Named after the Greek Sun God (Helios), the Redragon Helios H710 offers great sound quality for music listening and directional audio for games where hearing every footstep is crucial.
The HELIOS H710 comes with a large audio remote with four clicky, physical buttons for controlling the volume, mute sound and enabling/disabling the equalizer (EQ). The volume buttons and mute button are located on one side, while the EQ button is located the other side.
The shiny high gloss front of the remote contains three led symbols to indicate mute and EQ modes (move, game and music).
Being closed back, the 50mm drivers inside the HELIOS H710 headset produce a narrow sound stage with a clear tonal balanced between the bass, mids and highs, as well as big volume sound (115dB+-3).
When enabling the EQ modes, the sound signature is altered slightly. For instance, the Music Mode EQ setting makes the HELIOS H710 headset more bassy, while Game Mode increases the midrange, making vocals stand out more.
The HELIOS H710 audio remote is located inline a long braided cable with a USB connector at the end to connect to a computer. The cable has a similar build to the cable on the M686 Vampire Elite mouse. The HELIOS H710 is designed to be powered from a computer and, while you could also connect it to a mobile device via an OTG cable adapter, a phone would not be able to provide enough power to drive the HELIOS H710 to full fidelity.
The HELIOS H710 speaker drivers have a high impedance rating (64 ohm) and require 10mW of power to be driven. The maximum input power the HELIOS H710 speakers can take is 20mW, which is worth noting if you plan to drive the HELIOS H710 via an external DAC amplifier.
The outer casing of the HELIOS H710 headband is made of plastic, featuring Redragon branding on top and thick foam padding underneath.
The earcup adjusting slider is made of metal alloy and has cut-outs for styling. The adjusting slider is joint to the earcup via a pivot that allows up and down movement of the earcup to make the fit more comfortable on the ear.
The ear-cups do not swivel so, they cannot be rotated around. Swivel headsets are, typically, useful for keeping the ear-cups flat when transporting the headset during a commute to work. That said, the HELIOS H710 headset isn't designed for traveling so, it's not a headset you'll be using for this purpose, specially since the HELIOS H710 headset isn't wireless.
The HELIOS H710 earcups are also made of rubberized hard plastic with circular metal alloy accents around the front panel. The Redragon logo is prominently etched on the front panel, which does not contain any leds; hence the Redragon logo does not light up.
The HELIOS H710 earcups integrate 1cm memory foam padding that measures 10cm high and 7.5cm wide externally. The internal dimensions of the earpads are 6cm high and 3cm wide, which should accommodate most ears, although the speaker driver is not protected by foam, other than by a thin layer of fabric.
Because the speaker drivers are only protected by a thin layer of fabric, the earcup depth is very shallow (5mm) so, protruding ears may rub against the drivers. The more your ears stick out, the more contact it will make against the speaker drivers. Overall, the HELIOS H710 headset has a very compact design for a gaming headset and, it only weighs 320 grams, although it's nowhere as lightweight as the Redragon H848 Ire Pro (183 grams). On the outer sides of the HELIOS H710 earcups, there are also tiny holes. These holes contain the noise cancelling microphones, which in some ANC headsets are located inside the earcup. The advantage of having the noise cancelling microphones on the outside of the earcup is that noise is picked up before you hear it.
The Redragon HELIOS H710 mouthpiece consists of a flexible boom microphone that is detachable and fitted with a mini foam windscreen filter, which helps reduce over brightness of the vocals, giving the vocals a warmer sound.
Being a foam windscreen though, it doesn't offer the noise protection of a pop filter. Background noise is also picked up because of the microphone capsule's omnidirectional pick pattern. The microphone favors the bass frequency so, it is deep and warm sounding.
The microphone port is located on the left earcup and features a notch so, the boom microphone plug can only be inserted one way into the microphone port. The non-detachable USB cable is also attached to the bottom of the left earcup and features a thick strain relief.
The cable has a standard USB-A connector so, it is compatible with Mac computers, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch and Windows computers (Win 7, Win 8, Win 8.1 and Win 10). The HELIOS H710 stereo speakers also integrates 7.1 virtual surround sound with support for 16bit/48Khz and 24bit/96kHz audio. Check out the review of the Pandora2 H350 headset and GS520 Anvil desktop speakers.