Steelseries Siberia 350 Review – 1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back

Siberia 350 Adds Bells And Whistles You May Not Like

Late last year, I spent some time listening to the Steelseries Siberia X300 – a mid range set of headphones designed specifically for consoles. At the time, I said that they were light, comfortable, and presented a great soundstage while playing games. For the past few weeks I’ve been trying out the Siberia 350 – an evolution of the previous 300 series that adds a few bells and whistles. While the audio performance remains good, the headset is held back from greatness by the additions.

Let’s begin with a quick tour of the headset. The frame is plastic, with an elastic suspension headband that is comfortable despite its lack of padding. The ear cups are synthetic leather, with standard foam that remains comfy even during long sessions, while the drivers are thoughtfully fabric covered. The cable is a stiff and grippy rubber material that I absolutely detest as it tangles in unbelievable ways, but includes a handy if sensitive volume scroll wheel. The boom microphone stashes out of the way and provides mediocre audio quality, but a self monitoring option is sadly still absent. Structurally, these headphones are the same as previous Siberia models, and that’s largely a positive thing. My complaint has to do with the size of my head – it’s kind of big, meaning the Siberia 350 doesn’t clamp with quite enough force at the bottom for my taste, and sound tends to leak in and out. Still, the headset is as comfortable as any gaming set I’ve strapped on, but expect your ears to feel like they’re in a sauna after a few minutes.

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“The construction of the Siberia 350 is excellent.”

The construction of the Siberia 350 is excellent. The headset is lightweight, flexible, and stood up to my durability testing extremely well. This is a sturdy enough product to toss into a backpack without too much thought, and should last darn near forever when taken care of.

The most important part of a headset’s job is sound production, and the Siberia 350 absolutely delivers on that front. In game, directional audio is precise and crisp, leaving no doubt where sounds were coming from. Presumably this is partly due to the inclusion of DTS Headphone X 7.1, but I struggled to detect any difference between the 350 and previous x300 directionally. Lows are booming but balanced, and the level of detail the drivers reproduce is quite impressive. For example, the growls of hellspawn in Doom were easy to locate, and provided an extra measure of tension during intense firefights.

These are gaming cans first and foremost, and music performance isn’t exactly staggering. They’re certainly ‘good’, but I’d advise against choosing these if your primary use case is anything but gaming. Then again, the USB format of the headphones kind of ensures you’ll be sitting in front of a computer gaming while using them. The headset is compatible with PS4, but unless you have a huge USB extension cable laying around you’ll be stuck within 5 feet of your PS4. That length and connection choice severely limits the versatility of the headset. Maybe you don’t care about that, but I really like to be able to use headphones in as many situations as possible.

Now for the gamer street cred portion of the review. The Steelseries Siberia 350 includes RGB LEDs that can be customized through the Steelseries Engine software package. Though clearly a gimmick, it’s admittedly neat to have your headphones glowing on your desk, whispering “ignore your commitments and come play more Doom.” I had some issues with the Engine software. The lighting settings frequently became refused to update on the headset – though the audio controls still seemed to work fine – and required unplugging the headset to reset. I had the problem on several computers, even after reinstalling the software, but in reality this is far from game breaking. The 5 band equalizer is adequate for most people, and the Headphone X control allows you to turn the virtualized 7.1 sound on and off.

So to summarize: The Siberia 350 sounds and feels great, but adds a bunch of features you probably don’t want or need while bumping up the price. Are the LEDs cool? Sure. Is DTS Headphone X a good addition? Probably. Is the USB cable a pain for most people? Absolutely. If you are part of the specific audience Steelseries is targeting with the Siberia 350, you’ll probably be very happy. If you can do without the gimmicks, you might be better served seeking out the older Siberia models or cheaper alternatives like the excellent HyperX Cloud 2.