SteelSeries - Pro Wireless

If you can find an Arctic Steel Series Wireless Pro then that is my vote. I’ve ran them for 6 years now. I used to see them on eBay as open box for $150. https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Arctis-Wireless-Headset-playstation-4/dp/B079YBKT3H Edit: downvotes from the seinnheiser crowd I’m sure lol

i just bought an arctis pro for the second time, my first one lasted 5 years of very heavy use. Its only downside IMO is that its a little heavy. Other than that its been a great headset and worth the $200 [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079YBKT3H](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079YBKT3H)

By that logic, the $379 Pro's which are inferior to these in both sound signature, microphone & build quality isn't worth the price. But they are rated as probably Top 3 in Gaming headphones. You have to look at it in the entire package. Software + build quality + feature set + sound performance + mic performance. The Pro's are already top 3 in this regard. There are other headphoens slightly cheaper that may deliver certain things better and vice versa. Many brands have better mics, worse sound signature. Some have better sound signature and worse mics. Some can't do crap for software and EQ control. Then you have Audiophile cans that you then need to buy seperate products to take advatange of and then overall can cost more than the gaming headset. Like it or not, sometimes spending a little bit of a premium for convenience and having a good experience in each category makes sense. I don't want 50 things on my desk just to hear 5% better. I don't want a microphone on my desk either, and want it attached to my mic. I also want a wireless headset. I also don't want to spend hours trying to EQ my games and want something that just sounds a bit more immersive out of the box by clicking a button. I also like to keep all of my software not so bloated with 50 different products. I also like higher build quality and decent mics. That's where the Nova Pro's came in, and they are easily top 3 in most categories outside of audiophile specific devices. Enters the Elites which is better than them by a good margin in each of those categories. With your logic, don't ever fly direct on an airplane... how dare you spend more money for convenience!

Is he a big audiophile? That can drastically change the answer and increase the cost by quite a lot. If he's just looking to game online, SteelSeries has some great headsets for like less than half of your budget. I think I paid $200 or so for my Nova set. I had a Pro (9, I think) that cost about as much and I liked it more, but it broke. But I think that was my own doing. 99% of free time spent in discord calls with a partner who spent 80% of our time belittling me wore me down enough to throw it a handful of times. The SteelSeries app is kind of hit and miss. Sometimes you have to open it and manually select the headset, but not super often. I find that it doesn't happen much if you wait for the PC to fully boot before turning the headset on. It's great for grabbing clips though and has a lot of EQ settings.

Ok so I’ll answer the actual question here as I have a bit of experience of high end non gamer and gamer. So on my main set up I use a shure mv7 mic and Sennheiser 800hd with a dac/amp. It’s wired of course and yes the soundstage is excellent. Loads of times I’ve taken them off thinking someone was in the apartment and it was actually a sound in game… some sounds I didn’t know even existed in the game. That’s considered top tier high end and I have it for content creation and gaming. However, prior to that I had the steel series pro wireless (it’s the elite model). Honestly, they were just “ok” and for the money I spent, very disappointing in the sound department. For the money, not worth it at all. The battery swapping was neat, but I think ultimately a gimmick. So for my current gaming laptop that’s set up in the living room I used the Bose QC45 (basically the Bose Ultra in today’s money). You can grab them on sale for like $299. Now these sound great. Great ANC and solid experience and perfect for travelling too. But here’s the issue people forget to mention… if you are connecting wirelessly via Bluetooth, then you’re going get latency, and if you connect the internal mic on top via Bluetooth, then the sound actually changes to that “tin” effect as Bluetooth is unable to do the input and downput stream effectively (I know someone is going to argue the technical aspect here and I hope they do because I know I have that wrong, but Google many of these non gamer headsets over Bluetooth and you’re going to get loads of examples of how the mic fucks it unless you got into a wired connection/seperae mic situation). If that set up works for you then great, if not then you’re ironically back to gamer headsets where many come with a dedicated 2.4ghz dongle for windows/cinsole connection that give a direct signal feed, effectively reducing your latency to almost zero. They just connect with zero issues. So ironically I’m now back on “gamer” headphones for my laptop. I did my research and went for the Corsair Virtuoso MAX. Not something you see in lists that much I know but they are truly excellent… for the price. The issue is they released at $330 or so and tried to put themselves in the high tier gaming bracket with the Audeze and Steelseries. However, I picked some up this week for $199 on sale and at that price I think they are a steal. I can’t believe the sound quality of them wirelessly, and for sure the dedicated dingle makes them better for gaming than my Bose QC headphones that connected via Bluetooth (and sound as good as my Bose). I went Corsair as I already had a high end gaming pair in steelseries and they were crap. And I read the Audeze literally fail after a year from so many Reddit posts. No idea how the corsair will hold up, but the build quality is also great with a fantastic mic boom. I wouldn’t only get them at the $199 sale price though. No way the $330 price. So as other says: - high end wired non gamer headset + mic is gold standard but pricey and not always feasible - if unable to do then something like a Bose/Sonos style headset, but then be real careful on how it’s connected as Bluetooth can bring its own problems so avoid unless wired. - if you do have to connect wirelessly and have a smaller budget, then avoid the expensive gaming headsets and go mid-tier with a sale like the Corsair virtuoso max, which for me sound just as good, if not better than some of the so called high end gaming headsets. Good luck!

Idk about elites, but I bought Pros due to the fact of the interchangeable battery. I haven't found any other headphones with this feature.

I share your pain. I still feel like I got the wind knocked out of me. Why on earth do the midrange devices get companion app support but the Pro and Pro Wireless don't? All I want is Sonar on Xbox

I use SteelSeries Pro and love them. Little expensive though.

There are many options better than the Steel series pro. Those aren’t great, and the mic sounds awful

Steelseries 7P+ or Pro, don't touch the Sense 3D with a barge pole it'll eventually fail for build quality.