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by twblalock 1483 days ago
I've never seen a "gaming" headset that is any good.

You will always be better off buying headsets from companies that focus on headsets and headphones, rather than from companies that see headsets as a cheap filler item to sell to people who bought their mice and keyboards and want the blinky lights to sync up.

4 comments

The benefit of a gaming headset over bluetooth is reduced latency. Unless things have changed recently, the difference is very noticable.

The HyperX Cloud (wired) is actually a pretty good headset.

My SteelSeries Arctis 7 headset is awesome. Battery lasts all day, sound quality isnt terrible, no lights other than the microphone mute. USB interface, it presents a "game" and "voice" output to the system and you can control the volume for each with a wheel on the headset.
Same experience here for the last 4 years. Hardware mute with the on-boom LED has been extremely useful.

I will be very sad the day my Arctis 7 dies, as I've learn from friends that the newer iteration has a different wireless receiver which, anecdotally, seems to be far less powerful in terms of range.

For wireless, Bluetooth Headset profile (for bidirectional audio, so mic) only supports mono audio, and at pretty low bitrate too. For me that makes it completely unusable in gaming, where I want both mic, and stereo (positional) audio.
For wired headsets I would probably stay away from "gaming" products indeed, but it was surprisingly difficult to find a good wireless one.

At the risk of turning this into a product recommendation thread, I am very happy with my Astro A50. Hits all the right notes for a wireless headset to wear all day at home - from video chats over coding and gaming to laundry. Doesn't even have blinky lights.