G.Skill SR910 & SV710 Headset Review

Today we are taking a look at G.Skill’s newest products, a surprising pair of gaming headsets. G.Skill recently entered into the peripheral market with the KM780 gaming keyboard and the MX780 gaming mouse that both proved to be pretty decent, but for a memory company to enter the audio spectrum may cause a few raised eyebrows.

Price & Competition

We have two variants here, the Ripjaws SV710 virtual 7.1 headset and the SR910 real 7.1 headset. They are priced at $85 USD and $160 USD respectively. This price bracket is quite risky considering G.Skill has no previous audio presence and these two headsets will set the roadmap for the future success or failure of their gaming line. There is also a lot of competing gaming headsets in this price range, like the Logitech G633, the HyperX Cloud, the Corsair VOID headset, and a few more. Let’s see if G.Skill can keep up with the big leagues.

Design & Build Quality

First let’s do a physical tour. Both headsets have an identical frame that is in one word: Bizarre. The elevated omega style headband looks very strange even with the self-adjusting padding since it leaves the plastic top piece sticking above your head. Speaking of the padding, it’s very cushiony and comfortable to wear on your head. The outline stitches on the headband are black on the SV710 and red on the SR910 for easier differentiation. The SR910 continues that red and black colour scheme throughout the headset, whereas the SV710 maintains that simple black minimalist look.

The transparent ear cups reveal an illuminated G.Skill logo on both sides, which looks very nice. The SR910 illuminates the internal drivers a little more than the SV710, but the transparent plastic covering is a fingerprint magnet if you are concerned about the looks. The ear cups offer a good range of rotation, but not much angular adjustments so comfort wise they definitely need to go back to the drawing board.

The SR910 is the worse between the two because the five drivers in each ear cups makes the headset very heavy, and given the loose headband most of the weight is held by your years, which makes wearing it for any length of time totally uncomfortable. The SV710 is 40 grams lighter, which makes for a more comfortable fit for easier movement and I prefer these a lot more than the SR910.

Retractable Microphone

The low-profile microphone is retractable, which is great, plus you can maneuver it into whatever position you want. As far as sound quality, it’s okay, but it’s definitely not the best quality that we have heard. They sound identical on both headsets and it is very disappointing that so far neither of these provide any unique features.

Unique Features

The SV710 has a giant in-line volume control and the cheap plastic build quality feels like it might not last long. The SR910 on the hand has a larger desktop control hub that allows volume control for individual channels, which is great in practice, but that doesn’t help much when the driver quality in this real surround sound headset completely lacks any definition or accurate positional awareness. Also do note that the control hub is a heavy unit that is connected to the left ear cup, which in turn creates a lot of pressure on your left year if you don’t have it properly set up.

Sound Quality

Both of the headsets are connected to the PC via USB Type-A, so the main difference between both models are the drivers. The SR910 has 5 separate drivers in each ear cup that is supposed to represent a more distinct direction from where the audio is coming from. The main problem though is the driver’s size and the lack of accurate soundstage creation as the drivers are so close together that you lose all sense of audio cohesion. This means a lot of the detail is lost and the audio separation is very poor. The SV710 on the other hand has just one driver per each cup, and in standard stereo mode creates a much better stereo imaging with wider soundstage and even better positional cues. The bass is so much better on these versus the SR910, but don’t expect to be blown away at the lows as they exhibit unpleasant distortion at high volume levels.

There’s no way to sugarcoat this: Enabling virtual surround sound completely kills the audio detail. The soundstage expands but in an unnatural way where everything just feels more distant. There is no help or relief in the included software, which looks like it has received zero attention on the design front. It looks something like from the late 1990s. Visuals aside you have EQ settings with some presets, but for the SV710 I would recommend sticking to stereo mode. The added complexity on the SR910 is not user-friendly and figuring out optimal settings is difficult.

Conclusion

The entire experience with these new Ripjaws headsets has unfortunately been mostly negative, highlighted by weird comfort issues due to this unconventional frame design and lack of appropriate padding. The microphone is terrible and while the sound quality on the SV710 has its strengths, the SR910 real surround sound headset needs serious revisions. The directional positioning and detail is poor, plus the clunky software UI seals the deal as a product to avoid. That concludes this review, we highly recommend that you stick to the more established players in the audio space for now.