Aesthetics:

The Steelseries Siberia 150 is a fairly standard looking headset at first glance, it looks like a generic pair of headphones with an orange trim and no microphone. That is, until you plug it into your PC, at which point the glowing rings around the ear cups light up. Okay, so it looks kind of nifty now, though I wasn’t a fan of the pale purple glowing colour of my ear cups.  I didn’t have any lavender plants in my room to match it, being more of a Clematis flower man when it comes to purple plants. Then I found out that using the Steelseries engine software, I could make my glowing ear cups any freaking colour I could think of. Suddenly, I was going to need to buy some different coloured flowers if I wanted to be colour coordinated.

Functionality:

To be honest, at first I found the sound in the headset to be slightly… off. In a way I couldn’t put my finger on. Then I put my finger on the left side ear cup and discovered that it in fact does have a subtle little microphone, which you can toggle off and on by pressing a button on the ear cup. Whew. For a moment there I thought I wouldn’t be able to retaliate to the various children in competitive online games claiming to have had sexual contact with my mother.

After playing around a bit with the Steelseries engine software, I found you get set your own sound levels for the headphones to make them sound just the way you like. I’m not going to pretend I have in depth knowledge about sound mixing, unless I’ve had a few beers and am talking to someone who does know about sound mixing, so I chose one of the handy preset options called ‘Immsersive’. I found it sufficient for everything from my music to my games, for I am a simple man with simple needs. It was a lot nicer to listen to once I did pick a preset though, and you can set different presets to launch with different applications and games so the sound adjusts to whatever’s ideal for your various activities.

I had no problems with the headset being uncomfortable over long periods of time, and the leather rimmed ear cups fit snugly over my ears. They did give me a case of ‘headphone hair’ which is not a big surprise, as that is the sort of thing we learn to live with in this hobby.

Overall opinion:

The Steelseries Siberia 150 headset is definitely my style. The compact design, unobtrusive microphone and comfortable wearing were what made me like it, but the customisation options made me really feel like it wasmy headset. With the ability to have it sound the way you want, when you want, look no further than the Siberia 150, which by the way, is just as compatible with Vodka as it’s namesake.