Been trying out my new Steelseries Arctis 7Xes and was asked to give some impressions in the PS5 thread, but it isn't really a PS5 headset (although it is compatible with PS5), so thought it was better off in its own thread.
These are impressing me so far, super-comfortable (as you'd expect from Steelseries), solid build quality, significantly improved audio quality over my Steelseries 1s (I think they are 1s at least), all the controls you need on the headset itself, and a couple of nice quality of life features (there's a red LED in the mic that turns on when its muted, so you have a reminder in the corner of your eye). I'm very pleased with it.
The only thing I'm yet to test is the mic quality (I got loads of complaints about echoing with my 1s, but these have active noise cancelling for the mic, so you'd hope that wouldn't be an issue), I'll update post-FNF.
Pretty much the only complaint that I have is a rather daftly-designed dongle which has a USBC connector on it despite there not being a USBC port on the Xbox itself. The solution to this comes in the box in the form of an adaptor, an adaptor with a metre long cord on it. It's not the end of the world, it gets plugged in, hidden behind the console and quickly forgotten about, but it still seems a weird choice. Apparently the dongle will plug directly into the PS5, but it's T-shaped, so will block your other USB port, but don't worry, you can just dangle it onto the floor using the insanely long cable.
Pending chat tests at the end of the week, I'd happily recommend these to anyone looking for a wireless headset, particularly if you want to use it across pretty much anything you can play games on.
I've got a set of the arctis x9s and they are also very good. Sound quality is great and being able to pair them with my phone and xbox at the same time is pretty impressive (if so far un-utilised). They are considerably better than my wired Turtle Beach headphones I had previously in every way.
Sounds promising Yoss, I'll be upgrading from wired 1p's eventually so I have high hopes for these. Steel series have been touted as having the best mic so hopefully your echoing problems will be no more.
I've still got my TB XO40s, which I don't think they make anymore and I absolutely love them. Yes, they're not true wireless but they were my first ever proper headset and completely changed both gaming and film/TV watching for me. I won't replace them until they need replacing, but SS should like the way to go.
Update on mic, it works great, but apparently the active noise cancelling isn’t quite good enough to deal with shaking up a cocktail.
It did prove practically impossible to find a balance between listening to music and hearing everyone’s voices, but I don’t know if that’s the fault of the headset or just the fact that everyone tends to come through at a different volume. Microsoft should whack a compressor into the console that they run voice commands through.
Bumped for Liv. There's not much in here at the moment for cheap headsets so hopefully some badgers will leave a comment if they have a cheap headset to recommend.
Both me and Yoss have those arctis 1p's that are about £45/£50. I like em, no complaints and they don't look gamey either.
On a more expensive tip, the new Microsoft headset is £95, but Amazon are doing it for £85. Not often you get a discount on hardware before it’s even on the shelves.
i'm not recommending it at this stage as not really used it for voice chat and just had a brief test on xbox. i'm also not an audio person so can't really compare the sound quality (as much as this is a cheap headset, it's also the most i've ever spent on headphones). however they are light and seemed quite comfortable, and i could hear everything i'd expect to when playing with them on.
i got it cos it comes with two detachable leads to connect - one a 3.5mm jack and the other a usb one. i wanted this so i could use it on xbox and pc (where usb is preferred). it does have a bit of a 'gamer' style with the glowing purple stripes on the side which i would have preferred not to have, but they only light up if you're using the usb connector anyway.
it has volume and mute button on the ear piece itself, which prob isn't a big issue generally but the mute button in particular was fiddly and i think the mic will pick up the scratching noises as you fumble around for the button...so if you want to regularly (and discreetly) mute/unmute then it may not be the best.
the mic is detachable too for if you want to game with just headset at times.