SteelSeries Arena 3 review: Powerhouse 2.0 gaming speakers

The SteelSeries Arena 3 are the Danish manufacturer’s entry-level PC speakers and are designed specifically for gamers.

They share similarities with the brand’s Arena 7 but are larger, more rounded and don’t come with a subwoofer. Despite this, they put in a very impressive sonic performance and are a great pick for video game lovers who primarily play on PC.

SteelSeries Arena 3 review: What do you get for the money?

The SteelSeries Arena 3 cost £130, an outlay that gets you a pair of pear-shaped, solidly built satellite speakers that weigh just under 1kg apiece, with the right module being slightly heavier.

Each speaker houses a 4in full-range driver made of organic fibre and has a front port for improved bass response. The speakers themselves sit on plastic stands that can be tilted upwards by 25 degrees. That may not sound like a lot, and indeed it isn’t, but given you don’t get any direction adjustment with most speakers in this class it’s a lot better than nothing.

All the inputs, ports and controls are located on the right speaker. At the back, you’ll find three 3.5mm jacks labelled Aux, PC and Headset, with the latter being a four-pole affair to connect a headset with a mic to the system.

The base of the right speaker stand has a multi-function button and a volume knob. Pressing the multi-function button once switches between speaker and headset, which is handy if you don’t want to wear a headset for a prolonged period of time but want to be able to swap back to it in a jiffy.

Long-pressing the multi-function button puts the system in Bluetooth pairing mode, while a quick double press disables the LED light below the driver. Curiously, if you connect the Arena 3 to more than one sound source — 3.5mm and 3.5mm or 3.5mm and Bluetooth — the system mixes the two signals.

To set the Arena 3 up, you first have to connect the left and right speakers with the 2m cable that’s hard-wired into the right satellite. Then it’s just a matter of plugging the power adapter into the mains and plugging the power cable in the back of the right speaker. My review unit came with a two-prong European plug adapter, but I’m assuming retail units here will come with the right plug for Blighty.

SteelSeries also bundles a 2m long 3.5mm audio cable for connecting your PC or laptop. Kudos to it for bundling cables of a decent length.

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SteelSeries Arena 3 review: What does it do well?

The Arena 3 system doesn’t come with a subwoofer, nor is there a port for plugging in a third-party sub. Rather, the system relies on two small front-facing ports placed above each driver to enhance bass generation. The absence of a sub doesn’t hamstring the Arena 3 as much as you might think, though.

Granted, the system can’t generate the thunderous bass of the Arena 7 system or even the Creative Pebble X Plus with its diminutive but still potent sub, but it doesn’t do badly. Across the volume range, there’s a firm, almost solid underlying bass signal that never gets woolly and never distorts no matter how loud the playback.

To get the maximum bass effect, you’ll need to download SteelSeries’ Sonar software and activate DeepBass, which adds a significant amount of space at the bottom end of the soundscape. Sonar does have two small drawbacks, however. Firstly, it’s Windows-only, and secondly, you need to set up an account to use it.

Loud is something the Arena 3 does well. Measured against a pink noise source at a 1m distance, the Arena 3 pumped out about 86dBA, which is not to be sniffed at. That’s more than enough to fill a medium-sized room with sound. Even more impressive is the utter lack of signal deformation at high volumes: this is one of the cleanest-sounding sets of PC speakers I’ve encountered.

Low-end performance aside, the Arena 3 also produce an impressively forward sound that verges on ersatz surround sound. I set the speakers up just a little forward from the back of my desk where my usual satellites sit and angled them up to the full 25 degrees. The result was a remarkable sense of envelopment and immersion.

All those features come together when playing games with a first-rate sound design like Halo Infinite. Here, the Arena 3 proved superb at conveying the directionality of the sound effects and the hard-edged staccato of sounds like weapons reloading. Dialogue cut through the background sound with scalpel-like clarity.

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SteelSeries Arena 3 review: What could be improved?

The Achilles heel of the SteelSeries Arena 3 is the price. No matter how good the sound produced, £130 is still a lot of money for a 2.0 desktop PC system – Creative’s hugely impressive Pebble X Plus 2.1 rig is only a fiver more. Of course, some of that price is down to SteelSeries being a premium gaming brand. Are you paying more for the name? Yes, but such is the world of gaming.

For the price, it’s also a little hard to overlook the absence of USB-C – or indeed any non-analogue – connectivity, especially as those are features of the Arena 7 and Arena 9 systems. The Arena 3 also lack the funky LED lights that you’ll find on the Arena 7 and 9 satellites. They don’t improve the sound quality but do make it easier to justify the asking price.

Finally, and at the risk of stating the obvious, as good as the bass performance of the Arena 3 system is, it can’t match the earthquake-like rumblings of the Arena 7 2.1 system. There is a pretty large price difference between the two, however, and you’ll need to find space for a big subwoofer.

SteelSeries Arena 3 review: Should you buy it?

For a desktop 2.0 system without a subwoofer, the low-end performance of the SteelSeries Arena 3 is nothing short of remarkable and it’s achieved without any detriment to the detail and space that the speakers project. It’s loud too, very loud. This sort of performance is hard to match in a 2.0 system unless you plan on spending twice the amount for what will in effect be a pair of active hi-fi speakers.

As a combination of quality and convenience — not everyone wants a separate subwoofer box getting in the way on or under their desk — the Arena 3 system is a tough act to follow especially if your primary requirement is for gaming audio.