ROCCAT Elo 7.1 Air PC Wireless Gaming Headset, Surround Sound Headphones with Detachable Noise Cancelling Microphone, 50mm Drivers, 24 Hr Battery Life, RGB Lighting, Black

These are some pretty good wireless headphones, with a detachable mic which makes it even better for travelling and compact storage. The sound quality is great for wireless headphones, and the mic monitoring is useful if you need to watch how loud you are or to know where you need to have the mic for optimal voice input. The headphones are moderately comfortable, and I barely notice them after a few hours of wear. The Swarm software is okay, it does the job I need it to do, but it is a bit complicated. The only thing I dislike is how the Swarm software is set up. You may have seen other comments about the mic monitor and other settings resetting themselves, and that's because you actually have to hit "apply" at the bottom right of the window. That's right, without making any sort of attempt to tell you, you have to apply changes to make them stick, rather than the changes you make automatically taking effect. As an aside, you can hear the changes you make, such as turning the mic monitor volume off or turning on surround sound 7.0, but these changes only stick around until you close the Swarm window. I only discovered this recently (having had the headphones for a few weeks now). There's also an auto-apply option, which shows that Roccat's software is capable of applying changes as they're made, but decided to make a hard to see option on the bottom of the window instead. Seeing as Swarm is still getting regular updates, Roccat, I think that you should make "Auto Apply" on by default. It's just good UX, you know? If you can hear the changes, you expect them to be applied already. Besides that small issue with the software, I think these are some really good headphones. Nearly a year later, these finally broke on me, but they had a long and eventful service. I still dislike Swarm, and it's one thing I'm glad to see go while I upgrade. The area above where one of the cups swivel is what finally broke, even though I was convinced it would be the mic for all the abuse I put it through, frequently taking it out and putting it back in. Overall, I would still recommend these if you're seriously considering them, and you can deal with Swarm (after setup its not so bad, especially knowing what I know now about the auto-apply).

I bought this used and it is wonderful! The sound quality is amazing! The battery life is pretty good as well. The comfort is unmatched. I have never had a headset that has felt this good. The only complaint I have is every so often it has trouble connecting. All that I had to do to fix it was unplug the USB dongle and plug it back in! I use only roccat products and this is by far my favorite!

The headset fits nice on the head and has flexible joints so that it can fit any head shape. The ear cuff holders can rotate, as well as the ear cuffs themselves. The microphone is easy to remove and plug in, and does an excellent job, including noise cancelling, for the price point. The software that manages the headset is easy to use and includes a multitude of customization options. The sound quality is also excellent for the price point. There are two points that kept me from giving it five stars. First the range is decent, but if I move to far from the room my computer is in it starts to cut in and out. This doesn't matter 99.99% of the time since it is a gaming headset that is meant to be used at the computer. Second, I found if you shutdown your computer while the headset is connected wirelessly to the dongle, the dongle seems to think it is connected once you turn the computer back on. To reconnect the headset after this, you need to unplug and re-plugin in the dongle. Making sure to turn the headset off prior to turning off your computer avoids this issue. I plugged my dongle into the front USB ports of my computer to make it easier the few times I forget to do this. Overall I am very happy with this purchase!

Let's go through their claims in the About section at the top one by one: STELLAR WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY - The signal strength was weaker than expected, not even as strong as my almost-decade-old Logitech wireless headset. And if this is "reliable" I don't want to know what they consider "unreliable". It's about as reliable as a wired headset as long as the wire has a short in it. 24-HOUR POWER - If you are using a headset for 24 hours straight (let alone the week of battery life claimed) then you should probably spring for something better than these. For us normal people who can charge these while we are asleep this seems excessive. EXCEPTIONAL 7.1 SURROUND - Maybe? I have my doubts. Regardless, even if it is 7.1 (which, again, I doubt) it doesn't sound very good. Not terrible, granted, but not very good. MIC MONITORING TECHNOLOGY - I turned this off immediately because it's annoying and distracting. That being said if you have a problem where you shout into mics and don't realize it maybe you could find a use for it. I do feel like it would have fit better as an option in the software rather than taking up valuable control real estate on the headset itself. SUPERHUMAN HEARING - This is a joke, right? Please tell me this is a joke. AIMO INTELLIGENT LIGHTING ENGINE - The lighting defaults to rotating rainbow colors every time you turn it on, even if you have changed the lighting in literally every profile in the software and set one of the profiles to automatically select itself. GLASSES FRIENDLY COMFORT - I don't wear glasses so maybe they actually got one of these claims correct? The worst offence of all is not even covered in these claims. Every time I turn my computer on, without fail, the usb dongle is not in a mode that allows it to connect to the headset and has to be completely unplugged and re-plugged in. After that you can hold down the power button for the longest two seconds of your life to turn on the headset. After that the headset tries to connect (emphasis on tries) and will either connect after SEVERAL attempts at connecting, or it will cause the dongle to shut down and reset itself every time it tries to connect. Fingers crossed. All in all there are better options for less money.

Purchased December 2020 Update March 2023 PC use, over two years Sound Quality- Im no audiophile, but the Elo 7.1 Air are more than adequate for music, movies, and gaming, along with anything else that pumps sound through the drivers. There could always be more bass, but for over-ear headphones, they are much better than others Ive encountered. Id also like to say that the heavy foam earpads offer great passive noise cancelation. Build quality and Comfort- Ive always been impressed by how heavy duty these have felt. Although almost two years into use the plastic above the ear cups did crack open but a simple and partial fix was to wrap it a few times in electrical tape, and this was a good enough fix for the few more months I do plan to continue to use them. The side I had to fix on doesn't exactly lay flush to my head anymore so I have to deal with a little breeze on my right ear. The pleather earpads have lasted far longer than I have expected them to. The headset is quite heavy and will fall off your head if you decide to break a move, but other than that, they sit up there pretty comfortably. Mic- Cant compare the quality of the mic to something wired, its just not close. Ive always opted to use my offbrand boom mic for activities like gaming and discord, BUT, it works when I need it to: like when I need to leave my desk, Ill just pop the jack mic in and use it for when im away from my office. Battery- The battery life is great, its an advertised 24 hours and Im sure it meets that. It can go days of moderate use without a charge, and when it is time to charge, no worries because you can just plug it into your computer with the super long usbc cable thats provided Connectivity and Software- I used to have lots of issues connecting to my pc until I relocated the receiver to the front of my pc. The range isnt great either but its good enough for what I use it for (might sound splotchy when you walk to the kitchen). Roccat swarm software has been worst downfall of this headset. There seems to be updates for the software anywhere between a few times a month and a few times a week. When theres a pending update I have to stop what Im doing and update or else I just wont have any audio. The update doest take long its just tedious because youve gotta plug and unplug both the receiver and the headset from the PC. Knowing what other headphones are out there, Im not sure if id recommend these or not. But I can say that I am more than happy with the quality that is still present over two years later. I use these a few hours a day, every single day. I initially rated these 4 stars because of the flaws I found, but Ive decided to bump that up to 5 stars because they just work, and they have worked constantly. Despite the inconvenience of the software not being the most reliable, and the minor repair I had to do, I love these headphones

The main selling point for these was that they are glasses compatible, which I have not found in any of the over-ear headphones I have purchased recently. If you wear glasses and have a large head like me, these are definitely comfortable! That's about the only good thing. The wireless adapter has an incredibly short range, less than 30 feet before the audio cuts out. If you're sitting right in front of your device and don't need to move around, you won't have an issue. Using these to work from home, however, they might as well be wired because I have to stand within 10 feet of my desk to hear anything. The other issue with the sound quality is the left ear is considerably lower volume than the right, to the point where I thought it was dead completely. I put the headphones on backward, and the low volume traveled with the earphone. For $80 these should have a level volume between sides. There is no noise cancellation to speak of that I can hear, but I didn't pay close enough attention to see if that was a feature. They reduce the ambient noise volume, but wearing them I can still hear the TV in the other room over the audio on 75%. The white noise sound for the noise cancelation is intermittent at best, even so you can still hear everything clearly over it. I have a 5 year old pair of AKG on-ear headphones that block out significantly more ambient noise even with the padding deteriorating. The microphone, even when muted, translates EVERY SINGLE OUTSIDE AMBIENT SOUND into the ear phones. I could hear myself blinking in my ears, and touching the mic to adjust it away from my mouth sounded like a bomb went off in my head. I couldn't even use this on a meeting, because I couldn't hear talking over the sound of my breathing. It even translated my footsteps up into the earpiece. I repeat: WHILE IT WAS MUTED. The volume controls being wheels instead of buttons is a very nice touch! I don't have to take them off to figure out what adjusts the volume. Overall this is a nicely designed set of headphones for comfort and ease of use, but for the price point they are extremely lacking in performance. At best these are worth $20. As a quality analyst, they're not even good enough to listen to recorded phone calls all day. I am not confident these would work well for serious gaming or listening to music.

EDIT: I gotta knock two stars off after having used the headset for over a year now. It still performs well and everything I said about it before is still true - but dear god the paring. When you first boot up the headset and PC you will HAVE to reseat the transmitter. It will show the headset connected but never actually play any audio through the headset until you've reset the transmitter - sometimes multiple times. This is so inconvenient that I've lowered its rating to "average." It literally got me to switch back to wired for a good few months and sadly its not an uncommon issue. Reviews on this page mention it last year as well meaning for a year AT LEAST this has gone unfixed. I wouldnt count on them bothering to fix it in the future sadly. The headset is great, it has plenty of range to walk around my whole house, the sound is great and the microphone pass through is an awesome feature to allow yourself to maintain some awareness outside the headset and I love the volume knob for the pass through being on the headset so if you're launching a game you can turn the pass through off on the headset and dont have to open any programs to adjust it before starting your game - and then if someone walks into your room or something, you can quickly turn it back up and hear them perfectly without removing your headset! The headset also has a pretty punchy bass for a non-ampped and wireless headset! Explosions sound good and general game ambiance is definitely achieved. I havent tried super human hearing but I've never been good enough at games to pick out footsteps and reloads so its not a huge deal for me anyway. If you were after a headset to help you pick up those fine details I would stay away from wireless anyway as the sound quality is always going to suffer over the air waves. The ONLY con I have here and that is how much battery life the RGB sucks up. Personally, I just keep it off because there is literally no point to RGB on a headset when I cant see it... I've never understood that. But in the time I did have it on, it took my average battery life from 27 hours to 19 hours and that was on about 40% brightness. I can only imagine if you had it on full brightness it would only last about 10 hours!!!

The audio sounds terrible unless you download the driver and set it up. But once you do..... it sounds GREAT and honestly is the best feeling headset I have ever owned. I can keep it on all day without even noticing. The battery sometimes even lasts just as long as it claims if not longer, and the charging cord is long enough that it isn't an issue even when it does die. As I shop for an Xbox mix, I am saddened that I cannot find this brand for it as well because I would 10/10 buy one and suggest that all my friends do the same. Great headset for the price, just make sure you follow the proper steps.