Steelseries Arena 7 2.1 Desktop Gaming Speakers
design
Curves dominate here in a design language that’s become distinctly Steelseries. Much like their Alias streaming microphone the SteelSeries Arena 7 speakers carry a smooth balance of subtle yet styled. Across both the drivers on the front of each speaker and the outer shell itself there’s not a corner in sight. Every angle seems to nicely mirror its neighbours’ with a subtle sci-fi spaceship vibe that I really dig.
They’re pretty chunky as far as desktop speakers go but with a relatively compact footprint. Standing around 20cm high and just over 10cm across they’re big enough to deliver punchy sound but weren’t too dominating on my desk – you’ll definitely find smaller options in the market though.
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Each sits on a solid baseplate and is perfectly balanced, there’s around 30 degrees of tilt back and forth and even at the full extremes they were rock solid on my desk. No matter how hard I wobbled, banged or shook my Autonomous SmartDesk Pro, even at fully height, the Arena 7 speakers never budged or looked in danger of falling over.
The subwoofer isn’t quite as elegant as the Arena 7 speakers themselves, it’s a big, bold, pointy box. The front panel does feature a nod to the rounded styling of its family members. That said, it’s a black box that’s going to live on the floor under your desk, it’s not meant to be the star of the show looks-wise. The connections on the back are nicely laid out, easily accessible and plentiful in number. Steelseries has included USB-C, Aux, Optical and Bluetooth connectivity so there’s just about every option you could need. A touch that’s often overlooked is cable length and Steelseries has been generous here. Each speaker runs its own cable with plenty of length to make neat cable management a breeze.
Plugging in and powering up for the first time the SteelSeries Arena 7 transform from understated to a little more showy. Tasteful RGB LED lighting wraps the base of each speaker with a glowing panel on the back too that throws an impressive amount of light onto my wall. Each lighting zone is independent and controllable via Steelseries’ GG app meaning they’ll sync up with other gear like the Steelseries Alias. If you’d rather put an end to that office disco a quick double tap on the action button will shut the RGB off entirely.
The way the RGB panel on the back is implemented feels a little like a cop out option and it’s my only real gripe with the Arena 7 design. The all black speakers suddenly have a frosted white panel covering half of their back and it just doesn’t mesh together well. I’m being picky, mainly because I need something to balance out the praise in this review so far and I’ll caveat it by saying you’ll likely never see this panel again after you’ve positioned your speakers for the first time so it’s a minor grumble.
performance
Steelseries has been making some of the best headsets in the market for some time now, what’s taken so long to make a set of speakers too!? The brand’s experience speaks loudly here as the Steelseries Arena 7s sound great, genuinely great. Like a lot of people I’m sure, my previous speakers were a £20 set of Logitech Z200s that I felt were doing the job just fine. Before plugging the Steelseries Arena 7 speakers in I wasn’t expecting to hear a huge difference. After all they’re both a similar sized set of stereo, two speaker setups. How much better could they realistically sound?
Turns out the answer is much, much better.
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Even without fiddling with any settings in the SteelSeries Sonar app the Arena 7s delivered an excellent, full sound that was immediately impressive. Compared to the basic, low-end PC speakers I’ve used over the past few years there’s a distinct improvement in the richness of sound and this was particularly noticeably when listening to music and the subwoofer can take a lot of the credit here. Even when the bass was dialled down to avoid upsetting the neighbours the entire soundscape felt pumped up and full.
Gaming performance was just as strong and through a few hours of GTA V, the Arena 7s did a great job of covering the game’s wide soundscape. There’s a lot going on as you roam around Los Santos and the Steelseries Arena 7 speakers did a great job of putting it all in front of me. Driving around the in-game music from the radio was pleasant and balanced, the deep rumble of my car was present without overpowering character dialogue and when things got heated each gunshot had a proper punch to it that cut through everything else. If things really got out of hand, the subwoofer added power and energy to explosions and the constant buzz of those helicopter blades.
Watching videos was a similarly successful story as the SteelSeries Arena 7 speakers delivered clear, detailed sound with a surprisingly absorbing amount of depth just a 2.1 set. Steelseries doesn’t claim any kind of surround sound wizardry but I decided to push my luck and pulled up a few spatial audio tests. With my eyes closed I was genuinely impressed at how well the Arena 7’s simple left and right speaker setup managed to convey a far wider sense of direction in soundscapes. It’s always going to be limited and it’s not as absorbing as you’ll find from a speaker with actual Spatial Audio like the Sonos Era 100 or Soundcore Motion X600 but it certainly sounded like more than just two directional sources.
SteelSeries’ GG software offers full EQ control if you want to character of the sound. I tend to trust the experts when it comes to balance so stuck with one of the bundled profiles on offer out of the box. There’s a pretty comprehensive feature set on offer here however if you want to get stuck in. The app will feel familiar for existing Steelseries users with the same interface across other devices like the Alias microphone too.
summed up
At the best part of £300 the Steelseries Arena 7 speakers aren’t exactly a cheap option but they do continue to deliver on the brand’s strong reputation. There’s really little to complain about here and all but the most committed audiophiles will likely be blown away with the sound they produce.
Excellent audio quality coupled with pleasing design and build quality, plus an RGB party trick to boot, the SteelSeries Arena 7 are a great choice for those looking to upgrade their desktop audio.
