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There are so many options when selecting gaming headphones today, the market is saturated with them. With that, finding a good set of 7.1 headphones especially is difficult and with that I bring you todays review of the Viper V370 RGB 7.1 Surround Gaming. Time to find out if they are good or not.
Before we jump into the review, let’s check out the features and specs of this set.
Features and Specs
Features:
- 1 Virtual Surround Sound
- Ultra Bass Response (UBR)
- Built-in foldable microphone
- Ergonomic ear-cup design
- Controllable RGB LED Illuminated
- Travel Pouch
Specifications:
Speaker:
- Main Drivers: 40mm Neodymium magnet
- Sub Drivers: 30mm
- Frequency Response: 20Hz – 20KHz
- Impedance: 32Ω at 1kHz
- Sensitivity: 110dB ± 3dB at 1kHz Max
- Input Power: 10mW
- Cable Length: 2.2m / 7.22 feet
- Connection: USB
Microphone:
- Frequency Response: 100Hz-10KHz
- Signal-to-noise ratio: 60dB
- Sensitivity: -46dB ± 3dB
- Pickup Pattern: Omnidirectional
Everything looks great on paper, but what’s inside the box?
A lot of things included in this bundle, so let’s break it down a bit and go over each piece.
To start things off, they include this little red envelope with the Viper logo on it. Let’s see what’s inside.
Oohhh some goodies.
In the envelope, they include 2 Viper stickers to put where ever you’d like.
The also include a Quick Start Guide
Seriously not joking when they said Quick Start Guide and usually, for a pair of headphones you would be right in thinking not to read these but there’s a bit of an issue. A very important mention is not listed here, but I will get into that a little later in the review.
As an alternative to the leather/leatherette ear cups already installed onto the Patriot Viper V370 RGB 7.1 Surround Gaming, Patriot includes a second set. This set is a cloth mesh set, my preferred pair that let your ears and the side of your head breathe a little and avoid the sweat form making them stick to your ears. That is my preference though, you may prefer the pair already installed.
Then they include this interesting little gadget. This is designed to make changing the ear cups easier. Later we will see how that works.
A nicer bonus they include is this travel bag with draw strings. A welcomed little addition to store your headphones or take them on the go.
Then we have this interesting set of headphones, the main attraction. On the next page, we will go into detail on this pair of headphones.
[nextpage title=”The Headphones”]
Looking at these you might think that they are an average pair of headphones, but let’s look a little closer and see what it’s all about. We will start off at the USB connection and work our way up.
At the base, we find this innocent enough looking USB connection. The USB housing is gold plated to help it keep from tarnishing unlike the standard silver connectors. The plastic housing, has the standard USB logo and the other side is
Patriot braids the USB cable in this very tightly bound black and red braid.
Coming up from the USB connection, we find the ferrite bead or choke. The mystical device on many devices, the choke helps reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio-frequency interference (RFI). This keeps the “noise” the mouse signals create quiet stopping them from interfering with other devices or other devices from interfering with them.
Coming up a little more up the 7.22-foot cable, we finally reach the headphones.
On the inside of the headphones, of course we have the ear cup. The one that comes installed already is a leather/leatherette cup. This is very cushy and fits your entire ear inside of it, well depending on the size of your ears of course, but mine fit. The inside is covered with a red cloth covered in black meshing.
A closer look at the leather/leatherette here.
Coming out we find the volume wheel and the ultra bas response switch (UBR). The volume wheel is is a regular volume wheel, but the UBR switch is a bit interesting, I will also discuss this a bit later. The little drum logo makes me think “para-pum-pum-pum” (Little Drummer boy). Having the volume wheel on the actual earcup is a nice feature because you don’t have to find the volume wheel, it’s always in the same place.
On the side of the ear cup, we have this black metal mesh, like what you might find over a speaker. A silver accent brings out the VIPER logo, but there is a clear cover surrounding it. This cover is the RGB LED illuminated backlighting. I will show you in a bit just how it looks like, how it works and how to control it. This same side has a bit of a secret to it.
It’s hidden here, can you see it?
Pull this little tab out and you have the built-in foldable microphone. A little later in the review I will show you how they sound as well.
I will not show you the other side, it is the same as this one, minus the volume, UBR switch and the microphone. Let’s go up from here.
The adjustable headband actually shows you on the side what level you are on, this takes some of the guess work out in fitting them on your head. A small detail, but I think it’s a nice touch. Both sides have this so you know where each side is, but moving up there is move great stuff here.
Maybe not a lot to speak about specifically right here, but it has an etching letting you know which side is which. Many have this, though not all but here is the Left side.
Then the other side, the Right side.
At the very top, we find the leather cushion, keeping it nice and comfy on the top of your head. As you know, many have just a simple plastic strip which is not very comfy. Those of you with hair, may not get the full benefit, but for baldies such as myself, this is a nice feature.
Squeezing it a bit so you can see how cushy it is.
At the very top, there is this cutout showing the VIPER logo. This cutout actually exposes the rear portion of the headband, so it too has the leather cover.
On the next page, we will go over installing the drivers, configuring, the software features and functions along with the headphones. I will also show you how to change the ear cups.
[nextpage title=”Installing and Configuring”]
These are USB headphones, so just plug the USB plug into an available USB port.
Simple enough, and they will work that way, but you will get tons better audio performance downloading and installing the drivers, including 7.1. Without the drivers, you will only get Stereo.
Here you can get some information (though I will have more in my review) about the headphones as well as be able to download the drivers.
https://patriotmemory.com/product/viper-v370-7-1-virtual-surround-headset/
After you download and extract the 29.8Meg package, you will want to double click on the click “Setup.exe” file to start the install process.
Simple install, click “Next”, then “Install”
When it’s done, you will need to restart your computer, so save all of your work. I do recommend restarting, if you don’t, please don’t complain that something is not working right.
It will not automatically start with Windows, and this is something you will want to start up after the restart of your PC to make sure you can configure it.
The first message you will see is to activate you Windows Speaker icon, if there is no check in that box, place a check there then click “Exit”.
After you click “Exit” you will be greeted by the “Volume Control” section, and pay close attention, there are some things I will mention here that are not in the manual and by mistake figured them out. As you raise the master, they all go up, even the slider on the top right-hand corner. Left and Right Front speakers are individual. The Volume Control section also comes up if you click the “Speakers” icon on the left.
If you click on the “Microphone” icon on the left you will get the volume control for the microphone. When you first turn this on, the Mic-In will be at 0.00 for both Left and Right and it is super low. I had to raise them to 16.07 so I could hear myself properly. The monitor, allows you to hear yourself while you are recording, I don’t like to hear myself while I am recording, though it might help you record properly.
Clicking on the “Lighting” icon. As you can see, the “Enable Lights” check box is unchecked, you will want to put a check in here to start up the lights.
If you click on the drop down for “Light Effects”, you have the features above. Static, Breathe, Blink and Heart Beat. The “Speed” slider will not function in “Static” because it is just a solid color, the default color is blue.
Dragging the curser over the color scale, either of them, will allow you to change the color of the headphones LED light, but they will not change until you release the mouse button.
Breathe will cause the lights to pulsate on and off depending on the level you set the Speed slider to.
Blink, will blink through all of the possible colors shown above.
Heart Beat, is a little misleading. At first, I thought it pulsed based on your heart beat… but that’s not the case. With heartbeat, depending the audio playing through the headphones, the light will beat light a heart to the sound depending on the color you select. A nice little feature I think, if you are playing a game or listening to music, this will add a little ambiance in a dark room.
Clicking on the “i” on the top right hand will let you know the versioning of the Audio CODEC, Audio Driver, Firmware, DirectX, CPL and copyright information.
If you click on “Detail”, it will display the GFX and LFX versioning and modified date.
Clicking on the Cog/Gear on the top right-hand corner gives you this screen. From here you can have the program show in the system tray, change the UI transparency then also allows you to make the entire interface more transparent. “Don’t show start up message” keeps the message below from popping up every time you start up the program if it’s not in the system tray.
Careful with the transparency, it can make things really difficult to see
To the average person, even after reading the manual, you would think this is all of the features and you may be disappointed if that was the case but it’s not. By mistake, I found if you right click on the “Speaker”, you find an entirely new set of controls.
You get Volume Control, which we have already been using, Sample Rate, Equalizer, Viper Surround Headphone, Xear Audio Brilliant, Xear Dynamic Bass, Xear Smart Volume and Viper Surround Max. Since we have already seen “Volume Control”, let’s jump to “Sample Rate”.
Here you can select the Sample rate for the audio and then the Bit Depth.
Moving to Equalizer, the default setting is unchecked, which is the default for most settings but I checked it on so that you can see the defaults. Here you can select how you would like your audio to sound like. If you are hardcore about your music and don’t like the way it sounds by default, you can come here and browse through their settings, or create your own.
Viper Surround Headphones, disabled by default is what changed things for me on these headphones, why is this not on by default. Here is where you enable the Surround Sound feature for the headphones, without it you have a stereo headset.
Many would think there would be no difference between Music Mode and Movie Mode but there is a pretty big difference. On Music mode, the audio sounds more like it is coming from above, very tight audio. Movie mode sounds a little more like it is coming from below and more spatial, open.
The Room Size section, allows you to select what kind of a room the audio will sound like its coming from. The smaller room, sounds like you are in a phone booth, the middle room selection sounds like you are in a very large room, maybe your living room where you might have some audio equipment setup to watch movie and the largest one sounds like you are in a theater, but a really larger theater, a bit open. I feel more comfortable in the middle section, the audio sounds amazing and while the audio sounds good on the larger one, it just makes it sound like those speakers are smaller, things actually do sound further away.
Viper Audio Brilliant, as with the others comes by default disabled and must be clicked to enabled, I did say must. Without it, the audio sounds good, and you would not think anything different until you found this setting. This will help both in music and movies to get that extra emotion into audio, yes, I said emotion.
With this setting enabled, it seems to add a lot of the audio that somehow was missing. This allows audio to become music more crisp and clear. The Brilliant Level audio allows you to adjust that level of clarity, sometimes things can get too real.
Viper Dynamic Bass, a setting I had an issue with, not because there was anything wrong with it but because I am not a fan of bass too much. These settings are like Lego pieces, sometimes the model you are building might seem complete, but the model is not complete till you add those additional pieces, this is one of those.
Before this find, everything sounded great, while watching Captain America Civil war, I enabled this feature. Viper Dynamic Bass, added depth to punches, bass to Tony’s and Steve’s voices, it added intensity to the experience. The Bass Level lets you select the depth and the Cut-off Frequency, I could not find a movie or a game where this would come into effect. The cut off frequency allows the bass to slowly cut off when the bass requires too much power from the head phones.
Viper Smart Volume equalizes the sound levels of Music or Speech to reduce the need to adjust the audio during low audio points in music, games or movies.
Viper Surround Max, like the others comes disabled, but when you click “Enable Viper Surround Max” it’s the water to the sponge. Viper Surround Max adds to the surround sound experience, while not 100% needed, it does make the audio sound more full, it’s a little bonus.
These additional options are all that “Speakers” offer but “Microphone” has a little more as well.
The additional controls like with “Speakers”, come with a right click on the “Microphone” icon. The right click brings up “Volume Control”, which is the default section that comes up with a left click, but then we also have “Sample Rate” and “Vocal Effects”.
Here you can set the Sample Rate for the microphone.
Vocal Effects is off by default and it’s a good thing. It’s not that it does not work, it works very well but this is not something you want on all the time… if you are sane. Vocal Effects allows you to change your voice during recording to sound like a Monster, Cartoon, Male or a Female and it does a pretty good job too.
Talk is cool and all, but like you if I was reading this review, I would like to actually hear it. So, I recorded a video going over me using this software along with playing with this vocal effect as well. I recorded the audio using this Microphone as well.
In this next page, I will go over using the headphones and show you how everything works.
[nextpage title=”How does it work?”]
We have gone over the headphones and the software, but not in how they work together. Here we will go over both together.
In this video, we will go over a little bit of the software. I will also do some voice changing here, it’s kind of cool.
That was pretty cool right,… and actually I forgot to change my voice back to my voice, so for the rest of that video I was a woman or at least I sounded like one. It’s nice the way it allows you to unlock all of the surround features and then on top of that, the almost infinite options to keep making it sound better.
The software has a lot of nice features, another of the features you might have noticed is the ability to be able to change the colors of the headphones. Let’s go over the lighting aspect.
You can change the headphones to all of those colors on the grid, but here are the basic colors.
Now it might be best to show you in video how it all works.
The options they give you are all pretty nice between Static, Breathe, Blink and Heart Beat.
With gameplay, like the rest the sound was amazing. I have gotten used to stereo sound coming from the HyperX Cloud Stinger which are a great pair, but you have not gamed, unless you have gamed in Surround Sound.
I have played many games with them, Battlefield 4, Battlefield One, Grand Theft Auto V, and it is amazing how that when people are behind you, not only can you tell they are behind you but you know exactly where behind you so no sneak attacks through a door or window. I am obsessed with Battlefield 1, and these have helped bring my K/D (Kill/Death) ratio up very nicely. I was a bit distracted playing this, but in this next video I show you how good the microphone sounds in Battlefield One.
Sound amazing, don’t they? A nice thing to mentioned about this microphone is when the microphone is down, it is on but when the microphone is folded up it is off. This is another undocumented feature which is nice, I think this would help people when choosing a headset.
The Ultra Bass Response (UBR) at first, I did not like, just too much bass, you feel the headphones vibrate and I did get a bit of a headache. Then I tried it in Battlefield One, and the sound is amazing. Explosions sound and feel amazing, every gun shot as well causes a slight vibration with the bass. UBR can be good and bad, it does not work in all movies and games, but it’s not the headphones fault, some games or movies just don’t have that sort of need for it so it comes across as slightly annoying.
One thing about the headphones out of the box I did not like, and I mentioned it a few times before are the leather earcups. After hours of gaming, or listening to music they make your head sweat but thankfully Patriot includes a mesh pair of ear cups and a tool as well remove the ear cups. I made a video as well on how to change them.
Pretty simple, right? That was the first time I tried to do it, so you saw it first and while it was not incredibly easy at first, once I found the trick it was super easy. The process was not documented so I had to make it up as I went along.
Let’s move on to the final page and check out what I thought of the earphones and see if you agree.
[nextpage title=”Final Thoughts and Conclusion”]
A very well put together pair of headphones for a great price with some amazing features usually not found in a set so affordable. The headphone stand, the Patriot Viper Gaming Headset Stand/USB 3.0 Hub PVUSB33HSS does not come included, but I will be reviewing them separately and are pretty nice so far. You can click here to find out more about them CLICK HERE. Might be a nice bundle for them to offer.
Pros
- Very long cable
- Braided USB cable
- Rubberized Anti-Slip Coating
- Soft cushy headphone band
- Configurable LED-Lighted ear cups
- Very Comfortable feel
- Optional Mesh earcups
- Very customizable and functional software
- UBR Can be a nice touch
- Volume wheel on earcup makes it easy to find
- When the microphone is up, it is off, when it is down it is on
- VERY Affordable
- Included tool to change earcups
Cons
- No Apple Support
- Documentation could use some work
During my testing of these headphones, I have been listening to Alice In Chains, Metallica, A Tribe Called Quest, Best of Techno Bass, Black Eyed Peas, Beethoven and then watching Captain America Civil War, Ex Machina, Inception, Ant Man and then playing Battlefield 4, Battlefield 1 and Grand Theft Auto V. At times, since there are soooo many audio options, things may sound a little odd but a few clicks later everything just sounds amazing. It would be awesome if there was one setting that just sounded good, but if you think about it, that is kind of difficult.
There are many features the Viper V370 RGB 7.1 Virtual Surround Gaming Headset has, many of them really nice, some just OK, but they are there. The problem is there are too many features that are undocumented and with that, someone looking for a decent set of headphones could easily pass these by, because it doesn’t say some things.
All in all, I found these headphones to be amazing, especially because of the price and feature set. I hope this review sheds some light on some of the features they have forgotten. I give these headphones the Dragonbloggers Editors Choice Award. Let me know what you think.
We are influencers and brand affiliates. This post contains affiliate links, most which go to Amazon and are Geo-Affiliate links to nearest Amazon store.
I have spent many years in the PC boutique name space as Product Development Engineer for Alienware and later Dell through Alienware’s acquisition and finally Velocity Micro. During these years I spent my time developing new configurations, products and technologies with companies such as AMD, Asus, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA and more. The Arts, Gaming, New & Old technologies drive my interests and passion. Now as my day job, I am an IT Manager but doing reviews on my time and my dime.