This is the comparison between the Steelseries Arctis 5 and the Arctis Pro headset. Both the headsets are great for their price but with different features and sound quality. You decide which will be more worthwhile for you by this review.

Steelseries Arctis 5	Steelseries Arctis Pro
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Extremely comfortable. Sleek aesthetics. Great audio. Sensible software.	Very good build quality. HiRes audio quality. Very comfortable. Well-balanced frequency response. Subtle RGB lighting. Lots of customization options..
CONS	CONS
So-so surround sound. Long, convoluted cables.	Made for the desk, not the couch. Artificial limit on output. No chat mix on earcup. Expensive.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Expert Reviews of Steelseries Arctis 5:

By Nag.co
the Arctis 5 is a comfortable gaming headset that delivers good in-game audio as well as ensuring that your teammates can hear your commendations and insults in perfect clarity. Oh, and it features RGB lighting – if that floats your…

By Techteamgb
Steelseries sent over their Arctis 5 and Arctis 7 gaming headsets for me to take a look at – let’s see if they are worth their price tag! Want one? 5’s: prourls.co/VY8Q 7’s: prourls.co/Ijdc – OverclockersUK Affiliate link: techteamgb.co.uk/ocuk – Want…

By Techpowerup
The SteelSeries Arctis 5 is available online for $100. Great audio performance, both for music and serious gaming SteelSeries Engine 3 software is easy to use and filled with useful features ChatMix Dial is a fantastic addition, one I’d love to see on…

By Videogamesuncovered
SteelSeries have created an excellent headset with the Artics 5 being able to deliver very precise sound with a range of different options in the SteelSeries Engine to customise it to your needs. The connections and cables are something which could be…

By Tom’sguide
The Arctis 5 offers great sound that you can fine-tune to your liking, a comfortable design and an impressive mic at a reasonable price.

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…

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…

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…

Detail Review:

INTRODUCTION:

Steelseries Arctis 5

This headset is the predecessor of Arctis 3. There are some improvements compared to Arctis 3. The design and comfort are almost the same but the sound and features are different. 

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

this headset is one of the flagship headsets of the Steelseries company. The design, comfort, and there are many features for sound and also there are other useful features. The sound quality is also amazing but the price is bit high.

DESIGN:

Steelseries Arctis 5

The materials they used for the headset is like bit plastic with a blend of rubber and it feels nice and durable. The build quality is very nice but it’s not very flexible. The design is also like a headphone and also there is a detachable mic. So, you can use this headset as a headphone without the mic.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

Probably my biggest issue with this is the design. So, this one might be a little bit more ranty but at least it looks good. In terms of design, there’s not really a ton of adjustment for these headphones. The ear cups rotate, they have a little bit of swivel to make sure that you get the right seal on the side of your head but unfortunately where these like the really basic $50 Steelseries Arctis 1 pick up for that slack. They have no real vertical adjustment unfortunately and that is probably the biggest thing in terms of the downfall.

COMFORT:

Steelseries Arctis 5

Previously I had the Astro A10 and they got very uncomfortable like the least after many months of using them. They got very uncomfortable, they started to hurt my head, they’re very heavy. The comfort with these has been amazing, no problems whatsoever and the reason is because of this great design.

There’s nothing between the head and the actual headset that’s because there is a ski goggle strap. It’s like an elastic little strap and that’s what holds it on your head, it has velcro adjustments on both sides. So, you can adjust it a little bit but really one size fits all with this. It’s a little stretchy and very comfortable and it just sits on your head very nicely, evenly distributes the weight and these are already a fairly light headset, not the lightest but they are very light whenever you can pair them to something like the Astro A10.

Other than that, another little detail is they do pivot a lot. This is something important to you and you can put it on your neck.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

This headset is gonna be the comfort. If you have like a small to medium-sized head you’re probably gonna be fine with these, they even give you like this little band that comes on the headset that’s supposed to give you a little bit more comfort.

We got a nice little band which is supposed to be super flexible. This is cool but you gotta have either like a small or a medium-sized head for this to make sense because otherwise if you have a huge head, the headset will like tugging and pulling up. It doesn’t make it the most comfortable headset. You can fix that issue by taking out that little strap.

There’s a little rubber pad on the inside of the top that I can’t really feel it because of my hair. Then, you will feel a lot better, you will not have that same feeling that it feels like the headset is pulling up especially toward like the bottom of my ears. Other than that, they just add some vertical adjustment and we’re good just like the Arctis 1.

Overall, I do like this headset and I don’t prefer over the A40 not necessarily just because I find that the A40 is a little bit more comfortable for big heads. I feel like the stock ear pads and those are just a little bit softer, these are more like a firm pillow.

FEATURES:

Steelseries Arctis 5

It is a really good headset. It has RGB lighting, you can change that color to whatever you want and you can also have it to pulse and change colors. It also has a mute button and whatever you mute it, the end of the mic will turn red just like that. So, you know you’re muted. Whenever you’re on PC, it does not have any illumination whatever you are plugged into a Playstation controller or something else. That’s only for the USB connection and to connect it to your computer, the cord runs down to your USB port, and then this one is the headset that plugs right in and then this comes with an adjustment knob.

On the adjustment knob, you can turn on more game audio or less game audio and more chat audio which is very nice, it’s kind of like a cheap mix amp if you will but that’s a nice little feature. It also has rubber on the bottom. So, when it’s on your desk it doesn’t slide around very much so that’s also a nice little addition.

It is a wired headset, so you don’t have to charge it or anything which is personally something I like.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

It has RGB and obviously for that RGB to work, you have to use like the port that SteelSeries used on the headset. We got these removable magnetic speaker ties that you can customize and got a little RGB ring light around inside too. When you have it plugged in on the headset itself, you have a mute switch for your mic and a volume wheel to a 3.5-millimeter jack, a proprietary Jack that you need to be able to use this with a game deck and then you also have a retractable boom mic.

You can use this headset with ps4 or PC but you cannot use it with the Xbox one if you want to use it with that, I believe the version that they have for Xbox is called like the Arctis 9X or 7X, that’s the version that you get if you want to use a very similar headset for the Xbox One.

I do like this Game Amp, it’s very small and super simple to use and really easy if you want to change the mode from the volume to the chat mix, you just hit this big button one time which swaps it over. Now, your knob is controlling the mix of your chat audio and game audio and I really like that this thing has this cool little OLED screen on it too if you want to see play with this thing in-depth and kind of see everything that it can do.

It is incredibly customizable in the SteelSeries engine as well but honestly, the screen of the Game DAC is so good. You’ll rarely ever need it, the only thing you really need the SteelSeries engine for is to control the RGB and update the firmware of your headset every so often. Be sure that you update the latest version of the firmware.

One weird thing, when I had this plugged into my PC, the one let me change the volume from a hundred percent. So, my PC audio was always stuck at a hundred percent, so I had to use the volume wheel on this and the volume wheel on my headset to control the volume on my PC. When I was using it as my source for the Game DAC and this headset, so just be wary you won’t have control in Windows to change the volume, your shortcuts aren’t really gonna matter all you have to do is just reach over to your Game DAC and you can change the volume that was just a really weird thing that I noticed.

If this is the best gaming headset at this price range because they do have some really decent sound quality and this OLED screen on the Game DAC is probably a real crowd-pleaser. I like a lot because you don’t have to really use the software on your computer except for like to control your RGB on your headset and to install updates. Other than that, you can literally control all the presets, all the EQ, turn on and off the surround sound, change the mic sidetone, all on the Game DAC by itself.

MICROPHONE:

Steelseries Arctis 5

I did a test of the microphone of this headset. I’m really pleased with its quality. I think it sounds pretty similar to my condenser mic. So, it’s pretty good. Now, if you do touch it and it does make some noise if you twist it around but as long as you don’t mess with it too much that’s pretty good sound.

It is quite a bit flexible, you can put it wherever you need and if you’re not using the microphone, it also retracts right under the headset completely out of your way. So that’s a really nice touch.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

This headset has a retractable mic like all the Arctis version headsets. You can put it in whenever it’s not in use and it will be completely hidden, so that’s really a good feature. The mic is little bit flexible too.

Personally, I do think that this mic sounds a lot better than the mic that they put on Astro A40 and A50. One thing this headset gets right it’s the mic. You can also use this for Twitch stream or Podcast.

SOUND:

Steelseries Arctis 5

As far as the sound quality goes, these have very good sound quality. You can actually adjust the settings just the way you want them to have an equalizer and a bunch of presets in the SteelSeries Engine 3 desktop app. So, you can plug into your computer, load up the app and it’ll connect to the headset and you can address your equalizer and all that stuff that you want to do that’s a really nice feature to get it to sound exactly how you want it to.

I choose DTS sound and also some presets and it worked well. It will be great for gaming. For music and everything, the headsets sound very nice. In gaming, it gives nice immersion.

SteelSeries Arctis Pro

The sound quality is pretty good. It does have better bass response than the Astro, a lot similar to like a turtle beach headset. The mids and highs are pretty clear too, you’ll have no issues really distinguishing footsteps. This does make for a really good gaming experience. These are gonna give you a slightly more immersive feel than the Astro headset. The SteelSeries even compares it to on their website because these have a higher frequency response. The Arctis Pro just has a much bigger range of sound that it will pick up than they A40 do or at least that’s what it says on paper.

I won’t say that I definitely noticed that these are better music listening to headset than the Astro that I’ve sync many hours into. 40-millimeter drivers and they thump pretty hard, the bass is really good. It’s not overpowering and even if you put it on the bass boost preset, it’s not crazy bass. This isn’t gonna be like some Beats by Dre type bass that you’ll get, its the bass that you can feel and hear but it’s not gonna rock your skull.

These feature high-resolution audio and they also feature DTS for headphones and there’s a mode on the game deck that you can quickly turn on or off the DTS mode. The DTS mode gave it a little bit better spatial audio and that was about the extent of my experience with that. It didn’t make the audio quality sound a lot better or any worse, it just increased the spatial audio a little bit. It will give you maybe a slight advantage in-game and it says that it also features Dolby audio too, I didn’t really see any crazy settings in there for that but it has it if you’re looking for it. Otherwise, I think that this headset creates a really decent stereo surround sound effect. So that you get accurate positional audio.

This headset costs 250 dollars. I wish that they sounded a little bit better. It’s passable for the price range but I did expect more but it’s not bad either and it’s probably gonna be an upgrade especially if you’re using like a $50 or $100 gaming headset currently, you will notice a big difference in the sound quality.

WHICH TO BUY?

Both these headsets are great for gaming and also for their price. There are different features and also the sound quality according to their price. So, you have to decide which will be for you. If you have a budget of $250 then definitely Arctis pro will be great for you. Otherwise, the Arctis 5 is also good with some fewer features comparatively and decent sound quality.