Features and Photos
It doesn’t take more than a quick look to be able to see that the Siberia RAW Prism is completely different from everything else SteelSeries has been producing. Even compared to the other recently introduced Prism headsets it stands out. The earcups are solid not open like the standard Siberia and for lighting they only have a small ring on each earcup.
Currently the only color that you can get the RAW in is the white color photographed below. While the color looks good, the biggest thing that stood out to me was the lack of any real “polished” finished. When I say that I’m not referring to the lack of a glossy finish, what stood out to me was that the material they used feels a little cheaper in your hands than other SteelSeries products. This is to be expected to a point with this being a budget friendly headset but I feel like if they painted the RAW, even painting it in the same white color, would give it a higher quality feel. That said the build quality seems to be solid, they are flexible enough for you to be able to pull an earcup off one ear and strong enough to not have to worry about them breaking.
Frankly it feels a little weird talking about a Siberia headset that doesn’t have the suspension headband design that Siberia headsets have always had but that was one of the cuts that SteelSeries made when making a RAW model. In place you get a standard headband with about ¾ of an inch of memory foam padding on top. They skipped on using leather and used a microfiber mesh over top of a regular microfiber to give you a little ventilation and also keep things soft. They went with a grey color for the fabric. From what I hear they learned that with the last generation of headsets, when they used everything white the headsets got a little too dirty and they also would sometimes end up with hair coloring on them. By going with a slightly darker color they could avoid this showing up. No one wants to show off their new headset and have someone think they are dirty. They used the same material and color on both earcups as well. The padding in the earcups is also surprisingly soft, I can’t wait to get to testing to see how comfortable they are.
For the RAW SteelSeries went with a completely different microphone design. In the past all of their headsets have had a pull out microphone design that some love and some hate. This time around they actually just put this tiny little nub. When I first saw it I actually thought it was the microphone switch to mute the mic. It might take some people a little while to get used to gaming without a microphone around on the front and we will see how it performs in testing but I’m not all that shocked. Cell phone users have been using in line microphones on their earbuds for years and they do a good job of picking up your voice. So you might be wondering where the microphone switch is. Inside of the light ring if you push on that white plastic it will click and you will hear a beep over the headphones verifying that you are muted.
There aren’t any awkward USB adapters to plug into the Siberia RAW Prism, all you get for a cord is a white cord with a standard USB connection on the end. SteelSeries put the USB sound card inside the headset itself this time around. With the Siberia V2 they actually moved fully over to USB for some of the models later in its life so it was never designed for it. That is why they had a large USB connector that had the sound card built into it. There are also no cable extenders, you get 5 feet of cord and that should be all you need. This should be easier to work with than having a short cord and then a long extension like in the past.
The Siberia RAW Prism is also adjustable so hopefully it should fit people with large heads like me. I will get into that in the next section when I do performance testing. Each side extends about one inch, when extended you can see the same grey color that is also on the top padding and earcups.
