The Sennheiser GSP670 Wireless Gaming Headset Review: Cutting The Cord

Conclusion & Thoughts

Coming into this review I likely have a lot less experience with the headset landscape out there than maybe other reviewers, however hopefully at least I was able to take on Sennheiser’s GSP670 from a different angle.

In terms of the design and build quality of the headphone, I think the GSP670 is very much a headset that warrants its higher end price tag. With premium materials and manufacturing, I was very little issues with the unit, and while nothing new for the GSP670, the more modern and typical “gaming” look of the headphones work out well. I wish Sennheiser would have somewhat improved on the microphone build quality as its aesthetics don’t match its functionality.

In terms of comfort, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. The main issue I had is the headphone’s strong headband clamping force that was too strong even on the most lax setting. One benefit of this was that the headphones have incredible sound isolation, much more than any other closed headphones I’ve ever had – literally not hearing another person speaking right next to me if I have any playback on.

As this is marketed as gaming headset however, I do feel that long-term comfort is crucial, especially in hours long sessions. In this regard the strong headband clamp can be fatiguing. Also in regards to long-term comfort are the headphone’s ear-pads. They are relatively comfortable, however I wish Sennheiser would have gone bigger and thicker. The pad’s ear shape for me personally don’t do too much as their width was for me personally still a bit small at only 4cm – I prefer something bigger and I don’t mind them covering my lobes.

The pad material itself was good – the default hybrid design with pleather, velour and textile mesh works well. The pads are easily replaceable through Sennheiser’s clip off & on mechanism and replacement pads are very reasonably priced, although proprietary.

The actual physical design of the drivers seems to be excellent – by default they have a very good sound signature with deliberate emphasis on bass. They do have an extremely narrow soundstage and this seems to be caused by some dips in their frequency response, but it’s possible to equalize this out. Overall the physical aspects of the headphone speakers seems very good.

What is not good is the electrical aspect. Because these are wireless headsets, it means that the audio signal to drive them is generated inside the headphones. Sennheiser here relies on a Qualcomm/CSR CSR8670 audio SoC as well as their custom low-latency audio RF codec via the GSA70 dongle. The weaknesses here seems to be two-prone; the 16-bit DAC of the ASoC seems unable to properly cope with avoiding distortions as well as keeping the noise floor down, and there’s some funky remodulation going when using the GSA70 audio connection. Bluetooth also has some irregularities, but I found them not to be as audible.

One of the biggest issues is that the noise floor of the amplifier is just terrible – the 4.5KHz hiss is for me quite audible and annoying whenever there’s nothing playing back. The noise gating of the DAC is too slow to react and turn on, so it’s present in a ton of situations. It’s also a major component adding to the errors and distortions during playback.

The other issue is the distortion just isn’t acceptable for a 349 $/€ headphone. Even though overall the frequency response of the headphones are good, for me it was audible that there’s more distortion via the GSA70 connection than via Bluetooth, and overall just more than a regular wired headphone with a better DAC.

The benefit of the wireless headphones is that, well, they’re wireless. You can walk around with them and continue listening to your audio. However how useful this is for an actual gaming headphone is a bit unclear – PC players will be playing at their desk in front of their PC naturally. For console players, I guess there’s a market for that, but then again it’s not so much the enthusiast or the competitive gaming crowd anymore.

The wireless battery life of the headphones was good – I was able to get around two day’s usage with a full charge. One has to keep in mind that this is still quite a lot of battery charge cycles over a year if one uses it every day, and battery life will degrade over time, this is a consideration for a headset this expensive.

Finally, the microphone of the GSP670 is just odd. I don’t really understand why Sennheiser limited its frequency range to up to 7KHz when the sibling wired GSP600 go up to 15KHz. Beyond the doubtful physical design of the mic, this frequency range limitation just makes the audio sound bad and easily beaten by the cheapest add-on mics.

Overall, I think the GSP670 is a good headset with the largest weakness being simply the fact that it’s wireless. Sennheiser seemingly didn’t manage to get the hardware design of the latter part correctly and actually maintain the audio quality they’re known for. For a 349$/€ price tag I think buyers could simply just buy the wired GSP600's at 249 $/€, with the same physical design, invest the difference in a better DAC, and come out with an overall better experience.