Digital Trends

Steel Series 5H USB

February 22nd, 2006 | by Brett Rudolph

Features and Design

Headphones have been around for quite sometime, although their purposes vary considerably.  Ultimately those used by consumers are aimed at increasing the enjoyment and overall satisfaction of the listener on the materials they enjoy most.  The advent of online gaming and online communications has increased the difficulty in achieving this goal by requiring headphones to not only reproduce music and voice, but allow people to speak with one another.  To complicate matters further computers are often limited in their ability to reproduce music, voice or even game background sounds by the inadequacy of integrated or internal sound cards.

Steel Series has designed a product which is aimed at creating the best multimedia and gaming experience possible.  The 5H headphones are full of features sure to make even the most difficult-to-please gamer happy.  They have an integrated microphone which can be recessed into the right ear cup when not in use, in-line controls, two separate 1/8” connections for the headphones and microphone, and are even packaged with cable extensions which allow for a reasonable distance from the computer when connected.  The company adds that they designed the extensions to improve the wearer's safety as well.

The 5H headphones are extremely comfortable to wear, even for long lengths of time.   The headphones themselves are adjustable and each ear cup swivels to make optimal placement possible.  The microphone when not recessed can be flexed along its stalk to allow for comfortable positioning.

The Steel Series 5H USB headphones come with an additional feature, a USB soundcard.  The idea of this card is to allow for the use of the headphones with virtually any computer without suffering from degraded sound based on the computer's own sound card performance.  Installing this USB adaptor is simple, it's as easy as loading the mini-CD into the computer, following the instructions for your computer, and loading the drivers necessary to operate.

If there is anything lacking from the list of features from the 5H headphones it's their lack of surround sound capabilities, although according to the company the USB drivers allow for virtual 7.1 sounds.  While it might be possible to simulate this with the included USB audio card, it really didn't make all that much difference in the sound quality or visceral impact of either music or games.

Image Courtesy of Steel Series