But its place in a crowded market isn’t that clear. The Arcmanages to be both better enough than the original to justify its existence, and worse enough than the Pro to justify its lower price. I didn’t think there was much more they could do with it, short of a brand new product that would risk undercutting the Pro. I probably shouldn’t have been it’s common for headset products to get a refresh every 18 months or so. I was surprised when Steelseries announced a revision of the base Arctis lineup just a few months after the Pro. No longer is the market just a bunch of poorly-built muddy bass cannons.Įven Steelseries themselves moved on with this year’s Arctis Pro, a feature-packed headset with an eye towards mimicking the sound signatures of ~$200 audiophile headphone products…and a strong marketing focus on high resolution audio that I found strange. There’s the Cloud Alpha, the G Pro, the Kraken V2…and many others. If you want a quality-sounding gaming headset at 99 bucks, you’ve got a huge pile of options.

The spirit of the Cloud II has echoed into numerous products. Steelseries learned the lessons of HyperX’s best-seller, and mixed it up with a wide range of design changes, a really nice microphone, and an eye towards value. At that time, gaming headsets were still largely in two camps: The HyperX Cloud II, and cheap plasticky nonsense with too much bass. Two years ago, Steelseries surprise-launched the Arctis into the world.

Series arctis 5 2019 edition