ setting you can switch on if you so desire, but being a traditionalist I Prefer using bespoke in-game solutions for surround feedback. Battlefield 4 sounded as good as ever – especially on the War Tapes setting – and League of Legends was perfectly clear and audible with VOIP from team mates layered over the top. I don’t think there’s much else that could be improved on the gaming front, if anything. On the microphone front, the recording quality was no better or worse than most, and as per my usual benchmark, indistinguishable quality wise from my day to day Snowball microphone and there appears to be no noticeable lag induced from it being wirelessly transmitted.
In terms of battery life the spec sheet claims ~20 hours but this is for standby, I wager. From a full charge I got just over 4 hours of gaming and chatting whilst playing League of Legends with the volume at around 70%. Personally speaking, this isn’t a bad time at all, and if anything, you should probably have taken a break before the four hour mark so the brief battery swap wouldn’t be a hindrance at all.
