Fractal Scape Gaming Headset Review – Exceeding Expectations

Swedish hardware manufacturer Fractal Design is best known for its elegant computer cases, so I was fascinated to find that its debut headset – the Fractal Scape – maintains the company’s refined design language. Understated and eye-catching in equal measure, the Fractal Scape may be the most visually appealing gaming headset I’ve ever seen thus far. And more importantly, it’s super comfortable, sounds great, and sports plenty of features that make it well worth adding to your gaming setup.

Fractal Scape – Design and Comfort

From a design perspective, the Fractal Scape is a stunner. Without the detachable boom mic attached to the headset, this bad boy could pass as a luxury set of cans akin to Apple’s AirPods Max or Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra. This is particularly true of the Light variation, which is striking with its gentle matte gray finish, clean metal alloy accents, and earpad and headband fabric in a delightful silver-ish tone. Meanwhile, the Dark option trades those swanky vibes for something more traditionally sleek with its all-black aesthetic. Both are gorgeous in their own right, so it’s a matter of taste as to which suits your setup better.

Tucked away between the earcups and earpads, the Fractal Scape’s optional RGB accents are purposefully subtle. They feel just exposed enough to let you dial in a slight “gamer” ambience without the excessive flashiness of headsets that often feel designed to prove you’re Gaming with a capital G. These lights can be extensively customized using the Adjust Pro software (more on that later), or you can just opt to turn them off entirely at any time with the simple touch of a button.

Luckily, all of these good looks don’t come at the expense of wearability. Though I initially worried the fairly snug fit might lead to issues during prolonged use, I’ve found the soft memory foam padding on the earcups and headband has kept me from experiencing any fatigue or discomfort over long sessions. And the Fractal Scape’s cozy woven fabric has been breathable enough that my ears never get hot, either.

One of the coolest features of the Fractal Scape is its wireless charging dock, which holds the headset in a standing position via a magnetic connection. While you can still charge the headset separately with a USB-C cable, the dock makes it easy to display it like a piece of decor on an entertainment center or table. The headset can also automatically power on and off when taking it from or placing it onto the charging dock, respectively. It may not sound like a big deal, but this kind of convenience goes a long way.

Additionally, you can plug the dongle into the dock, then run a wire from the dock to the USB port on your PC or console. By doing this, you can put some distance between the dongle and other nearby devices that may cause interference. And I’d recommend doing so, as my headset would sometimes randomly lose connection to the dongle while plugged into a USB-A port on my consoles. Updating the firmware reduced the frequency of disconnects, but only inserting the dongle into the charging dock and placing it away from my other devices and in a clear path to the headset eliminated the issue entirely.

You can swap from the 2.4GHz wireless mode to Bluetooth 5.3 using a toggle on the left earcup, letting you bounce between multiple devices with ease – though it’s worth noting that the headset doesn’t support the two simultaneously, so you won’t be able to answer a phone call while still hearing your game. Meanwhile, the omission of a 3.5mm jack means you’re limited to using a USB-C cable for a wired connection on the Fractal Scape. This doesn’t phase me as someone all-in on the wireless world, but more options are never a bad thing, so I hope Fractal reconsiders adding a jack on any future iterations of the headset.

Fractal Scape – Software and Battery Life

Adjust Pro, Fractal’s web-only software, lets you customize and save up to three EQ presets, which you can then cycle through using the EQ button on the headset. It also gives you an impressive amount of customization over the RGB lighting with a combination of colors, effects, speeds, and more. It’s nice that these changes are flashed to the headset immediately so that you can start using your settings with no extra hassle.

The Fractal Scape promises a reasonable battery life of 40 hours, but I’m happy to report I’ve been getting closer to 50 hours out of it from a full charge. Opting to use the RGB features can cut that down to just a little over 20 hours, however, which is a substantial reduction for a payoff that you can’t even see while using the headset anyway. I’d recommend ditching the flashy stuff and keeping things basic for the extra runtime – and to be fair, I’m not really an RGB kind of guy to begin with. Do what makes you happy, but know there’s a trade-off.

Fractal Scape – Sound Quality and Microphone

I wouldn’t consider myself an audio snob, but it’s impossible not to tell the difference between the bass-heavy sound profile of many gaming headsets and the wide, clear audio output of the Fractal Scape. It makes sense that its contemporaries chase those lower frequencies for immersion in a medium often filled with loud explosions and deep, rumbling scores, but sacrificing mids and highs can leave their soundstages a bit muddy at times. With its 40mm audio drivers, the Fractal Scape focuses on providing fine-tuned balance and clarity across all frequencies, and I love it for that.

Make no mistake, the Fractal Shape still serves up plenty of bass, ensuring that combat in a game like Doom: The Dark Ages feels rightly impactful. But giving mids and highs some room to breathe allows you to hear dialogue and important audio cues much more clearly. Most notably, when combined with the headset’s top-notch spatial audio, I found pinpointing enemy footsteps and gunshots in competitive games significantly easier than with most headsets in my arsenal.

The Fractal Shape’s super wideband boom mic covers frequencies between 50Hz and 16kHz, with the latter reaching the upper limits of human hearing. This means that, unlike average headset mics that compress your voice output and make you sound a bit muffled, the Fractal Shape’s mic highlights the dynamics of your voice far better. As such, you come through nice and bright to whoever is listening on the other end.

I’m a big baby who finds boom mics inherently irritating, though, so I love that the Fractal Scape also has a built-in omnidirectional mic. There’s a moderate drop in overall quality when comparing it directly with the boom mic’s unidirectional design, which helps reduce background noise, but none of my friends minded when I swapped between the two during our gaming sessions. That being said, my home tends to stay very quiet, so your pals may appreciate you using the boom mic if you’re gaming in a noisier environment.

Billy Givens is a freelancer at IGN with over a decade of experience writing gaming, film, and tech content. You’ll find him blabbering on about video games and more on Twitter at @mektige.