Features and Pictures
The overall look of the Siberia Elites is interesting and really eye catching. They do share some styling with the older Siberia models but have changed up a lot as well. They do still have a suspended band on the top like the others, but the main band is an exposed stainless steel where before the Siberia’s used two bent steel bars to hold everything together. I love the way the stainless steel bands look but I would be a little more worried about sitting them down on things where the older Siberia’s had a coating on them to prevent that. It’s the giant padding on the earcups that really catch your eye though. The Siberia Elite will be available in Black and in White but currently white is the only color that you can order. The all-white design is really eye catching, especially with the thick white leather earcups.
I mentioned the stainless steel band that holds everything together before. Here is a better view of it around the top. You can also see the SteelSeries logo embossed into the suspended padding up top as well.
Each of the earcups has a silver ring on the side that has full color LED lighting behind it that will glow any color you would like. The rings on each side actually do double function. One spins to give you volume control and the other spins to mute and un-mute the microphone. This was so seamless that I didn’t even catch the volume and mute controls at first! When you look close you can see the grips built into the ring.
The microphone on the Siberia Elite is a pull out design, just like the Siberia v2 and all of the SteelSeries H series of headsets. SteelSeries did change things up here though with a much thicker design and with a microphone on the end that has a built in LED to let you know when you have it turned off. I have a feeling that this thicker microphone boom size is in response to some people having issues with the microphone on the Siberia V2, hopefully this will prevent those issues from happening in the future.
Here you can see the microphone with it is “docked”, it is certainly a clean design when the microphone isn’t in the way at all. You can also see that there is a second plug on the bottom of the right earcup. This allows you to plug in another headset and share what you are listening to with a friend.
I mentioned before the tangle free cord design that SteelSeries went with. Here you can see that they also built in a Velcro strap to keep the cord from being a mess as well. The main cable is actually more than long enough for use without the extension cable that they provide, I can’t imagine needing much more but it’s nice to have that option. The tiny USB connection plugs into the adapters provided or directly into the USB soundcard that SteelSeries gives you.
Here is the Siberia Elite up next to the Frost Edition Siberia V2. With them next to each other it’s easier to see the huge difference between the two headsets, especially with the microphone boom size. It’s also important to point out that the Siberia Elite uses a sealed earcup design where the Siberia v1 and v2 both used an open air design.