First Look

The Steelsound 5H is packaged very nicely indeed. Clear plastic cover allowing you to have a good view of the product itself and a nice cardboard backing which lists plenty of information about the headset. Its specifications and features are listed in detail on the back and in brief on the front.

A Closer Look

After removing the headset from the packaging, I was struck by the fact that the headset is very much in the style of studio headphones, very big and very comfortable. They allow your ears to sit snuggly inside the bowel that they create; this is also good as it manages to keep out a lot of ambient noise without making you deaf to the world.

The Steelsound comes with some very nifty little features that make this product great. The connector cables that run from the headset come in 3 pieces. There is a short microphone and headphone cable, an adaptor cable that extends those 2 cables by another few feet and a USB adaptor.

The pack also contains a small instruction booklet and a driver CD.

Another helpful little tool that the headset brings to the table is a volume control and mic mute switch. This is all attached to a clip so that you can clip the little thing to anything you want. I did try clipping it to my dog’s ear for a laugh but he wasn’t very impressed. The mic mute switch has 3 settings, “hi”, “low” and “off”. This represents “on” “half volume” and off respectively. The volume switch is not a new feature on a headset but it is always nice to be able to adjust the volume of the headphones themselves as apposed to doing it through the computer.

The headset’s redeeming factor for me though was the brilliant microphone design. It is made of a bendable cable with a plastic coating so that you can place it where you find it most comfortable and for best sound pickup. However, the best part of the microphone for me was the fact that it retracts inside the headset. This is perfect for when you just want to use the headphones for listening to music as apposed to talking. It is also good if you fancy a snack while using the headset as you don’t end up getting food on the mic, as some of the messier headset users can attest to.

The software bundled with this headset was nice and simple to install which is a plus. It also provides you with some nifty little features. There is the option for the virtual 7.1 surround sound and there are also some little settings to change your voice when using the microphone, however almost all of the settings (and there are quite a few) mainly just add different levels of echo to your voice; however they are fun to play around with none the less.