Sennheiser GSP 670 review — Great sound with a disappointing quirk

Sennheiser makes some awesome wired gaming headsets. Now, the company claims that low-latency wireless tech is finally in a place where it is willing to go whole-hog into wireless. The Sennheiser GSP 670 launched earlier this year, and it has the high-quality audio and build quality that you would expect without having to deal with a USB cable. But one major flaw makes it obvious that Sennheiser is still figuring things out.

The Sennheiser GSP 670 is available now for $350.

What you’ll like

Sennheiser GSP 670 has pristine sound

For a $350 Sennheiser headset, I don’t think it’s surprising that the GSP 670 has incredible audio quality. And unlike a lot of gaming headsets, it is the full package. It isn’t just great at clarity or bass. It does everything well.

The thumping low tones have body. You can feel the bass as well as hear it. Mid-tones come through with distinction. And high-tones are loud and precise without distortion. It all sounds expensive.

Great, modern features

The GSP 670 connects to your PC with a dedicated dongle. You can set that dongle as the default audio and a separate communication audio. This enables you to control game sound and communications independently. You’ll find that in a lot of gaming headsets, but it’s nice to see here.

One thing you won’t see in most other gaming headsets is a Bluetooth radio that works simultaneously with the dongle. This enables you to connect a device like a smartphone to listen to music or podcasts while still also getting your game audio at the same time. Turtle Beach’s Elite Pro 2 and Superamp also had this feature. I hope more headset vendors emulate Turtle Beach and Sennheiser.

Comfortable

The GSP 670 looks big and bulky, but it doesn’t feel that way on your head. It feels feathery light on my head. A big reason for that is the snug, even fit that spread out the weight of the device.

Sennheiser put a beefy battery in the headset, so it can last for lengthy gaming sessions. And comfort shouldn’t turn into a problem over that time.

What you won’t like

Auto sleep doesn’t work well

You can tell this is Sennheiser’s first wireless gaming headset, though. The GSP 670 does not reliably go to sleep when not in use. I tried everything I could think of to fix this problem, but nothing worked. Almost every time I picked up the headset, its battery was dead.

I updated the firmware for the headset and the dongle. And I installed the latest version of the Sennheiser Gaming Suite software. That application even has a button to turn on “Auto Sleep.” The idea is that if the headset doesn’t detect an audio signal, it’ll go into standby mode. But that has never worked well for me.

Even if it did, a $350 headset should not be going into auto sleep just because you aren’t playing music at that moment. Astro solved this in 2016 by putting an accelerometer into its A50 headset. That sensor can tell if you are wearing the headset. If you set it down on a table, the A50 turns off a few minutes after it stops sensing your subtle head motions.

The GSP 670 should have something more like that.

Underwhelming microphone

The GSP 670 also doesn’t have a Twitch-quality microphone. It isn’t awful. You’ll sound great on Discord. But it isn’t on par with some of Sennheiser’s other recent headsets.

And I get it. This is a wireless headset. Sending a high-quality mic signal over wireless is a waste of radio bandwidth. But you can use this headset plugged in through USB, and it would be nice if the mic was good enough to record podcasts or make simple YouTube videos. But it isn’t.

Conclusion

Sennheiser is the pinnacle of sound and quality, and the GSP 670 is more evidence of that. It is easily the best-sounding wireless gaming headset that I’ve used. It is a touch better than the excellent (and recently revamped) Astro A50.

But I can’t live with a wireless headset that doesn’t reliably conserve its battery automatically. If you are meticulous about ensuring that you turn things off the second you put them down, then I can still recommend the GSP 670 to you.

But I get distracted. I have kids. If something happens in the middle of a game, I might set the headset down to go check it out. And I am not going to remember to come back to turn the headset off to save battery for next time. That’s why I would pass on the GSP 670 unless Sennheiser has a reliable fix. Instead, I’d pick up the wired GSP 550 headset, which is similar but connects over USB.

Sennheiser’s GSP 670 is available now for $350. Sennheiser sent a sample unit to GamesBeat for the purpose of this review.