Patriot Viper V370 7.1 Gaming Headset Review – Versatile!

FEATURES

Clearly, the main effort of advancement here between generations is found within the software itself. To start us off, the 115mb download located on Patriot’s website is compatible with most platforms:

• PC or Mac with an open USB port
• Windows® 10 / 8 / 8.1 / 7 / Vista / XP
• 150mb of free hard disk space

With a relatively quick install your V370 headphones are now 100% fully operational. Upon finalizing the installation you may start altering your listening and recording experience in many different ways.

By right clicking on the “Speakers” icon, a large drop down menu opens for you to access. First off is the “Volume Control”, self explanatory; the master volume control.

Next is the powerful “Sample Rate” where you may change the headphone’s sample rate to closer fit the media type you are listening to. Ranging from CD quality all the way to HD DVD quality, you will be able to appropriately select the proper sample rate for your listening experience.

Following “Sample Rate” we fall into the “Equalizer” page where we can do all sorts of tweaks. With the ability to manually customize your pattern or choose from some premade for you, one can really tweak the way these headphones play any sort of audio.

Next up is the first of the many “Xear” settings, starting with “Xear Surround Headphone”. Tweaking the overall performance of the 7.1 surround sound headphones, this setting helps simulate different sizes of rooms and the appropriate media type being played to try to attain the best listening performance/playback required.

The “Xear Audio Brilliant” setting is a simple sliding scale that enhances the clarity of the sound quality.

For all of those dub step fans out there, the “Xear Dynamic Bass” setting is going to stand out the most. With two sliding scales to adjust your Bass level and Cut-off Frequency, you can really dial in just how much bass you are looking for and/or are willing to take.

“Xear Smart Volume” is a simple adjustment meant to save your ears. By capping the maximum volume level, no longer will you put your headphones on and jump out of your seat forgetting how loud you were blasting your tunes late the night before.

“Xear Voice Clarity” attempts to boost the vocals within any audio source to make it more legible. Increasing the clarity may unintentionally also boost the background noise but the noise suppression slider helps to negate this issue some.

Finally, “Xear Surround Max” will simply change the pitch of your surround sound experience. With this deep, multifunctional list of tools in your pocket, maximizing your listening experience is never far out of reach.

Next up, the Microphone has a relatively small customization menu in comparison to the speakers. Here you may adjust the pickup sensitivity, the overall gain of your voice, the sample rate, and if the mood should strike you, a few voice changers.

As stated previously, with the inability to move the microphone closer to our lips, we found in necessary to increase the gain to properly capture our voice. Unfortunately, in doing so we also picked up more background noise.

The only solution here would be to either keep the gain at its default settings and just speak up, or place your recorded audio in a program to scrub off the background noise.

Finally we come to the main selling feature of Patriot Viper’s V370 Gaming Headset over the V361, the RGB lighting. First off, you may turn off the lighting all together if so desired. If you’d rather play around, this program has a few lighting effects built in as well as a full RBG colour spectrum to help find your desired colour. Playing on the extreme ends of the spectrum, setting all of the RBG settings to zero doesn’t create a “black” light but instead turns off the lights completely. At the other end of the spectrum, maxing out the settings doesn’t create a truly “white” light, but more of a subtle off-blue colour.

The four light settings include: Static displaying only one solid colour, Breathe which cycles that chosen colour from full intensity to none, Blink which cycles through the full RBG spectrum endlessly, and Heart Beat which takes your chosen colour and “dances” it to your listening experience changing intensity in accordance to whatever you are listening to.