This is the review of the comparison between the Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE and the SteelSeries Arctis Pro along with Game DAC. There are many more differences between both the headsets. To know which one is better from their features, and which one is the best for you, go to the detailed review.

Corsair virtuoso RGB Wireless SE	SteelSeries Arctis Pro
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Powerful hi-res audio. Immaculate presentation. Excellent battery life. ICUE software is easy to use with many options. Detachable microphone. USB-C charging.	Very good build quality. HiRes audio quality. Very comfortable. Well-balanced frequency response. Subtle RGB lighting. Lots of customization options.
CONS	CONS
Wireless range depends on house construction. Expensive but you get what you pay for, this is Corsair’s flagship device after all. Soundscape is treble-heavy. No Bluetooth connectivity.	Made for the desk, not the couch. Artificial limit on output. No chat mix on earcup. Expensive.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Expert Reviews of Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE:

By pcgamesn.com
One of the best-sounding Corsair headsets, with the stunning build quality, and robust wireless technology. But it just misses out on its more audiophile target with a slight lack at the low…

By Games Rader
Fantastic, full sound with strong spatial audio detailing and anesthetic to sit proudly on any PC…

By techteamgb.co.uk
When this headset launched a few months ago, it sold out, worldwide, in something like 48 hours. That’s insane. It better be worth the hype then eh? Let us take a look and see. Corsair’s Virtuoso headset is definitely in the premium category for gaming…

By PCWorld
Corsair’s new Virtuoso RGB SE doesn’t sound quite as good as it looks, but it looks really damn good. If nothing else, it’s a much-needed alternative to Corsair’s cheap Void line.

By ThinkComputers
From the start, we knew that CORSAIR had designed the VIRTUOSO RGB Wireless SE to be a premium gaming headset. By incorporating machined aluminum, comfy memory foam, and tons of attention to detail, this headset has a lot going for it. As we stated…

Expert reviews of SteelSeries Arctis Pro:

By techadvisor.co.uk
You really can’t go wrong with SteelSeries products and the Arctis Pro + GameDAC is a perfect example of this – exceptional build quality and design meet harmoniously with exceptional, highly-customizable sound quality and diversity. The GameDAC allows…

By techwalls.com
SteelSeries is still among the best gaming accessory manufacturers and its headset lineup has gained the most successes over the years. I’ve used many SteelSeries headsets but none of them is as good as the SteelSeries Arctis Pro + GameDAC.Inside…

By PC Gamer
High-resolution audio is PC gaming’s favorite “Next Big Thing” at the moment. Just as HD displays brought our eyes out of the dark ages and into a new era of crystal-clear game worlds, hi-res audio wants to bathe your ears in newfound fidelity, making positional audio cues in games easier to pinpoint, and Metallica’s Master of Puppets sound exactly 3.8 times more badass than the last time you heard it. And it’s this promise that SteelSeries embraces with its newest batch of Arctis headsets. They were already among the best gaming headsets in the market, and now a trio of fresh (and expensive) models aims to stretch out that lead on the competition. There’s always room for a little healthy cynicism when these new tech standards present themselves, of course. But what we’ve seen elsewhere from hi-res headsets, such as Roccat’s Khan Pro AIMO, is that even if you’re not listening to a 24-bit sound, and thus capitalizing on the…

By LanOC Reviews
Normally you can kind of see a product coming simply because there is a big hole in the market. But These headsets came as a surprise to me when they were announced. That isn’t to say there wasn’t a big gap in their product line at the high end, but frankly, all of the gaming headset companies have had the same hole for years and no one has really wanted to jump into it. People who want higher quality audio in a gaming headset have been left to pick up options from traditional headphone companies and add their own microphone or more recently a few of those companies have finally started to make a push into the making market.

By Bit-Tech.net
The SteelSeries Arctis Pro and GameDAC combination is a standout one on all three of the main pillars of a gaming headset: comfort, build quality, and audio quality (for both the speakers and mic). It really is hard to fault it on any of these fronts, and the only time I can remember such good audio quality from a headset was when I used the Beyerdynamic MMX 300.

Detail Review:

INTRODUCTION:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

The Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE is a premium headset. It comes for around $210. It really looks stylish. For this price range, it’s pretty good.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

If you’re looking for a headset for PC gaming, you should definitely consider this one which comes at $250. It’s a really good headset, it’s very comfortable, the mic works well, quality is really good. The High-Res Audio sounds really good not just for gaming, but for any other audio source or content you’re consuming as well. The game DAC by itself is probably the best piece of this whole set up.

DESIGN:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

It looks very nice. Inside the box, you have the headset itself, there is a carrying pouch in which you can store your headset when taking it along on the road, we have the instruction manual, a USB to USB-C because you can charge it through USB-C and you can use it as connectivity to your PC, a USB dongle, the detachable microphone with mute button, and a 3.5 millimeter jack. So, that’s everything in the box.

On the headset, you can find the volume wheel, wireless, or wired connection button if you put it into wireless the headset will turn on, the microphone connector, your jack plug, and the USB type-c charger, or best rule from your PC.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

In the up, there is a cloth strap and this cloth strap is actually going to be how you sized the headset to your head. If you move this cloth out of the way, you can see a metal band up there which is really good, that’s going to add some durability to the headset, and it’s also going to allow it to flex, to not only provide that clamping force on the side of your head but also make it more comfortable and secure while you’re wearing it. Underneath that metal band is going to be a rubber piece, that they’ve worn on to the bottom side of it, and that along with the cloth on the bottom side is going to be what protects your head from that metal band and makes everything a little bit more comfortable.

On the sides of the headset, there you’ll see an LED strip that runs all the way around the outside of the ear cup and that’s gonna light up, what you haven’t turned on it looks really cool, and there’s the SteelSeries branding right there, and those speaker plates are removable and magnetic, so you can order new ones different colors and stuff like that and replace those if necessary. On the inside of the earcup, you can see a plastic piece inside of there that protects the actual neodymium speakers.

COMFORT:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

It feels quite nice. There is an adjustable headband strap. It’s quite nice. You can barely hear yourself anymore. Your ears will hardly touch the drivers, that’s quite comfortable. Also, your ears are free from the top and the bottom so, that’s also quite nice.

There’s one disadvantage about his headset and it’s the thickness of the padding, after roughly three hours of playing, I started getting pain in my ears because the insides of the headset were touching my ear, it made it quite uncomfortable. After a little while, I came to the conclusion that you can remove the ear cups.

I had a workaround for this but still, after a little longer, it starts to make some my ears painful, but the idea is if you push the headset a little bit more to the front, you can grab your ears inside padding and this way you can turn the speakers a little bit out. This way you’re not pressing to the inside of the drivers, but you get a strain on your ears for pulling them out.

This takes a little bit longer for the pain to set start coming up, but still, eventually, it becomes quite uncomfortable. Even though if you have smaller ears than me and that shouldn’t be that hard. This headset is amazing if they would have come in thicker padding.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

Unfortunately, there’s no way to extend these ear cups out at all. So, the only way to size this headset is by undoing the velcro strap and then either pulling it to make it tighter or pulling it inner way cinching it down and it can fit larger head sizes. So, that’s gonna be the only way to size the headset.

There’s a cloth material over the plastic inside the earcups to kind of protect your ears from rubbing against that plastic in there. The ear cups are made of a full cloth that feels really good, it also breezed really well, even when I push down on the ear cup there I can feel that air escaping out the sides of the ear cup. So, that’s really good for breathability, hopefully, keep your ears pretty cool while you’re wearing the headset for extended periods of time.

It’s also very comfortable, the ear cups are very well padded, my ears don’t touch the inside of the speaker plates. It’s a very light headset, and it’s one of the lighter headsets I’ve worn in a while. I’m not sure how I feel about the microphone kind of going into the headset and then coming back out, because it’s really hard to find the perfect position for the headset after you first pull it out. It’s kind of just sitting there and the wire that is used here is not very pliable. So, it’s hard to get a perfect position, but you know you can kind of manipulate it around a little bit and find kind of where you want the headset to go.

FEATURES:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

You should open up IQ software in the Corsair App, this is the connectivity software for all Corsair products. It also shows the status of your headset, if your headset is off it will not be shown in your system, so you should keep your headset on before you start changing your settings.

After you switch it on, you will get a notification sound and you could also see it on the microphone. You can see in the Corsair app, the IQ software that the wireless mode may be enabled at first, so click the headset on and there you can see the overview of the headset itself. In this step, you can change the lighting of the logo on the sides of your headsets. You can choose any color that’s within those color spectrums.

Battery time is roughly 20 hours and in my opinion, that’s quite good. You could also charge it quite quickly with the USB type-c cable that came included in the box.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

On the left ear cup there on the back, you’ve got a mic mute button and a volume scroll wheel, and then on the bottom of the headset there is a mini USB port that’s going to be what connects to the game DAC or if you got the version without the game DAC, this is going to go straight to your PC or console. There is an auxiliary port, so you can actually plug in an outside source and listen to different music and stuff, which is a little redundant, especially if you have the game DAC but it’s a nice feature to have.

Then out of the left side of the ear cup, there is actually the microphone, you just pull it out and that’s going to give you access to your microphone and then when you’re done with it, you can just slide it right back into the ear cup, and that’s going to keep it from getting damaged and it’s also gonna allow you for a little bit more of a compact storage as well.

On the game DAC, there is going to be your volume wheel and it’s also going to be how you adjust a lot of the settings. On the left-hand side of the game DAC, there is where your headset plugs on the other side that mini USB is going to be there to the left side. On the back of the game deck, you have an optical port that’s going to be where you plug in your optical port from your Xbox or console or whatever. The USB port right there goes to your computer or PC whichever one you are listening on, and then you’ve got a mobile port and your line out port is basically going to be your stream port, that’s where you’re gonna go from your line out to either your mic or line import to your PC for streaming.

The game DAC comes with two buttons on the top and a dial. The first button is gonna be the small one, the second button is gonna be actually pushing in the style, and then the dial itself is gonna allow you to adjust the volume as well as go between all the menu settings. It’s a little confusing when you first start to use this learning how to do everything and go through the menus, but once you have it all figured out, it’s really not that bad.

Basically, on your main home screen there, you’re gonna have a volume bar and a mixing bar, and to switch between those two you’re just gonna tap your dial real quick. So, when it’s on the left side you’re gonna be able to control your main volume, and when it’s on the right side you’re gonna be able to control the mix of volume between the game and the chat up. On the top there, it’s gonna tell you whether if you’re in PC or console mode or High-Res mode, and then this second bar there is gonna tell you, what audio format you’re currently in.

On the right-hand side, there is gonna be your DTS on and off, and you’re just gonna hit the small button right there to turn DTS on or off. You’re gonna hold down the volume switch right there and that’s going to bring you into the main menu. Then you’re just gonna use this to go through the menu options turning left or right on the dial switch.

You first go in the DAC, there you can see you have DTS on or you can turn it off just like you did with the smaller button on the main screen, and the small button is gonna take you back whenever you’re in a menu. So, we’re gonna hit that small button and there you see equalizer, those are gonna be your equalizer settings, it may be on bass boost, but you can toggle between flat and custom smiley, all those different presets they have or you can go through there and kind of do your own preset.

You can set your gain on high or low, it’s gonna be on low by default and due to certain regulations. You’re gonna have to override this in the settings to be able to go too high, but high is gonna open up that louder volume for a lot of people. Sidetone is going to be what other people consider a kind of mic monitoring, so I’ve got to set them off because I found even on the lowest settings, it’s a little loud for me. So, I leave it on low, but you can go between medium and high. I usually either go lower off.

Next is gonna be input, this is where you go from PC to High-Res to console output, you’re going to go to line out mode, you can either output it to speakers or you can output it to streaming. On display, you can adjust your display brightness turning that up or down, and the idle timeout which is just gonna shut off this screen if you don’t touch it after a certain amount of time, you can change that as well. It also shows your current firmware in any info and then we can go all the way out to the main screen.

The headsets are good, the game DAC is very good. Even though most other gaming headsets can’t take advantage of that wider frequency response like this headset can, you could use their game DAC to drive just about every other gaming headset out there. It has a stream port just like the Turtle Beach’s and the Mix amp pro from Astro.

MICROPHONE:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

The mic volume which may be switched off will be shown in the Corsair app and indicated by the red light if you switch it on the mic returns on and turns green. You can see there on in the software, they may be yellow, so you can adjust the mic volume.

I checked the sound of the microphone. In my opinion, it sounds very well from a microphone on a headset. Normally, you also always have this kept out the sound. It’s quite bulky. It has good lows in it as well. I’m very happy with the results of the microphone of this headset.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

Mic volume is going to be the actual volume of your mic to other people or your stream, and I leave this at 8, it’s plenty loud enough as is but you can adjust this if needed. Illumination on the DAC is gonna allow you to adjust the color for your mic, when it’s muted or just the ear cups in general.

The LEDs on the ear cups, they look pretty good, and also when you use the mute button for your mic, you’ll notice that you can see it light up red on the microphone to let you know that you’re muted. So, that’s a good feature as well. It looks pretty good.

The mic quality is pretty good. I would say, it’s well above average for a microphone that’s attached to a headset. If you’re not looking for a dedicated mic or anything like that, this is gonna serve you pretty well for both gaming and streaming.

SOUND:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

In the Corsair App,  you also have a button for stereo or the 7.1 surround option which is handy for games, so that you can hear all around, you hear where enemies are nearby or anything like that.

You have the equalizer, it may be standing on normal but you can also select a couple of presets or make one for yourself and then adjust the sliders for what kind of sound you want.

I went through a sound test on how the headset sounds for itself. First of all, the sound quality of this headset it’s really amazing, when playing games you get a real immersive sound. I’ve done also a little bit of streaming, people told me that they could easily hear my breathing to the microphone, but next to that the sound quality was rather good from headset microphone.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

The headset itself has 40-millimeter neodymium drivers, and a headphone frequency response of 10 Hertz to 40 kilohertz, which is really good, that’s probably the broadest range of frequency response that I’ve seen on a dedicated headset. That’s pretty far outside of the range that scientists say the human ear can even hear, but it’s not bad to have a broader range. 

The headphone impedance is 32 ohms, which is gonna be perfectly fine especially, with the game DAC no separate amp or anything to drive these headphones. The game DAC itself has a frequency response of 5 Hertz to 40,000 Hertz or 40 kilohertz. So, it’s going to cover that whole range plus, actually an additional 5 Hertz on the low end. The audio format is available up to 96 kilohertz and 24 bits, which again is very high for a gaming headset. So, this game DAC at least on paper is very capable. This is pretty much the star of the show right here. The headset is good, but this is going to be what drives them and gives them that full feature set.

For input, you’re not going to have access in the DAC, remember earlier I told you you have access to a High-Res mode that can go all the way up to 96 kilohertz and 24-bit, you’re not gonna have access to that, unless you go into your input and go to High-Res mode and it’s only available on PC, but even when you go to high-res mode, this might be grayed out for you. If you’re playing on PC, this is where the best audio is going to come from and again this is unavailable on the console, so you’re gonna be pretty much locked at 16-bit audio.

I’m going to guide you on how to get that High-Res Audio option out of the DAC. You’re going to come down there to your volume panel, and you’re gonna open your sound settings, then you’re going to come up to sound control panel, once you’re there you’re gonna find your headset, you’re gonna right-click, and go to properties and go to advanced, and once you’re there, you’re gonna be able to select whatever you need. I think by default it’s on 16-bit 48 thousand Hertz, which is also similar quality to what you’re gonna get out of your console as well.

Since the DAC allows you to go above that, you’re gonna go to the two-channel 24-bit 96-hertz studio quality and hit OK. Once you do that, the little grayed-out High-Res Audio option, on your game DAC is gonna be lit up, letting that you don’t have High-Res Audio coming from your headset. Also, make sure that you have those three input settings PC High-Res or console, make sure it’s on High-Res and this is going to be for PC only. Remember this is unavailable on consoles.

One thing to remember, if you’re not getting the volume level that you’re looking for, remember that they sell this headset without the game DAC, the game DAC has a volume knob on it, but because they sell it without the game deck, remember there’s a volume knob on the back of the left ear cup, make sure that’s all the way up.

Without using the High-Res Audio on the PC, the headset still sounds very good. It doesn’t get quite as loud as I would like, but the sound quality is still there. When you activate that high res audio on the PC, it can get pretty loud, plenty loud enough for me. I usually don’t even turn it all the way up, usually, about 90-95 percent is where I leave it when I’m in the middle of the game.

The headset is very well rounded so it sounds good not only for gaming but watching YouTube, Netflix, listening to music, whatever. Especially, with that High-Res Audio option, if you listen to anything especially, soundtracks from a more lossless audio source are gonna sound good. On the PS4 it sounds very good, but not excellent.

WHICH ONE IS BETTER?

I do think there are other options, that you could choose at this price point or even below that is going to give you similar audio quality. But, if you’re looking for a new premium gaming headset somewhere between 150 and 250, I would recommend the SteelSeries Arctis Pro. It’s for PC gaming, the specs alone for the game DAC, are far better than I’ve seen on any other mix amp on the market. It’s very comfortable, the mic quality is great, the game DAC has a stream port, the game DAC in and of itself is a great piece of equipment, especially with that high res audio option, it’s easy to use and everything feels comfortable and durable.

If you are looking for a premium and stylish headset at this price range then for you may be the Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE better than the SteelSeries Arctis Pro. In my opinion, the Virtuoso is better than the SteelSeries Arctis.