Unless you're a PC nerd like me, chances are you're not familiar with Fractal Design. The company has made a name for itself in recent years by designing some of the best cases you can buy for a DIY build. In a space known for its gaudy aesthetics, Fractal's products stand out for their simplicity. Now the company is entering the crowded audio space with the $200 Scape, a gaming headset that not only looks sophisticated, but also sounds surprisingly great too.
Design
I mentioned the design of the Scape first, and for good reason. It shows attention to detail, with a lot of thoughtful flourishes. The best of those is the dock that comes included with the headset. It charges the Scape inductively, so there's no need to align any charging pins, and it cleverly houses the headset's 2.4GHz wireless transmitter. When connected to your main PC, the dongle can sit inside the dock, ready to go when you want to use it with your PlayStation 5, PS4, Nintendo Switch or another PC or Mac (sorry, Microsoft fans, there's no Xbox support). The base also has wire channels to make cable management easy.
Those same thoughtful design touches extend to the headset itself. On the back are four buttons, a dial and a toggle that cover nearly every function of the Scape. You can adjust the volume, mute the built-in mic, switch between 2.4GHz and Bluetooth connectivity, power the headset on or off, turn the RGB lighting on or off and switch between three EQ presets. What’s more, all of the controls feel distinct and are easy to use. There's also a USB-C connection for wired audio and a three-pole headphone jack for the detachable microphone.
The headset is primarily made of plastic, with a touch of brushed metal. Fractal offers the Scape in two colors — the aptly named light and dark — and despite the company's choice of materials, the headset feels undoubtedly premium. Tilt adjustment is limited — it's not possible to lay the ear pads flat on a table, for example — but the headband offers a fair amount of resistance, adding to the high-end feel.
That said, the Scape could be more comfortable. Clamping force feels just about right, but there's not enough padding along the top of the headband. I found I could wear the headphones for a few hours, but I eventually had to take them off to relieve the pressure that had built up on the top of my head. I'm also not a fan of the fabric Fractal used for both the headband and ear pads. It feels scratchy and it's not great at dissipating heat. Thankfully, the high-density memory foam beneath is plush and the pads were deep and wide enough to comfortably accommodate my ears.
Fractal has made it easy to swap the ear pads if needed; they come right off with just a small amount of force. For the time being, the company isn't selling replacements, but a spokesperson told me Fractal will send customers who need new pads a set for free. You just need to contact their support team.
Sound quality
Out of the box, the Scape's dynamic drivers are tuned to a soft v-shaped curve, with an emphasis on accuracy over character. Bass frequencies are punchy without being bloated, and there's nice detail to mid-focused instruments like guitars. To my ear, the one issue with the Scape's default tuning were the upper mids and treble frequencies. They weren't shouty to the point of being sibilant, but there was definitely a harshness to the vocals of singers like Jeff Buckley and Caroline Polachek who are known for their falsetto. Thankfully, this was easy to fix with the Scape's built-in EQ settings.
I'll have more to say in the software section of this review, but Fractal's Adjust app allows you to make parametric EQ adjustments. This is different to most gaming headsets, which often limit people to restrictive fixed-band tweaks. Even when I used just five potential points of customization, I found I had a great deal of control over the tonality of the Scape.
Overall, for casual music listening these are excellent headphones capable of covering many different genres. When it comes to gaming, they're great too — with some caveats. For singleplayer games, the default tunings are an excellent match. Playing Ghost of Tsushima, the Scape did a great job of reproducing the game's immersive sound design, allowing me to soak in all the little audio details Sucker Punch packed into its rendition of 13th century Japan. The soundstaging isn't as expansive and lush as I'm used to with my Sennheiser HD 600, but for a pair of closed-back headphones, it's above average.
When it comes to competitive first-person shooters, some tweaks are required. I found all the default presets produced too much bass to easily isolate sound cues in games like Valorant. Again, Fractal's software made this simple to fix; however, the Scape can only store three presets. Some gaming headsets, particularly those from Steelseries, come with tunings for hundreds of different games. For the ultra-competitive gamer, this can be useful since every game has a different sound engine. I'm not one of those people, so I found the Scape had just the right amount of customization.
One feature you won't find on these headphones is active noise cancellation (ANC). Don't get me wrong, ANC is great, but I also didn't feel like the Scape was a worse product without it. My girlfriend is a Pelton fanatic and she does all of her daily classes without wearing headphones in our small apartment. In that situation, the Scape's passive noise isolation was enough to block the loud music coming from those workouts.
That said, the one area where the Scape could have been better is Bluetooth connectivity. It's a 5.3 headset, but codec support is limited to SBC and AAC. If you've ever tried a pair of wireless headphones only to be disappointed by how they sounded, SBC was probably to blame. When I used the Scape over Bluetooth, there was a subtle difference, but in a beat 'em up like Absolum, the game's excellent sound design was less effective because it sounded more compressed, with more lag between what was happening on-screen and the effects that followed.
I would have liked to see Fractal support more modern codecs like aptX Adaptive, but given that you need a dongle like the Creative BT-W6 to get access to those protocols on PCs and consoles, I can't fault the company for its decision. Also missing from the Bluetooth equation is multipoint support, meaning I wasn't able to connect the Scape to my PC or Switch and my iPhone at the same time.
The Scape's detachable microphone is fine but uninspiring. In listening back to a chat I had with some friends over Discord, I found the Scape compressed my voice to the point where there wasn't a lot of life or nuance to it. The optional noise cancellation algorithm does a good job of filtering out nearby commotion, but does so at the expense of adding more compression. You can flip the microphone to mute yourself, and if you're feeling lazy, the Scape also has a built-in mic — though it sounds about as good as you might imagine. Still, it's handy in a pinch.
Software
I mentioned Fractal's Adjust software, but what I didn't note is that it's not an app you need to install on your computer. Instead, it's a website you can access through any Chrome-based browser. It's a small thing, but one I really appreciate. I can't count how many times I've had to troubleshoot issues with Windows that were caused by a conflict created by Logitech G Hub or NZXT Cam.
The web-based software itself is simple, with two pages, named Lighting and Audio, encompassing all the options you can tweak. The Scape comes with 10 lighting themes out of the box, and like the headset itself, these presets are understated and classy. Naturally, you can also create your own lighting schemes, and the tool for doing so is fairly robust.
When it comes to the EQ adjustments you can make with the Adjust app, the one thing I'll add here is any presets you save are stored on the Scape, so they're available everywhere you want to use the headset. That was great because it meant I didn't need to Alt-Tab out of a game to switch the headset to a more competitive tuning.
The one area where Fractal's software feels lacking is when it comes to microphone controls. It's possible to adjust sidetone (the volume of your mic input as heard through the headset) and enable microphone noise cancellation, but that’s it. It'd be nice if it was possible to configure those settings for the two mics independently of one another, but the software doesn't support that right now.
Battery life
According to Fractal, the Scape can go up to 40 hours on a single charge with RGB lighting off. With the feature turned on, battery life drops to about 26 hours. I'll be honest, I had a tough time putting those claims to the test because of how easy it is to charge the headset. As best as I can tell, those estimates are accurate. I managed to get three days of battery life from the Scape with the RGB lights turned on and about eight hours of use each day.
One nice touch: when you tap the power button, the RGB lights will briefly illuminate to indicate how much battery life the Scape has left. Those same lights will turn off when you place the headset to charge so that they're not distracting.
The competition
With the Scape, Fractal has entered a crowded market. That said, the Scape is competitive with some of the best gaming headsets you can buy right now. At $200, it's $100 cheaper than the Audeze Maxwell, Engadget's pick for the best premium gaming headset. The Scape doesn't sound as good as the Maxwell or offer LDAC support for Bluetooth connectivity, but it's lighter and charging is easier thanks to the included charging base. If you ask me, the Scape also looks a lot better too.
If you can't live without ANC, your best bet is Razer's BlackShark V3 Pro, but it costs $50 more and doesn't sound as good as the Scape. You also need to put up with Razer's annoying Synapse software. For the best mic on a gaming headset, my longstanding recommendation has been the $199 Drop PC38X. It also has one of the best default tunings for competitive gaming. However, it's a wired headset, and Drop doesn’t offer a wireless option.
Wrap-up
If you can't tell by now, I think the Fractal Scape is a great gaming headset. There are models like the Audeze Maxwell that beat it in one or two categories, but for $200 the Scape is an excellent all-around package. Nitpicks about comfort aside, the Scape sounds and looks great. It's also a tremendous first effort by Fractal, and I can't wait to see what the company does next in the audio space and beyond.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fractal-design-scape-review-a-stellar-debut-173000007.html?src=rss