Customer Ratings & Reviews

First of all, this is not for audiophile people. Music, even videos are OK. But when it comes to gaming this is just phenomenal. I do audio engineering and mixing in my professional home studio. I totally understand the purpose of the speakers. They are not meant to listen critically. But it comes with a lot of benefits. It is easy to use. You don’t need an extra sound card with 5.1 outputs or any other sound decoding devices. This would easily add an extra $100 to $200 $ just to get DTX sound or anything else. THIS ITEM DOES NOT ANY OF THOSE SOUND FORMATS. According to the customer service, they just take five channel audio and put it out of GG software. They didn’t answer me on my questions of licensing issues. I assume as a vendor, they have to pay license fees to Dolby. Etc… You do not have any control over the levels of the five channels. But you have a very good control over paramedic EQ and different modes for gaming and chat. I set up my battlefield game, audio output to surround and advanced warfare mode. It is extremely precise, loud punchy with massive bass (for it’s limited size of course ) . Bullets flying through the room. Choppers flying behind and above me. This is the impression I have. It is so fun and beautiful with the lights that I can’t express my happiness whit this item. There is no power button, which is so good because it puts itself on sleep and turns back on when needed. The lights are super bright and gorgeous. You don’t need hundreds of watts of sound when you sit right in front of it because in real world, loudness degrades over distance. There’s a math for it. You can do the calculation online. But if you sit right in front of it, it hits you right in your face when playing games. Overall, great quality for gaming, ease of use for set up, especially the rear speakers since they don’t need any wiring. This the right purchase for me.

Great product. Everything was packaged well and easy to set up. Iblive that ut connects to a usb port making it great for desktop and laptops. The sound quaility is amazing and the RBG lights ad a great feel to the room. Love it so far.

Steelseries has been on top of their game. They've been perfecting their craft over the last few years. I enjoyed using the nova pros and thought this set of speakers could bring a whole new level to my gaming experience. I built my pc not long ago and noticed quickly that the speaker market for pc gamers is quite bad. These can get very loud and have very clear sound. I enjoy using the app to adjust settings to my liking. Very easy to set up and has tons of awesome features!

First off, sounds great for the price. Not hard to hook up at all. Be sure to connect the surround sound speakers Bluetooth. The two right speakers should have lights on to indicate power. Now, my issue was in game dialogue was muffled when i had 5.1 upmix ON but the rest of the game sound was great but background sounds was muffled and extremely annoying and if you had 5.1 upmix OFF the sound was low but the background sound was good… so after hours or trying to figure out the issue i read somewhere (not specific to these speakers) that you have to disable your audio driver which mine was nahimic and then boom problem solved sounds great now i dont have to return them

Rear “wireless” speakers give out a static sound the whole time increasing volume makes it louder (makes music sound bad) LED lights great really bright and can customize Subwoofer 8/10 sound quality over all 7/10

This product provides excellent quality surround sound. Plus, the speakers have lights on them that can be in almost any configuration you want. Gaming with this sound system is very immersive.

I was really shocked at how great this system sounds. Im using them to mix music and they do not disappoint!! Love the light options as well.

At the store it sounds great. Unfortunately my husky ripped the right wire, tore the middle speaker, and lodt the control pod. The steel series web page is pathetic. They dont have customer service to call. The chat is a AI joke. Finally was able to do a ticket which after several conversations bc they don’t understand English. Was informed that they dont sell individual parts. So all i have is a $600 of Trash Series don’t recommend buying from them or a husky

Sounds and works great!!! Best PC speakers I have ever owned!

I really wish I could give these a higher rating. I loved these speakers at first until I updated them - they are completely brick't. OLED has been displaying FW Update Available for about 5 days despite me unplugging it and reinstalling drivers. The deeper I looked, I found lots of people talking about bad suctomer service with SteelSeries and how they had been offered replacements with no real QA or further troubleshooting. Makes me sad because these sounded sweet. My rating is that of a working model.

First off, set up was a breeze. You just plug everything in where it says to plug it in and off you go. It's a closed set up, so if the provided cables are not long enough for your space, you're out of luck. However, the cables are very long. The disappointing part is that connecting everything is just the beginning of what is a very frustrating setup process. You CAN NOT make these speakers sound good with windows only set up. You are REQUIRED to install Steelseries GG software, which REQUIRES an account. I won't go in it to here, but bloatware is putting it lightly. Be ready to fiddle with EQ settings. Before I installed their proprietary bloatware, I very nearly boxed everything back up and ran back to the store for a refund. I am very much a set it and forget it type. I don't want to go in and have to change settings and while there are plenty of helpful presets, I still had to make some adjustments to make them sound how I wanted. Once you find what works for you, they do sound fantastic. The LEDs are cool for a few minutes, but that type of thing isn't what I'm looking for in PC speakers. As of this writing, I still can't figure out how to get the AUX input or optical input to work.

While the overall sound quality is great, even though this is marketed as wireless there are quite a few wires involved. The biggest drawback for me was that after using these speakers for a month they started making a small 'metal clicking' noise that almost sounded like it was picking up an extra signal. The sound got to my head as i couldn't have absolute silence in the room if these were kept turned on. Therefore i decided to return them, since they are 500$ which is quite pricey in the first place itself. I am a diehard steel series fan, I still own a Rival 3 from 12 years ago which works flawlessly. I have faith that steel series will transform this into a much better/robust product and also probably reduce wires while reiterating product design.

Just gonna say it - they are very cool . Like seriously. And if I have to be honest I didn’t read specs beyond sound performance, and the speakers themselves were larger sized than I expected . So both good and alright on that front as they take more space then I expected . But , we still get back to how undeniably cool they look . Oh, and on the sound ? Absolutely on par . Nothing to blow your ears out of the water with and delicate enough to catch surround nuances helpful in gameplay . I’d have put 4 and 3/4 stars if I could so I rounded down slightly only because A: the speaker sound is on spec but now that I see the size of them I’d expect higher specs. And B: the overall instructions weren’t user friendly . I’m used to hooking up various sound equipment so it wasn’t exactly baffling but looking at the extremely small pictographic instructions made things worse

i have had the arena 9 speakers for about a month now. i am impressed by the sound stage that these speakers offer, and along with that the ease of setup. pros usbc to a cable included easy to to set up with when plugged in with interactive setup guide with the steelseries sonar software can control other steelseries speakers and headphone from the well made control dial cons none

This is a unique product from SteelSeries. I will say that even though it is not the best sound system on the market, the visuals of the hardware with the integration of the RGB gives you the opportunity to cretae a unique setup of your own. The highlight isnthe Subwoofer and the integratoon of two rear speakers to have an immersive 360 experience.

Sounds great and I haven't had to struggle with the software a lot, it's pretty intuitive to use. You can run game audio/music through the speakers while wearing a headset for team communications. Works great. Speakers aren't too intrusive on your desk size wise and the customized lighting creates a cool desktop look.

They work well, but even at max volume, still seem quiet. Software is nice and build quality is great.

I did enjoy them but ended up rerurning it because the surround sound on these are very weak. Good sound on the front speakers tho

The aesthetics and design are beautiful and went perfectly with my battlestation/office, unfortunately...visual appeal is where these stop delivering. If we were only discussing the front and center channels, there'd be a small talk to be had about clarity (lack of distortion), but that would ultimately be undermined by the lack of range these speakers provide due to the mid driver being only a couple inches bigger than the tweeter. With all that said, the worst part about these speakers is the rear channel wireless connectivity (only 1 rear speaker is wireless, the other is wired to it)...these rear channels have SERIOUS issues with crackling, static and popping, so unless you enjoy the soothing sounds of a yule log burning superimposed over your music, and constant complete audio cut out, I'd avoid the 5.1 version of this and just get the 2.1 and 3.1 versions. I'm going to include a link to a video I recorded and hope for the sake of best buys customers they allow it, words cant do this issue justice. https://youtu.be/tlYe-hDjMew

One of the best true 5.1 surround sound, perfect for gaming and watching movies, bass is crazy it shakes the windows through the whole house