In my infinite quest to find the perfect PC gaming headset, I've gotten pretty close to perfection, but always came up short. ROCCAT's latest entry into the mix, the ROCCAT Syn Pro Air, seems a worthy contender on the surface. Our latest look dives below the back of the box to see if this is the headset to use in your day to day gaming experience.
Let's look at the box and see what this pair of headset offers. The ROCCAT Syn Pro Air touts four great features - 3D Audio, Stellar Wireless, Quality and Comfort. All great features to look for in a headset, but here's what I want to see - Audio Quality, Comfort, and Features for day to day use. For audio quality we look for clean sound, deep bass and crisp highs. A good example of this is can I still hear the click of a gun during an explosion on the screen. Comfort is subjective, but a good headset should have great padding and materials. In terms of features we want the ability to balance game and chat audio, adjust the volume or mute right from the headset.
The ROCCAT Syn Pro Air stacks up quite well in audio performance. My recent favorite game to push headsets to their limit is Battlefield V. The audio design and depth is broad, chaotic, and positional. All areas the Syn Pro Air met with flying colors. Playing a session of Red Solstice 2: Survivors with our co-op pals I was able to discern voice chat easily thanks to a separate chat channel while also hearing the grunting of monsters and the constant and distant gunfire from teammates and turrets. All in all, I was happy with what I heard.
From a quality perspective the Syn Pro Air feel incredibly solid with a heavy duty plastic and fabric makeup. They are light, but feel solid, and the stitching on the material feels soft, yet durable. The Memory foam earpads and headband make the headset comfortable for long-term gaming sessions so this also checks the box.
The microphone is detachable and bendable like a Gumby figure, as opposed to a fixed position or wire based. It also auto mutes when you flip it up, which is a great feature. In terms of audio quality - it's average, but passable. There's a volume slider on the side that lets you adjust side tone so you can hear yourself since the headset does isolate quite a bit of outside noise.
Wireless performance and battery life is on par with most of the recent wireless headsets we tested including the Logitech Pro X Wireless and Turtle Beach Stealth 700. Wireless range was about 20 feet until I started to hear static. In terms of battery life, the headset does offer "quick charge" via USB-C. I was able to take the battery from 15% to 75% in about 20 minutes of charge time which then lasted almost 12 hours of gaming.
With the launch of the ROCCAT Syn Pro Air, the company is beginning to retire its SWARM software suite in favor of a new, more modern package called Neon. With it comes a cleaner more streamlined interface. To be honest, I didn't have many quarrels with Swarm, but this does seem to be a nice step forward from a design perspective and it offers up plenty of controls for the headset as well as the ability to sync lighting. The best feature is the ability to adjust voice and chat balance, though it would be great to allow this to be mapped to a volume slider on the headset itself.
So does the ROCCAT Syn Pro Air check the right boxes? Is this my new wireless headset for everyday use? The answer to both is YES. While there's a few minor things I'd change, the Syn Pro Air will now replace the Turtle Beach Stealth 700's. Ironically both are technically Turtle Beach products! I guess they are doing something right.
You can grab the ROCCAT Syn Pro Air right now for $149.99.