Introduction

With the launch of any new hardware site, it takes a bit of time for companies to start to notice you. It also takes a while to build up a reputation as a good reviewer. Therefore, it's been almost three weeks since the launch of the site and this is our very first review based off of products sent to us. Soft Trading, the parent company behind Steel Series and Icemat, is well known for its support of eSports. This is no exception. Kudos to them for being the first company to send us a product to test, they know a good idea when they see it.

After the launch of this site, I received a sample of the Icemat Siberia as well as the Steelsound 5H from them. Both were the versions of the headsets that featured USB sound cards. Since I personally owned a PC150 from Sennheiser, I figured it would be a good idea to see if these two headsets really do justify their price tag, which is double that of the PC150s. After extensive testing, this is what we here at GotFrag Hardware have decided on in a head-to-head-to-head between the Sennheiser PC150, the Steelsound 5H, and the Icemat Siberia.

Steelsound 5H

First Impressions
The Steelsound 5H came in a very attractive clear plastic package, with the headset mounted on a gray holder with a silver “5H” on it The entire package contains a USB soundcard, a mini-CD containing the drivers and other software for that card, a 3-foot headset extension cable, and the headset itself. Setting it up was incredibly easy with Windows XP, and the audio software to control the USB soundcard was very intuitive.

Design
This headset, from the way it's packaged, to every minor detail of it, was designed for gaming. It is designed to completely cover your ears, but still allows some sound through for a LAN environment. As is the case with most closed-ear headsets, these are extremely comfortable to wear for even hours at a time. In order to adjust to the different sizes of heads, it features the typical sliding speaker system that just about any headset today uses. The microphone stock is designed to be flexible, but also maintain any position you put it in. One of the more interesting features of the headset allows the microphone to completely retract into the left speaker. This is actually pretty useful if you want to just use this headset to listen to music on a CD player, or if you just don't want to look like a dork in public. Another neat feature that you LAN jockeys will love is that you can take the headset apart. The padded connecting bar that goes over your head and the two speakers all detach, so you don't have to worry about crushing your headset together when you're getting ready to go to a LAN.

The headset is connected to the rest of the setup via a single cable that carries both the audio output and microphone signals. Then after about 1.5 ft of cord, it reaches the volume control box. This little device lets you have a decent amount of control on the volume of your headset, and also lets you switch your microphone between off mode, low mode, and high mode. Unfortunately, the microphone settings are extremely hard to make out, but once you've read them once, it's pretty easy to memorize them. The back of the volume control device has a clip on it for attaching to your shirt, or whatever else might strike your fancy. From here, the signal travels another foot at which point the cable ends. From there, you plug the headset cable into an extension that is another 3 feet long. From here, it can either plug into your sound card in your computer, or into the USB sound card included in this setup. Though it may seem like a lot of cables for a relatively simple device, keep in mind that the makers also wanted you to be able to take these on the road with a CD-player and listen to them. This is why the cable ends at 3 feet with an optional extension. It wouldn't be very convenient to be carrying around 6 feet of cabling wherever you went.

Sound
Design is only half of what makes this headset so obviously built for gamers. The other is the way it sounds. After scrimming a bit of DoD with this headset, I can honestly say it sounds awesome. The bass is deeper and all sounds are crisper than anything I've used before, and I'm used to $50 Sennheiser PC150's! In any game that was played, the sound quality that the 5H's generated were noticeably better than anything I'd ever heard before. Obviously, it is quite hard to describe in words how one headset sounds, but to put it simply, the 5H's provide extremely clear sound, and the bass has a lot of punch. Unfortunately, when it comes to playing music, this headset does not quite pass muster. Though providing superior quality to the PC150's in that respect, it still leaves quite a bit to be desired considering the price tag. However, one must consider that this headset is not designed for listening to music specifically. It is designed for gaming and only gaming, and this is what it excels at to a great degree. The final point I have to make about the sound has to do with positional audio. However, this is covered later, under the review of the USB sound card that actually generates that audio.