The Fractal Scape is the first foray into the gaming headset market from the Swedish manufacturer, best known for producing premium PC hardware. The result is a closed-back, over-ear headset that employs a minimalist, monochromatic Scandinavian design language, replete with a detachable boom mic and sleek magnetic charging dock. While compatibility is limited to PlayStation, PC, and Switch hardware (sorry Xbox owners), the Scape boasts an array of features that bring it in line with offerings from big players in the gaming space. There's Bluetooth support to complement wired and 2.4 GHz Wireless connection types, a secondary beam-forming mic, while memory foam earpads and a long battery life point to its suitability for gaming marathons.
Our Verdict
The Fractal Scape isn't suitable for sports and fitness, as it's really not designed for this purpose. While it has a stable fit on the head and offers a decent level of comfort, it'll fall off your head in the face of more vigorous exercise, and the cloth-covered, memory foam earpads will trap sweat and heat. Although it's on the lighter side for a gaming headset, the bulky design is hardly the most streamlined for your daily run. It also lacks an IP rating for protection against the elements.
Stable fit
No IP rating
The Fractal Scape is passable for travel use, though it's not really designed with on-the-go use in mind. While its boom mic is detachable and the charging dock is on the more compact side, the ear cups don't fold flat, and the headset takes up a lot of space in bags and luggage. The lack of an ANC system means that you're at the mercy of roaring jet engines and the captain's announcements, should you wish to take them with you on the plane. They don't fare much better in other environments either, plus they leak enough audio to bother those around you in tight quarters. While they're comfortable over short periods, the high clamping force can take its toll over extended use, particularly if you have a larger head or wear glasses. On the upside, the 46 hours of battery life should get you through a layover-filled international itinerary on a single charge.
Stable fit
Long, 46-hour battery life
Poor noise isolation performance
Leaks a fair amount of audio.
The Fractal Scape is adequate for office work. Its excellent mic recording quality and noise handling are strong assets for those who take a lot of meetings and those who take calls within a bullpen-like environment with lots of ambient noise. Unfortunately, its poor noise isolation performance means that, while your voice might be well-separated from its background, you'll struggle to make out what's being said on the other end in busy environments. There's very little attenuation of bass and mid-range sounds, so you'll be at the mercy of scraping chairs and office gossip. Its memory foam ear padding makes for a comfortable feel over the ears, but the high clamping force might apply some pressure on your head over time, especially if you have a larger head or wear glasses.
Great boom mic, with a secondary integrated mic
Long, 46-hour battery life
Poor noise isolation performance
Leaks a fair amount of audio.
The Fractal Scape is a good choice for wireless gaming. It offers a decently comfortable fit, courtesy of its memory foam earpads and cloth covering, though the high clamping force can put excess pressure on larger heads or glasses-wearers over extended gaming sessions. The 2.4 GHz wireless connection via the dongle offers a no-nonsense, low-latency performance, supplemented by Bluetooth support (though they can't be used simultaneously). The V-shaped sound profile offers plenty of excitement with game audio, emphasizing explosions and soaring string soundtracks alike. That said, the real show-stealer is the detachable boom mic, which captures your voice in a very detailed, natural way while separating it from busy backdrops. 46 hours of battery life also means this headset can be separated from its charging dock for a whole weekend.
Great boom mic, with a secondary integrated mic
5-band parametric EQ with presets.
Poor noise isolation performance
The Fractal Scape is good for wired gaming. It connects via a USB-A to USB-C cable for low-latency playback, and you'll have full mic and audio support. Its V-shaped sound profile injects some excitement into soundtracks and in-game audio, adding a visceral quality to ground-shaking sub-bass SFX while rendering sword clashes with some extra zing. While the combination of memory foam earpads and their cloth covering makes for a comfortable sensation on the ears, the strong clamping force can cause some discomfort over extended wear, especially if you have a larger head. The detachable boom mic does an excellent job of rendering your voice naturally, whether you're in a game lobby or Discord chat, and can even separate your voice from loud background noises.
Great boom mic, with a secondary integrated mic
5-band parametric EQ with presets.
Poor noise isolation performance
The Fractal Scape is a good choice for audio reproduction accuracy. The frequency response mostly follows the V-shaped sound profile, with only subtle deviations in the mid and treble ranges. It's a response that's well-suited to both first-person shooters and single-player storyline games, as well as dynamic genres like pop and rock. The L/R drivers are well-matched in frequency and amplitude, resulting in an even stereo image. Although there are some phase imbalances, they're nearly impossible to hear with everyday content. Other objective metrics, such as group delay and harmonic distortion, fall within acceptable values.
The Fractal Scape offers very little attenuation of external sounds. It lacks an ANC system, relying instead on its closed-back design to passively isolate you from your surroundings. Unfortunately, this doesn't amount to much: it can take some of the sting out of whirring PC fans, but it won't shield you from an active flightpath overhead or a busy street outside your window. This headset also leaks a fair bit, so be aware that others around you will be able to hear your audio at louder volumes.
The Fractal Scape has an excellent microphone performance. The detachable boom mic renders your voice clearly; there's plenty of mid-range detail without the bass or treble roll-off you often see with headset microphones. It also does an amazing job of separating your voice from its background, even in the face of loud, sudden noises that can often obfuscate voices. Should you want to detach the boom mic for a more casual look, the beam-forming integrated mic can also do a job in its stead.
The Fractal Scape has decent frequency response consistency. The design of the ear cups, coupled with the high clamping force, means that the seal can easily be disrupted by the arms of glasses or thick, long locks of hair. As a result, you might experience some deviations in bass delivery if you have glasses with thick arms or long hair, though the degree to which this range is affected isn't as drastic as with other headphones. Either way, we recommend taking the time to adjust them on your head to achieve an optimal seal.
Performance Usages
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Fractal Scape comes in two color variants: 'Light' (an all-white color way) and 'Dark' (an all-black color way). We've taken a picture of its label for you to see. If you encounter another variant of this headset, please let us know in the comments, and we'll update our review.
Popular Headphones Comparisons
The Fractal Scape is a closed-back, over-ear gaming headset. It's positioned within the hotly contested mid-range gaming headset market, where it faces stiff competition from established manufacturers like SteelSeries, Astro, and Razer. Its clean, minimal aesthetic (ironically) helps it stand out from a crowd of adversaries with flashier color schemes and bold accents. It offers a comparable feature set to the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7, although the Fractal boasts a longer battery life and a higher-quality mic. Both headsets offer a similarly excited sound for a similar price, but Xbox owners will appreciate that the SteelSeries has a console-specific variant. If you're wont to game in noisier environments, the Razer BlackShark V3 Pro features a decent ANC system that attenuates more external noise than the Fractal. It also features a more balanced sound, along with a mammoth 70-hour battery life, but its audio delivery is more susceptible to inconsistencies, particularly if you wear glasses.
If you want to check out more headset recommendations, take a look at our best gaming headsets, the best wireless gaming headsets, and the best PS5 gaming headsets.
The Audeze Maxwell is a better gaming headset than the Fractal Scape and is worth the additional outlay if you can afford it. It has better cross-console compatibility, given that the Fractal won't work with Xbox consoles, and it's also better-built with a longer 77-hour battery life. On top of this, it has a more balanced default sound and supports the LDAC codec for high-bitrate audio streaming. While these are all feathers to its cap, the Fractal does have a better mic recording quality and surpasses the Audeze in a few technical aspects that will be important to some users. The Audeze's frequency response consistency is negatively impacted by the headband's limited range of adjustment. As a result, it can be difficult to achieve a good fit with solid L/R channel alignment, especially if you wear glasses or have long hair.
The Logitech G PRO X 2 LIGHTSPEED Wireless and the Fractal Scape are both mid-range wireless gaming headsets with wired capabilities. The Logitech has broader console compatibility as it can be used with Xbox family consoles, in addition to PlayStation and PC support. It also has over double the Fractal's battery life, with a whopping 97 hours. It's more comfortable than the Fractal over longer gaming sessions as well. Still, there's plenty going for the Fractal, especially if you value mic quality: its detachable boom mic is among the best we've tested and features great noise handling. It also has better frequency response consistency and supports Bluetooth multi-device pairing. If you need isolation from your surroundings to focus, neither of these is a great fit, though, as they both struggle to attenuate external noise.
The Razer BlackShark V3 Pro and the Fractal Scape are similarly spec'd, mid-range gaming headsets with slightly different strengths. The Razer boasts a more balanced sound profile, a decent ANC system, and a gargantuan, almost 70-hour battery life. It's also a bit more comfortable for long gaming sessions, and the Synapse companion software allows for more in-depth customization. That said, the Fractal features a higher quality microphone with better noise handling, which can give it an edge if you need a headset for both gaming and calling. It's also less susceptible to audio delivery issues related to fit, and can be more forgiving if you wear glasses in particular.
The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 and the Fractal Scape offer comparable feature sets at similar price points, so choosing between them comes down to smaller factors. The Fractal boasts a longer battery life, improved frequency response consistency, and superior microphone recording quality. The detachable boom mic can also effectively separate your voice from its background, which is great for gaming in noisier environments. The Fractal has a more excited, V-shaped sound profile, though, which could be fatiguing over longer sessions compared to the SteelSeries' warm sound. In a similar vein, the Fractal's high clamping force means the SteelSeries will likely be more comfortable for gaming marathons. The SteelSeries also has a more robust companion app and comes in an Xbox-specific variant, while the Fractal foregoes Xbox compatibility entirely.
Test Results
The Fractal Scape has a V-shaped sound profile that scoops the mids and exaggerates the lows and highs relative to our target curve. As with other headsets that support multiple connection types, there's some deviation in the frequency response depending on how you choose to connect.
You can also toggle between three different EQ presets, though these don't elicit radically different sound profiles. If you're looking to apply more granular changes, there's a parametric EQ present in the companion app, though you're limited to five bands.
This headset has decent frequency response consistency. It features a curved hinge design that applies more pressure than usual on the hinge joint, meaning small movements of the headset on your head can result in channel imbalance. We recommend taking the time to achieve a solid fit and properly align the drivers.
The combination of soft earcup padding and a relatively high clamping force means that the arms of glasses or strands of long hair can disrupt the seal, resulting in inconsistencies in bass delivery. While it won't make a drastic difference, it's worth adjusting the fit on your head to ensure you get a good seal.
The Fractal Scape has impressive bass compliance to our target curve. The range is slightly overemphasized as a whole, resulting in some extra boom and thump in your audio. This ensures explosions and rumbles sound visceral and vivid without eclipsing other frequency bands.
The mid-range compliance is excellent. This range is mostly flush with our target curve, resulting in great dialogue clarity and detailed lead instrument reproduction. A small boost in the low-mids lends some body to snare drums and higher-pitched toms.
The treble compliance is satisfactory. This range is generally overemphasized relative to our target, but there's a narrow yet steep dip between the low and mid-treble that can cause certain sibilants to sound a little dull. Still, bright environmental sound effects, like the metallic sound of high-speed ziplines in ARC Raiders, can verge on being piercing.
The peaks and dips performance is good. This headset's frequency response generally stays true to its V-shaped sound profile, with some deviations in the treble that can alter the timbre of sibilants.
The Fractal Scape's L/R drivers are generally well-matched, resulting in a mostly even stereo image. They're particularly well-aligned when it comes to amplitude and frequency response, where minor deviations in the mid and treble range aren't audible with regular content. While our tests indicate some phase mismatches throughout the mid-range, we weren't able to hear this during everyday use either.
The group delay performance is great, and it falls under the audibility threshold across the entire frequency range. This means kick drums' fundamental frequencies sound tight and well-defined, with snappy transients, while treble range reproduction is transparent.
This headset's PRTF response is disappointing. It doesn't have much in common with the response of an angled reference speaker, so the sound isn't particularly immersive or wide.
The Fractal Scape has an excellent harmonic distortion performance, with no audible coloration to your audio at regular listening levels. However, we weren't able to get it to output 104dB/SPL for this test, so measurements were collected at 98dB/SPL instead.
It's worth noting that we weren't able to output much more than 97.4 dB/SPL during testing, despite adjusting level and gain settings. This should still be enough volume for the majority of people (and for safe listening), but it's significantly lower than most other wireless headsets.
This headset is battery-powered and doesn't require an amp to be driven using a wired connection.
These are the settings used to test the Fractal Scape. Our results are only valid when you use the headset in this configuration.
The Fractal Scape is the first gaming headset from the Swedish manufacturer, and it sports an aesthetic that's unmistakably Scandinavian. It features a closed-back design, with soft, cloth-covered earpads, metallic hinge accents, and a detachable boom mic. There are a lot of clean lines and soft contours, particularly with the unique hinge design, with its angled yokes. It's available in monochromatic 'Light' (white) and 'Dark' (black) color ways. The 'Dark' model we tested features a semi-gloss finish with black earpad cloth.
This headset is decently comfortable, although comfort can depend on several factors. The memory foam padding used for the ear cups is soft and plush, and while the padding on the underside of the headband is similar, it doesn't totally keep the headband from digging into your crown over time. This tightness on the head is exacerbated by the headset's high clamping force, which can exert pressure on your temples too via the ear cups. It's perfectly manageable for shorter listening sessions, but you may experience some discomfort during longer gaming sessions, especially if you have long hair or wear glasses. On the bright side, these headphones are quite lightweight and feature a smooth sliding mechanism for easy adjustment.
The controls are located across both earcups, giving you access to a wide range of functions and parameters. The control scheme itself is straightforward and intuitive, with easily identifiable buttons and sliders. There's a multi-directional 'crown' feature that handles all playback controls, including volume adjustment (via an infinite scroll wheel). There's also a slider that allows you to toggle between different connection types.
The buttons themselves are tactile and clicky, but the crown, while smooth in its rotation, offers no feedback for max/minimum volume. Pressing it can also result in some stickiness when adjusting the playback controls. The EQ preset button features an LED light to indicate which preset is selected, but the same treatment isn't given to the mic mute/unmute button, so it's hard to tell whether it's enabled or disabled. The power button can also be a little tricky to locate, due to its smaller size and location directly under the ear cup.
As with most over-ear gaming headsets, the Fractal Scape isn't very portable. The ear cups don't fold flat either, which means they'll take up a lot of space if tucked into a bag or backpack.
The Fractal Scape has a good build quality despite lacking an IP rating (though this is the case for most gaming headsets). Most of the components are made of plastic, but everything feels relatively sturdy. The ear cups use a mixture of cloth, memory foam, and plastic and are connected to the rest of the frame via angled yokes. While this design is certainly eye-catching, it does put some extra strain on the hinges. Given that the ear cups don't fold flat and the hinges have a limited range of motion overall, this can put a lot of stress on this particular juncture. The headband sports a similar cloth padding to the ear cups, but the thickness of the padding doesn't seem sufficient to counteract the headset's clamping force. There's also an RGB LED strip located behind the earpads that flashes to indicate Bluetooth pairing status.
The included charging dock is sleek and feels solidly constructed, too. You can plug in the dongle at the bottom of the dock to connect to a PC via USB.
This headset is on the more stable side, particularly compared to other competitors like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite. One positive effect of the high clamping force is that the headset stays in place during moderate head movements. While it'll stay in place during regular gameplay, we can't guarantee a Silent Hill jump scare won't displace it from your head.
- Fractal Scape gaming headset
- User Guide
- USB-A to USB-C cable (1.5 m/5.1 ft)
- Boom mic
- USB dongle
The Fractal Scape has a poor noise isolation performance, which is unsurprising given that it lacks an ANC system. The closed-back design is able to provide some passive isolation against higher-pitched noises, like the whirr of your PC fan or fridge hum, but it does very little to block out lower-pitched noises.
The headset does a bad job of isolating you from common scenarios. It fares best when it comes to isolating you from the honks and whooshes of a busy street. However, that's not to say it excels in all aspects, as most of this noise is still audible. It really struggles to provide any relief from the roar of an airplane engine, leaving you at the mercy of almost all the environmental noise in an aircraft cabin.
This headset has an okay leakage performance. While most people won't choose to wear it out of the house, doing so will require you to keep the volume on the quieter side, lest your audio bother those in your immediate vicinity.
This headset features both a detachable boom mic as well as an integrated beam-forming mic.
This boom mic's recording quality is impressive. Your voice sounds smooth and natural to whoever's on the other end. While our test results were obtained using the dongle and detachable boom mic, the frequency response will vary depending on a few things, like whether the noise gate is enabled. You'll also hear some changes over Bluetooth and USB, and naturally, when you switch to the internal mic, you'll also experience changes to the mic quality over both Bluetooth and USB.
The boom mic's ability to reject external noise is excellent. It does a great job of pushing background noise to the back of the mix when you're taking calls in a moderately busy environment, like a cafe. It does a similarly amazing job at attenuating louder, sudden sounds, like a passing train, reducing the screech while keeping the focus on your voice.
As part of the testing process, we also took a few recordings of the mic with the noise gate feature enabled. You can check them out below if you're curious:
With the boom mic, connected via the dongle
With the boom mic, connected via Bluetooth
Internal mic, connected via Bluetooth
Boom mic, connected via USB
Internal mic, connected via USB
This headset has a good battery life performance. While it can't quite compete with battery endurance heavyweights, like the Audeze Maxwell with its 77 hours of continuous battery life, it still lasts a respectable 46 hours off a single charge. More than enough for an extended gaming marathon, or a couple of days away from the dock. Enabling the LED lights depletes the battery at a faster rate, though, reducing the battery life to around 24 hours.
The charging time is on the longer side, at over 3 hours; however, a quick charge feature is advertised to provide four hours of playtime from a single 15-minute charge. Unfortunately, the battery isn't hot-swappable, like the one that comes with the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite.
The AdjustPro companion app is entirely web-based, although it will function offline once you are connected to it. Just be sure to use a Chromium-based web engine, as we noticed it lacks compatibility with others, such as Safari. It's somewhat barebones compared to the companion apps offered by major gaming headset manufacturers, such as SteelSeries and Astro. Still, you can use it to monitor battery levels, adjust the LED lighting, play with the EQ presets and parametric EQ, and adjust mic-related settings, like the sidetone and noise gate. We've recorded a video to guide you through the app's capabilities.
The app also allows you to add custom EQs to the headset via the 'EQ Code System', enabling access through the EQ toggle button on the headset's control interface.
The Fractal Scape comes with a USB-A to USB-C cable for wired connections. Latency is predictably very low when using this connection type.
This headset has amazing Bluetooth connectivity. It supports Bluetooth v5.3 and allows you to connect to two sources simultaneously, although you'll need to manually pause playback on one device to start it on another. It supports Bluetooth LE audio with the LC3 codec, but we were only able to test with the SBC codec. Latency with this connection type is too high for gaming use, but it'll do the job if you just want to listen to music. Unlike other headsets, like the Astro A50 X, you can't play audio from a Bluetooth source at the same time as the dongle (or blend the two via a mix control). You'll need to manually toggle between the two using the dedicated control on the left ear cup.
The Fractal Space has excellent connectivity with its wireless dongle. There's 24 ms of latency when using this connection type, and there's more than enough range to ensure you don't get disconnected if you have to quickly answer the door.
This headset has full compatibility with PCs over its wired USB connection, as well as with its wireless dongle. You'll be able to receive audio and send it via either of the mics.
The Fractal Scape works with PlayStation family consoles via USB or the wireless dongle, offering full audio and mic compatibility. Users online have pointed out that the volume is much lower when using this headset with a PS5, which we were able to verify in testing. We had to max out the volume in both the PlayStation interface and on the headset's volume wheel to achieve a satisfactory volume level. This issue is compounded by the headset's inability to attenuate external noise. One potential fix is to enable 'Audio Focus' and set it to 'Boost Quiet Sounds' in the accessibility settings of the app. While this does boost output, it also introduces quite a bit of compression and sibilance into your mix.
This headset isn't compatible with Xbox consoles. Though you can still technically connect via Bluetooth, latency will be too high to make gaming feasible.
The Fractal Scape comes with a charging dock that doubles as a USB receiver. It's a lot more portable than most docks and features a nifty compartment on the underside for the USB connection. This allows you to connect a USB cable directly to your console and avoid running a cable from your ear cup.
