Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2021
My 10-year-old Logitech G930 finally started last maybe 4 hours before needing to be recharged, especially if I forgot to leave it plugged in when not using it. Things weren't always like this--it used to go on and on without charging, but I wasn't too surprised after all this time. The leatherette on the earcups and headband had already flaked off, and I'd replaced the headband for a few dollars. For maybe $30 I COULD replace the battery and ear cushions, but in a world with Atmos and DTS:X, maybe it's just finally time to upgrade.
I decided to purchase and test the top of the line headsets that I could find online, which wound up being: the Steelseries Arctis 7 and Arctis Pro, Logitech G935 and Pro X Wireless, the HyperX Cloud II, and the Sennheiser GSP 670.
My priority is gaming, particularly immersion point-of-view. To that end, I'm less interested in e.g. flawless music performance or for movies. I wanted whatever best gave the sense of the location of sounds around me, on an intuitive level, but also had the most "neutral" tone, too, since that helps things sound as intended.
This guy, the Sennheiser GSP 670, was the clean winner. They claim that it uses a "binaural rendering engine", and I can believe it--this headset was the only one with which I could blindly pick where sounds were coming from in The Witcher III after randomly flailing my mouse, almost without fail. After trying all those headsets and compared to my old G930's, I am genuinely impressed.
Overall
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Unlike other headsets, the GSP 670 is sparse on buttons. On the right earcup, it has a knob to tune the relative levels of e.g. Discord chat vs game chat, a button that can be configured through the EPOS software to either toggle the surround mode (2.0 or 7.1) or cycle EQ presets--and nothing else!--and the volume+on/off knob. On the left earcup, there's a switch that you can flick, and the headset will speak the battery level to you in 20% bands, e.g. "More than 80% left", "More than 60% left", "Less than 20% left", etc. That's it--nothing else!
This headset really is focused on bringing you great sound, period. No macros. No RGB controls. Just audio!
Premium Features
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I genuinely like the fact that this headset will tell you its status, rather that relying on the software. That means that you can easily find out how much battery is left, even when you're about the house doing something else. This system is also used to inform you when it loses connection to the dongle, acquires connection to the dongle, and so on. I haven't tried the bluetooth pairing, but I suspect there's more there, too.
I also like the fact that the volume knob is independent of the PC output gain--this might be a matter of taste, but it's also usually the mark of an audio product that knows what it's doing. While a part of me is frustrated that I don't have the number to let me know that the gain is at the "right" level, I've gotten very comfortable with simply turning the knob to what sounds "right" instead.
I will say, though, that it's so nondescript that I didn't know how to turn the headset on until I looked at the (visual) instructions it comes with. Really? Engraving a bluetooth logo onto the earcup is fine, but we can't just print "On/Vol" and an arrow or something onto it? I mean, I do like clean aesthetics, but discoverability is valuable, too!
The earcups are also incredibly comfortable! I'm not sure whether they're real leather or something, but I normally look to replace my earcup cushions with velour, and while that would still have SOME advantages relative to the material the GSP 670 ships with, I've not been motivated enough to try. They mold to your head surprisingly well, and still ventilate well to avoid drowning your ears in heat.
Comfort
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This is this headset's biggest weakness, despite what I said above about the earcups. Those are wonderful--the headband, however, is not. You can find stories online of peoples' heads hurting after hours with it on, and I am one of those people. No amount of adjustment to the headband's fancy alleged pressure distribution sliders makes much of a difference--it just takes longer to start hurting. It's an improvement, but not a SOLUTION.
If you look at the headset, there's a spot in the middle of the headband pads where the two halves join at a V, with appreciably less padding. It's precisely this area that, after a long time, induces pain. I can't tell you how such a basic mistake was made--none of the other headsets have padding like that and are perfectly comfortable to wear for basically forever.
It's true that one does get more or less used to it, in my couple of months of experience, but...well, I'm also seriously considering a strip of bubble wrap or SOMETHING at that V to see if I can fix it.
This headset is great for 1-2 hours, but longer than that it genuinely starts to hurt. It's incredibly disappointing, given all the other ways that this headset succeeds, AND its price point. =/
But, it also says something that I'm willing to put up with it/hack it, I suppose.
Surround Sound
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This is where the GSP 670 shines, and why I ultimately went with it, despite the comfort issues.
There is no other WIRELESS "surround" headset on the market that can equal this one. None of the other headsets I tested--not the Steelseries Arctis 7 nor Arctis Pro, nor the Logitech G935 nor Pro X Wireless, nor the HyperX Cloud II matched it in terms of spatialization. The G935 came CLOSE, but the GSP 670 really is in a class of its own.
You'll be able to tell the difference between "directly behind me" and "directly in front of me", between "directly to my right" and "slightly behind me to the right", and so on. It's not down-to-the-degree accuracy, but I noticed I couldn't get that with real-world sounds either, so your individual ability to localize sounds might play a role here. Maybe if you're some sort of sound-position ninja, this is inadequate for you--but in that case, I'm not sure what really would be! =P
For comparison, I couldn't discern various directions "behind" from "in front" (think like a cone where everything sounds the "same") on most of the other headsets. I have almost no problem doing so with the GSP 670--I do fail sometimes, but not consistently. It's well within normal parameters, IMO.
There ARE some technical foibles to getting surround working correctly, though. You definitely have to install their software, and be sure to to opt in to the 7.1 mode--see the attached screenshots. The GSP 670 exposes itself to Windows as a 7.1 endpoint, so your games etc will all be rendering as 7.1 and then the EPOS software will downmixing to plain 2.0 or whatever filtering they do for surround, depending on that setting. I suspect that some failure along the way here explains some of the bad reviews.
Also: headset positioning can affect my perception of the spatialization effect. If you look carefully, you'll notice that the earcups are angled relative to the headband--by something like 30 degrees!--whereas most headsets have them plain vertical. YMMV, but sometimes I fiddle with its positioning and "murky" localization suddenly becomes very clear. It's not great that it's this sensitive, but it's good enough in a wide enough range that I don't notice it most of the time. I do want note that, for me, I've wound up with the headband sitting much further back on my head than I'm used to. Just something to play with, before deciding you're unsatisfied. =)
Wireless
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The range and quality are actually some of the best. It's definitely the most SENSITIVE dongle, though--I've had to make sure to use the included extension cord to place it a foot or two away from my computer, monitor, etc. Once I did that, though, I had no problems with neither the range nor quality.
I will note that, unlike other headsets, Sennheiser opted for a "low-latency" connection. Thus, if the signal has basically any interference, there's not some huge buffer to pad things out, so you'll get the crackling that some other reviews talk about. There is an option for "fixed", versus "adaptive" latency in the software that can help, at the cost of battery life, but even then you still want to keep metals and electronics away from the dongle and yourself.
Oh, yeah, and the dongle definitely needs to be plugged in BEFORE turning on the headset. A mild inconvenience, to be sure, but also a rather strange requirement in this day and age. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Software
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The EPOS software that controls the GSP 670 is relatively spartan, compared to the competition. It isn't tryingto be some multi-device hub to Control All The Things, and I, personally, welcome this.
See the attached screenshots--those are all the panes in the software, and they let you do everything you CAN do. You can set up an EQ, control microphone EQ, Noise Cancellation, and Noise Gating, and update the software and the headset and donlge's firmwares.
Updating was the first thing it wanted me to do, actually, and I suppose that went well. Not much else to say there.
I have noticed that it sometimes fails to detect my headset--even though it connected to the dongle and is receiving audio! This is something to pay attention to if things don't quite sound right--it seems to be necessary for the surround to work properly. I've never needed to do more than re-plugging the dongle to rectify things, and most of the time just turning the headset itself on and off again or hitting that "Auto Setup" button in the software does the trick.
Update 2022/02/21: So, I've had to go through the dance with Revo Uninstaller others mention with this thing after the software randomly stopped picking up the headset. The headset itself would still work, mind you, but "Auto Setup" wouldn't fix it, so I couldn't configure it anymore. To be clear: neither simply uninstalling the software, NOR going through the recommended troubleshooting step involving using USBView to remove USB devices, did the trick. It was only when I reinstalled after uninstalling with Revo Uninstaller that things went back to normal.
I've not had issues with the software since, but, well, I'm keeping Revo Uninstaller's installer handy. ;)
Microphone
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Surprisingly, this was my favorite microphone from the batch of headsets that I tested, even though on paper it shouldn't be that good. It reports itself to Windows as a 16 kHz mono device, which SOUNDS like it should be worse than the 48 kHz most things report themselves as, but, well, telephony systems are ~8kHz, so it's probably STILL overkill.
My voice sounds great through it, even without any of the "enhancers". To be fair, though, I couldn't hear much of a difference there anyway, but YMMV.
I did end up configuring the Noise Gate and Noise Cancellation to 20% and "50" (whatever that means), respectively. No noise cancellation means that all the static the mic picks up comes through, and 100 (the only other notch) makes it sound like you're talking from inside a padded room, lined with nice absorptive material. Noise Gating was tuned to where it filtered out typing when I wasn't talking. Your settings may vary, but I think it's a good idea to play with them to taste--they're surprisingly effective.
The headset has no indication of whether the microphone is active--well, other than its position. You can hear a physical "click" plus some resistance when it crosses the threshold, either up or down; there's no sound that "plays" though the drivers. So, if the mic is up, it's off, and if it's down, it's on. The click-point is pretty generous--I'd say something like 90 degrees from the headband (remember: the earcups sit ~30 degrees back relative to your neck!)--, so it's pretty hard to accidentally turn it on.
I think a light or something to tell you it's on would be nice--maybe even as another button on an earcup, it we want the clean aesthetics, but this is a small gripe. It's not much of an issue in practice.
The EPOS software has a sidetone feature, so that you can hear yourself some, which I set to 25%--enough so that I know what I sound, but not enough to blend into the audio I'm trying to listen to. It does use the raw microphone audio, though, so if you're turned on the noise gating/cancellation, what you hear is NOT what others hear! Still, that can be useful in its own way--you're sure of what the baseline is, anyway.
Also, the mic is FLEXIBLE, but NOT EXTENSIBLE. You can position it relative to your mouth as you wish, but it'll always be the same length. Maybe this is an issue for some people, but I found it to be less of an issue than I anticipated. It really does a good job of picking up your voice, especially with help from the software!
Conclusion
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This is indeed the best surround headset that money can buy if you're looking for spatialization accuracy. There's just nothing out there, currently, that comes anywhere close--so much so that I'm willing to believe that it's really using some binaural algorithm, unlike its competition!
The head-comfort issue is a REAL bummer, though, ESPECIALLY at this price point. Were it not for that, I'd have no problem giving it a solid, 5/5, no-holds-barred, what-are-you-waiting-for-give-them-your-money type of recommendation. I do like the software--even that it's so spartan--and while I wish I could configure a couple more things, there's nothing else that amounts to anything worth docking a star, or even worrying too much over.
I hope this review stands in good contrast to so many negative ones--this headset really is worth your buy if you're willing to ignore or hack your away around its dumb headband padding. However, I also hope that Sennheiser fixes this particular issue in a newer version of this headset--so maybe it's worth holding out for that. =)
