Gaming Headphones 2026: Twenty Models Ranked

On This Page

1. Start Here: The Shortlist
2. Cans Or A Headset: Choose Your Side First
3. What The Grades Mean
4. Part One: Ten Headphones Without A Microphone
5. Part Two: Ten Headsets With A Microphone
6. Open-Back Or Closed-Back
7. Impedance, Sensitivity, And What Your PC Can Drive
8. Adding A Microphone To Bare Headphones
9. Every Pick Side By Side
10. The One-Paragraph Version

A “best gaming headset” list usually opens with a category error. It lines up a $50 wired headset beside a $330 wireless planar flagship, ranks them together, and finishes with a score out of ten, as though one number could settle a question nobody asked.

Those two products are not rivals. They are answers to different questions.

If the question is what sounds better, the answer is almost always a plain pair of headphones: nothing wireless, nothing attached, no software in the signal path. The entire budget goes into drivers and a frame, which is why an inexpensive open-back pair can place sounds more precisely than a headset costing twice as much. That has been true for years and it has not changed.

If the question is what you actually want to live with, a bare headphone leaves voice chat unsolved. A headset handles it in the same box, and the current good ones are genuinely good rather than merely convenient.

So this is two guides in one. The first ten entries have no microphone at all. The second ten have one built in. Every entry gets a single grade, and the grade is about one thing only: how it behaves in a game. Everything here assumes a desktop or laptop on the other end of the cable, so the driving notes are written for a PC rather than a phone. Prices are approximate figures from the time of writing, and this category moves constantly, so check the current number before committing. If the listening side of this interests you more than the shopping side, there is plenty of it under posts.

Start Here: The Shortlist

The guide compressed into ten lines, for anyone who wants the answer before the reasoning.

• Sennheiser HD 560S, roughly $188 — the headphone to buy if you already own a microphone. The most accurate all-rounder here.
• HiFiMan Edition XS, roughly $209 — the largest stage and the most detail, provided you amplify it and can carry the weight.
• Philips SHP9500, roughly $90 — the cheapest bare headphone worth owning, and the easiest to drive on this list.
• Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO, roughly $200 — the pick when the room is loud and the outside world needs keeping out.
• SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless, roughly $229 — the most complete headset: base station, swappable batteries, dual wireless.
• Audeze Maxwell 2, roughly $329 — the best sound of any headset here, and the heaviest to wear.
• ASUS ROG Kithara, roughly $248 — open-back planar sound with a boom microphone attached.
• Razer BlackShark V2 Pro, roughly $84 — the value pick: yesterday’s flagship at a fraction of what it once cost.
• HyperX Cloud III, roughly $43 — the cheapest headset here that is worth the money.
• Beyerdynamic TYGR 300 R, roughly $160 — the bare headphone that needs no amplifier and no fuss.

Cans Or A Headset: Choose Your Side First

Five honest answers to five questions will narrow this guide down further than any review can. Work through them before you scroll any further.

• Have you already got a microphone you are happy with? Then buy a bare headphone and put the whole budget into sound. You get roughly twice the audio quality for the same money, and the single weakness of bare headphones is already covered.
• Is the room you play in shared or loud? An open-back pair lets sound move in both directions. Everyone around you hears the game, and you hear everything around you. In that situation, pick a closed design or a headset.
• Do you need to be wireless? That means a headset. Nobody makes a serious open-back wireless headphone, and a cable avoids the whole problem set anyway: nothing to charge, nothing to compress, no latency.
• Will you run an amplifier or a DAC? This decides whether some of the best-value entries in the first half are usable for you at all. One entry here genuinely needs an amplifier, and two more lose a great deal without one.
• Will it be your only pair? If it also has to travel, sit in an office or survive a train, buy closed or buy a headset. Open-back headphones belong in one quiet room.

Compressed to a sentence: a microphone plus a quiet room makes a bare headphone the better buy, and without those two things a headset earns its premium on convenience alone.

What The Grades Mean

Every entry carries one grade, awarded for gaming and for nothing else. A headphone that flatters music but smears a busy fight does not score well here, however pleasant it is to listen to.

What earns the top grade is specific. Bass that stays controlled instead of swelling upward into the midrange. A lower midrange clear enough that small details have room to exist. Imaging sharp enough that a sound has one obvious place, and stable when several arrive together. Treble that resolves fine detail without turning painful across a long evening. Sets tuned for excitement often fail here, because excitement is usually mid-bass, and mid-bass is what buries everything sitting above it.

• S — among the best in this list for the money.
• A — does the job well, with one clear limitation.
• B — fine, but something else here manages the same task for less or better.
• C — avoid. Nothing in this guide earned one.

Part One: Ten Headphones Without A Microphone

There is no microphone anywhere in this half. Solving that is cheap and quick, and the options are set out further down under Adding A Microphone To Bare Headphones.

Power requirements here are all over the place, so read the impedance section before choosing anything. Whether a pair plays happily from a motherboard jack or sulks until it is given an amplifier is decided by two numbers, and getting them wrong is the usual reason a well-reviewed headphone gets sent back.

Each entry opens with the grade, an approximate price, the design and the two figures that matter, followed by the verdict in a single line. Read that line, decide whether the rest applies to you, and move on. Nothing in this half is graded C, which means none of it is a trap; these grades rank the entries against each other, not against everything else on the market.

Sennheiser HD 560S

— S, Roughly $188, Open-Back Dynamic, 120Ω, 110 dB, 240 G.

Read The Review

The HD 560S is an open-back dynamic headphone for a player who would rather hear the game than a flattering version of it. Its tuning sits close to neutral, with nothing lifted to mask anything else, so quiet cues are not fighting a boosted region for space; a distant reload or a player shifting behind cover arrives at the level it was mixed at. Imaging is precise and stable as sounds move, and the angled drivers fire into the ear and push the stage outward, which helps you judge front-to-back distance rather than left and right alone. Detail is strong without sounding sharpened. Comfort is a real part of the case: 240 g is light, the clamp is gentle, and long sessions pass without a hotspot building. The 1.8 m cable detaches, and the 3.5 mm plug can take a screw-on adapter for a 6.35 mm socket. At 120 ohm and 110 dB it reaches volume from anything you plug it into, with no equipment hurdle before you start.

Compromises: the bass is accurate rather than exciting, so explosions and engines read as correct instead of weighty, and anyone expecting the feel of a sealed design will call the low end lean. It gets loud from a controller, a phone or a motherboard, but it does not give its best there; a proper source tightens it and adds control, so this headphone has a habit of pulling extra gear into the budget. The build also shows where the money did not go: the frame is plastic and plain, and nothing about holding it suggests its price, even though the tuning and drivers do. Practical note: it is fully open and leaks in both directions, so anyone nearby will hear what you are playing and you will hear them in return; that suits a quiet, private setup far better than a shared one.

HiFiMan Edition XS

— S, Planar Magnetic And Open-Back, 18Ω, 92 dB, 405 G, Roughly $209.

Read The Review

This is the most capable headphone in this half of the list, and the reason is the driver rather than the tuning. A planar diaphragm is moved across its whole area rather than pushed from one spot, which gives fast, even transients and pulls overlapping sounds apart rather than blurring them into one mass, so a busy fight stays legible instead of turning into noise. Against the Sundara it offers a larger stage in every dimension, more detail, deeper bass and more transparency, and that combination is what makes it such a good tool for building a mental map of a space you cannot see. You can follow one player’s movement through a doorway while gunfire, footsteps and callouts continue elsewhere. If you want the clearest window into a mix that this group can give, this is the one to hear.

Compromises: at 405 g it is the heaviest set here, and the large cups combined with light clamping force push that weight onto the top of your head rather than spreading it around your ears, so long sessions slowly build pressure. It is also power-hungry despite the low 18 ohm figure, because sensitivity is only 92 dB; budget for an amplifier rather than relying on a motherboard or a controller, and treat that as part of the purchase price rather than an optional refinement. Being open, it leaks a great deal, so it is a poor fit for a shared room or for a microphone that might pick up what you are listening to. Practical note: give it a decent source and the bass, control and separation are all there; give it a weak one and you will blame the headphone for something the jack did.

HiFiMan Sundara

— S, Planar Magnetic And Open-Back, 37Ω, 372 G, Roughly $179.

Read The Review

The Sundara is the standard first serious planar headphone, and it earns that position by doing the fundamentals well rather than chasing an effect. What you get is the quickness and grip a planar driver brings, a roomy and unforced presentation, and a frame that feels more expensive than it has any right to. It is lighter than the Edition XS, and the suspension headband with moderate clamp spreads the load so there is no single hotspot pressing on your head, which makes it the more liveable of the two HiFiMan models here. You can wear it through a long evening without thinking about it, and that matters as much as any specification once you are several matches in. Detail is plentiful, effects and instruments are easy to tell apart, and the open presentation keeps the stage wide and unforced rather than pushed forward. For a first step into planar headphones, this is the sensible and comfortable default, and it is hard to be disappointed by it.

Compromises: it does not match the Edition XS for stage size or imaging precision, so sounds are placed slightly less exactly and the space feels a little smaller around you. At 37 ohm it wants more drive voltage than the Edition XS, which sounds contradictory until you remember that impedance and sensitivity measure different things; in practice it rewards a proper DAC or amplifier, and from a plain motherboard jack it can sound flat and constrained. The open frame leaks freely, so it belongs in a quiet room rather than next to other people. Practical note: it is also the model most likely to make you want the next upgrade, since planar drivers are hard to give up once heard.

Beyerdynamic DT 900 PRO X

— A, Roughly $320, Open-Back, 48 Ohm, 100 dB, 250 G.

Read The Review

If you want the headphone most likely to still be working in several years, this is the pick. Almost everything that wears out can be replaced, from the pads to the cable and the headband parts, so a failure becomes a repair rather than a replacement. The velour pads stay comfortable over long stretches, and at 250 g the light frame does not press hard, so nothing about it asks for attention while you play. At 48 ohm and 100 dB it runs straight from a motherboard, which keeps a whole setup simple and removes a box from your desk. In a game you get strong detail and a wide stage: directional information is clear, the image does not feel boxed in, and the open design keeps distance cues readable. It is a headphone you stop worrying about, which for many players is worth more than the last degree of refinement.

Compromises: price. At roughly $320 it costs more than the HD 560S, which places sounds just as accurately, and more than the Edition XS, which is the stronger performer on technical grounds. What you are paying for is the frame and the replaceable parts, not a hidden advantage in sound, and if your priority is the most information per pound then the money is better spent elsewhere in this list. If your priority is owning one headphone for years and fixing it when it wears, the calculation changes completely and the price starts to look reasonable. It remains an open design, so it leaks and isolates nothing at all. Practical note: judge it on build and longevity rather than on beating cheaper rivals, and it makes sense; expect it to sound merely good rather than revelatory.

Beyerdynamic DT 990 PRO

— A, Roughly $160, Open-Back, 250 Ohm, 96 dB.

Read The Review

The DT 990 PRO is a long-standing studio open-back, and that history shows in the way it presents sound. Its treble-forward tuning deliberately pushes small sounds to the front, so rustles, distant footsteps, reloads and the click of a weapon being readied sit forward where you can examine them carefully instead of hunting for them in a crowded mix. The stage is wide, which helps you separate two players moving in different directions at once. For a player who wants to pick a sound apart rather than simply hear it, that emphasis is a feature rather than a fault, and it is why the model has stayed in use for so long in studios and on desks alike. It is a tool with a strong opinion about what matters in a mix, and if you share that opinion it will feel like it was made for you.

Compromises: bright and forward becomes tiring. If you are sensitive up top, the same emphasis that makes small cues easy to spot will wear on you across a long session, and you will find yourself turning the volume down rather than turning it up. The cable is fixed and coiled, so there is no swapping it later if it fails or if you want a different length. At 250 ohm a real amplifier is required, and a motherboard will not do it justice, so treat the amplifier as part of the price rather than an optional extra; that changes the value calculation against rivals here and should be counted honestly before you buy. It is open, so it isolates nothing at all. Bought with those terms understood, though, it exposes detail at a price few others in this group approach.

Beyerdynamic TYGR 300 R

— A, Roughly $160, Open-Back, 32 Ohm, 290 G.

Read The Review

The TYGR 300 R is the gaming-tuned sibling of the studio models, and it is built for the player who does not want to think about a chain of equipment before every session. At 32 ohm it is happy straight off a motherboard, so it works on a desk setup, a laptop or a controller without any extra box. Its extra low end gives explosions real body, which makes action land with weight rather than as a flat crack, and plenty of players find that far more satisfying to spend an evening with than a technically cleaner but thinner presentation. The light frame and the large velour pads keep it comfortable for hours at a time. It is the practical choice among these Beyerdynamic models for someone who wants one headphone, no complications and a sound that flatters the games they actually play.

Compromises: the DT 990 PRO shows you more fine detail, and beside the HD 560S, which costs about the same, this one sounds coarser, so the tuning stays friendly rather than revealing. The extra bass slightly muddies the lower midrange, which is exactly the region where some cues live, so you trade a little separation for a little impact and should decide which you value more. The cable is fixed and short at 1.6 m, which may not reach comfortably around a desk or to a rear panel. Despite the gaming branding there is no microphone in the box, so budget for a separate one. Practical note: it is worth owning for what it is, an easy, forgiving, comfortable headphone, but it is not the one to choose if your priority is hearing everything.

Audio-Technica ATH-AD700X

— A, Roughly $140, Open-Back, 38 Ohm, 100 dB.

Read The Review

The ATH-AD700X has been a favourite for positional clarity for years, and the reason is its enormous, airy stage. Sounds arrive from well outside your head, which makes direction and distance easier to read, and quiet movement does not get swallowed by the rest of the mix. At 38 ohm and 100 dB it is easy to drive from a motherboard, so no amplifier is needed and there is nothing to add to the cost of getting started. The wing headband is the distinctive part of the design: it floats the weight off the top of your head rather than resting a band on it, and for many players that is genuinely comfortable across a long evening of play. It is light, open and unobtrusive, and it has stayed in circulation for so long because that combination continues to work.

Compromises: it is light on bass. Gunfire and explosions carry less weight than they do on more bass-forward sets, so an action game built on impact can feel oddly polite, and you may find yourself wanting more low end than the headphone is willing to give. The build is basic plastic with thin pads, so it does not feel expensive in the hand and the pads may need replacing sooner than you would like. The wing headband divides people: it floats weight off the crown, but on some heads it creates pressure points instead of relieving them, so try before committing if you can. Practical note: the stage is wide but not always exactly mapped, so some sounds feel large rather than precisely placed, and clarity of direction is a better reason to buy it than pinpoint accuracy.

HiFiMan HE400se

— A, Planar Magnetic And Open-Back, 32Ω, 91 dB, Roughly $109.

Read The Review

This is the cheapest way into planar magnetic headphones, and it does not feel like much of a compromise on sound. Detail and speed are strong for the money: overlapping sounds stay separate, transients land cleanly, and the open stage keeps the presentation from feeling crowded even when a lot is happening on screen. In a game that means you can pick out one movement while other noise continues around it, which is the whole point of a headphone chosen for competitive play. It is comfortable enough for long sessions, and at roughly $109 it leaves room in a budget for the amplifier it will want in order to give its best. If your aim is to hear what planar drivers do without spending a great deal, this is the natural place to start.

Compromises: the construction is basic, the pads are thin and the cable is unremarkable, so nothing about it feels luxurious and it is clearly built to a price. It also asks more of your source than anything else here for what it costs, because sensitivity is only 91 dB; that is low enough that a motherboard jack will leave it sounding quiet and flat, and you may conclude the headphone is dull when the problem is the output feeding it. Budget for a dongle or a small amplifier and treat it as part of the cost. With one, it remains a bargain; without one, it will disappoint. Being open, it leaks freely. Practical note: judge it as a value proposition rather than a finished luxury object, and it makes a great deal of sense for the money.

Philips SHP9500

— A, Roughly $90, Open-Back, 32 Ohm, 101 dB.

Read The Review

The SHP9500 is the cheapest bare headphone here that is genuinely worth owning. It is open, light and comfortable, and at 32 ohm with 101 dB it runs happily from a motherboard jack with nothing added, so the barrier to a decent listening setup is close to zero. Its large stage spreads sound well beyond your head, which is enough for most players to read direction in a game without straining. It also has a long-standing reputation as a pairing with a cheap clip-on microphone, which is why it turns up in so many budget setups: the headphone covers what you hear, the clip-on covers your voice, and the total stays low. For someone starting out, building a second setup, or buying a first pair that will not break the bank, it does the basic job with very little drama and very little fuss.

Compromises: its balance is bright and thin rather than full, with restrained bass and a raised top end, and that divides opinion sharply. Some hear clarity and detail; others hear something thin and sharp, especially over a long session or with a harsh mix, and no amount of adjusting will change the character. The large stage is diffuse rather than precisely mapped, so sounds are wide but not always sharply placed, and you get scale rather than pinpoint accuracy. The build and the pads are basic, and the whole thing is plainly made to a price. Practical note: it can be driven from essentially anything, so there is no equipment hurdle at all. Try to hear it before buying if brightness has bothered you in other headphones, because that is the one thing you cannot work around.

Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO (80 ohm)

— B, Roughly $200, Closed-Back, 80 Ohm, 96 dB.

Read The Review

The DT 770 PRO is the isolation option in this list. Because it is closed, it keeps your game in and the room out, which matters if you play near other people, in a shared space, or with a fan or an air conditioning unit running nearby. It is unusually spacious for a sealed design, so the image does not collapse into the middle of your head the way cheap closed headphones do, and you still get a sense of sounds sitting away from you rather than on top of you. The frame is robust and built to survive years of handling, and the velour pads are generous enough to stay comfortable through a long session. If your circumstances rule out an open headphone, this is the one to consider first.

Compromises: a closed stage still cannot match the open sets here for distance and placement, so directional cues are less exact even though the sound is bigger than you would expect from a sealed model. The tuning is bright and forward in the familiar house style, which suits some ears and tires others across a long session. The cable is fixed, so it cannot be replaced if it fails or if you want a different length. At 80 ohm and 96 dB it benefits from a dongle or an amplifier to sound its best, so add that to the price when comparing it with cheaper open rivals. In a quiet room, several open models costing less than this one place sounds more accurately. Buy it for isolation and durability rather than for the finest imaging.

Get PullzeAudio

Part Two: Ten Headsets With A Microphone

This is the convenient half. Each of these handles your voice and your game in one device, so there is nothing extra to buy.

How it connects matters more here than it did in the first half. Anything running over USB or a 2.4GHz dongle skips your motherboard’s analogue output altogether, which removes the hiss and whine problem described in the impedance section. The wired analogue headsets lower down cannot do that, and they inherit whatever noise your board makes.

Wireless brings its own trade. A good implementation adds no latency you can feel, but it adds a battery, a charging habit, and one more thing that can fail quietly at a bad moment. A wired analogue headset brings none of that and takes on your motherboard’s noise instead. Choose which of those two problems you would rather have.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless

— Tier S, Roughly $229, Closed-Back, Base Station With 2.4GHz Wireless And Bluetooth.

Read The Review

Nothing else in this guide arrives as fully equipped. A base station handles the digital-to-analogue work outside the computer and doubles as a control hub you can reach with one hand mid-match, which keeps the machine’s own audio circuitry out of the chain. When a cell runs flat you swap it and carry on, so a session is never ended by a charge indicator. Two radio links run at once, letting the game and your phone stay connected together; an incoming call does not pull you out of the round. Sound quality is good in the plain sense of the word, doing nothing clever and nothing wrong, and long sessions stay comfortable on the head. The microphone is usable for team chat and for the calls that arrive in the middle of one. Closed cups mean your audio stays with you and the room stays out.

Compromises: the closed cups compress the sense of space, so the open models in Part 1 place sounds with more room around them. Its companion software is powerful, but it expects to become the single manager of everything your PC plays, which suits a committed setup and irritates anyone who prefers to keep things separate. Roughly $229 is also the price of a serious pair of plain headphones and a good desk microphone bought together, and that pair would win on both sound and voice unless you specifically want the hub, the swappable cells and the dual link.

Audeze Maxwell 2

— Tier S, Roughly $329, Planar Magnetic Closed-Back, Drivers Of 90 Mm, Battery Rated At Up To 80 Hours.

Read The Review

On pure sound this is the pick of the whole guide, and the margin is wide enough that you notice it in the first minute. Planar magnetic drivers give instruments and effects room to sit apart in a way that closed dynamic designs do not manage, so a crowded fight stays readable instead of collapsing into noise. Detail and control are the strengths, and the tuning behind them is deliberate work rather than a bass boost wearing the label of a preset. The microphone is good enough to stand beside dedicated desk microphones, a claim almost nothing else here can make. Charging is a weekly chore rather than a nightly one, since the battery is rated at up to 80 hours, and the closed cups keep your audio private and the room quiet. It is built for a player who wants one object on their head doing the work of a headphone and a microphone at once.

Compromises: planar magnets are dense, so the headset carries real weight, and a couple of hours in you start to feel it sitting there. It is the dearest item here as well. The same budget would cover an Edition XS and a capable desk microphone, and that pairing wins on sound and on voice for anyone willing to sit at a desk with cables. Buy it for the simplicity of one wireless device that does both jobs, not because it is the cheapest route to good audio.

ASUS ROG Kithara

— Tier S, Roughly $248 (MSRP $299), Planar Magnetic And Open-Back, 100 Mm Drivers, Wired 3.5 Mm, 16 Ohm.

Read The Review

Here is the one headset that brings the sound of Part 1 and a microphone together in the same frame. Open planar drivers produce a sense of space and a picture of direction that closed designs cannot reach, so distance and movement stay legible. With drivers of 100 mm, a plain 3.5 mm cable and an impedance of 16 ohm, it reaches full volume straight from a motherboard output and needs no amplifier, which is rare for this driver type. The boom microphone is far better than the usual headset fitting, clear enough for team chat without the compressed edge you expect. Sessions stay comfortable, and there is nothing to charge and no radio link to drop, because the whole thing is analogue. Ask roughly $248, or $299 at list.

Compromises: sound pours out of it and the room pours in, and that matters more here than on a pair of plain open headphones because you talk into a microphone that hears everything around you. Treble is pushed forward, which flatters small details but wears on you through a long evening. The cups are big. There is no wireless option, and a machine with no headphone socket needs the USB-C adapter supplied in the box. In a shared room, beside other people, this is the wrong headset, and a player who needs a quiet environment should look at a closed model instead.

Razer BlackShark V2 Pro

— Tier A, Closed-Back, Roughly $84, Drivers Of 50 Mm, Up To 70 Hours Of Play.

Read The Review

This is the bargain of the guide. Once the flagship of its line, it now sells for about a third of what it once cost, and what remains is still a very capable closed wireless headset. Drivers of 50 mm and a battery rated for up to 70 hours mean a week of evenings passes with no cable and no charging ritual. The frame is light, and hours of wear do not turn into pressure behind the ears. The microphone is the real surprise: headsets asking several times as much sound worse through it, and your voice arrives as a voice rather than a compressed radio signal. Sound in games is tidy and usable, with enough room between effects to place them and enough weight to make them land. Spend roughly $84 here and you collect most of what the expensive wireless sets offer.

Compromises: the low end is light, and some players find the result thin, especially in single-player games built on rumble and impact. Plastic everywhere means it does not feel expensive in the hand. It is also an older generation that will eventually be replaced, which is the reason for the low asking price rather than generosity. Take it while it is available, and judge it on the microphone and the battery, both of which hold up better than the finish suggests.

Sony INZONE H6 Air

— Tier A, Roughly $178 (MSRP $200), Open-Back With A USB-C Audio Box, Wired, 40 Mm Drivers.

Read The Review

Comfort is the first thing you notice: this open headset sits light on the head and is easy to forget during a long evening. It brings its own USB-C audio box, so the conversion from digital to analogue happens in that box rather than inside the computer case, and being wired means no latency and nothing to charge. Drivers of 40 mm are tuned to place sounds accurately, and for a headset the sense of direction is good. Sony’s software adds spatial processing that some players find genuinely useful for picking a sound out of a busy mix, and the wired path through the audio box keeps the setup simple and predictable. It costs roughly $178, with a list price of $200. What makes it worth the money is the combination rather than any single part: open cups, an external box and a light frame in one package.

Compromises: open cups isolate nothing, so noise around you competes with the quiet parts of a game. A large share of what you pay for lives in the software, and a player who never installs or tunes it is funding something they will not use. Price is the other sticking point, since the Razer costs half as much and there is no dual wireless link or control hub here to justify the gap. Treat it as a comfortable wired headset for a quiet room rather than a do-everything purchase.

Logitech’s G PRO X 2 Lightspeed

— Tier A, Roughly $150, Closed-Back, Graphene-Coated 50 Mm Drivers, Up To 50 Hours.

Read The Review

Flexibility is the argument for this one. Three ways in, a 2.4GHz link, Bluetooth, or the 3.5 mm cable from the box, mean the same headset serves a PC, a console and a phone without a second purchase. Graphene-coated drivers of 50 mm keep a busy mix under control, so a lot happening at once does not turn into mush, and the frame stays comfortable through long sessions. The microphone is respectable for chat and calls, the closed cups keep your audio to yourself, and a battery rated for up to 50 hours covers a week of evenings. Roughly $150 buys a headset that does not require you to pick a platform in advance. That is the whole case for it: one purchase, three ways to connect, and no adapters to lose.

Compromises: it arrives with the bass turned up, and anyone who cares about quiet detail should reduce the low end in software before deciding what they think of it. The spatial effects bundled alongside it add little and are usually best switched off. Its microphone is good enough for voice chat without being a standout, so buy it for the connections and the control rather than for the sound as delivered. None of this is a serious fault, but each item is a small adjustment you have to make yourself. Ten minutes in the software settles the balance, and after that there is nothing to think about.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7

— Tier A, Roughly $140, Closed-Back, Wireless On 2.4GHz Plus Bluetooth.

Read The Review

Most of what the Nova Pro offers is here, minus the base station, which is exactly what makes it interesting at the price. It carries a 2.4GHz link and Bluetooth in a closed frame, so a game and a phone call can be live at the same time and answering one does not mean leaving the other. The fit and the microphone are inherited from the dearer model, and those are the parts you live with every evening. Sound comes close enough that the difference appears mainly in quiet passages and in how much control you have over routing. The battery lasts a long evening without complaint, the closed cups keep the room out, and roughly $140 is a sensible middle point between a budget wired set and the flagship. It is the obvious answer for a player who wants wireless without paying flagship money.

Compromises: the connection reverts to an ordinary USB dongle. An ordinary dongle still beats the analogue socket on a motherboard, but there is no dedicated conversion stage and no physical control hub. Battery life is good without being remarkable. Build quality drops a step from the Pro as well, and the whole thing feels lighter in the hand, though nothing you touch or speak into has been cheapened. The saving is real, and so is the subtraction. Whether the missing hub matters is a question only you can answer, and plenty of players never touch one.

HyperX Cloud Alpha

— Tier B, Roughly $60, Closed-Back, Dual-Chamber 50 Mm Drivers, Wired 3.5 Mm.

Read The Review

This is the headset that made the budget category respectable, and it remains worth buying. Its dual-chamber housing keeps low frequencies in one space and the midrange and treble in another so each can be tuned on its own, which stops bass from spreading upward and clouding the middle, where most of the information you need actually sits. Drivers of 50 mm feed a wired 3.5 mm cable, so the headset connects to whatever you already own. An aluminium frame takes being shoved into a rucksack without complaint, memory foam pads stay comfortable for hours, and the microphone comes off when you do not want it. Roughly $60 is a fair price for something sturdy rather than disposable, and it is still the standard against which cheaper headsets are judged. Two separate chambers also mean the middle of the mix keeps its shape when engines and explosions arrive together.

Compromises: it is a closed dynamic headset in the middle of the price range, and the space it creates is small, so sounds sit near your ears. It resolves detail to an ordinary standard, and its sense of direction is workable rather than exact, which is fine for everyday play and weaker when a single footstep decides the round. Being analogue only, it inherits whatever noise the motherboard socket carries. The Cloud III below it is both newer and cheaper, which is worth knowing before you spend.

HyperX Cloud III

— Tier B, Roughly $43, Closed-Back, 53 Mm Drivers Set At An Angle, 64 Ohm, Wired 3.5 Mm.

Read The Review

Below $50 nothing else here is as good, which makes this the sensible first headset. Drivers of 53 mm are set at an angle to the ear instead of pointing straight across, and at 64 ohm through a wired 3.5 mm cable they give a warm sound that is clear enough to live with for hours. The frame is aluminium rather than plastic, the pads are memory foam, and the microphone detaches and is genuinely good, which is unusual at this price. It should outlast cheaper plastic rivals too, and that matters when this is your first purchase and you would rather not repeat it next year. For roughly $43 it does the basics properly: it fits, it survives, it accepts a cable, and it lets you talk without sounding like a call from a tunnel. It is wired only, which keeps the cost down and leaves nothing to charge.

Compromises: the stage is small and shut in, so everything happens close by. Direction is approximate rather than exact, a rough fix rather than a precise one. Bass is lifted, enjoyable in itself and working against clarity once a mix fills up. No headset this cheap matches open designs for locating sounds, so treat it as a beginning rather than an ending. It is honest about what it is, and at this money that is the whole point.

Beyerdynamic MMX 300 (2nd Gen)

— Tier B, Roughly $257, Closed-Back, 32 Ohm, Wired 3.5 Mm.

Read The Review

Take a DT 770 PRO, the studio staple, and fit a microphone good enough for broadcasting, and you have this headset. That microphone alone beats almost every other microphone in this section of the guide. A wired 3.5 mm cable and an impedance of 32 ohm mean it will run from whatever socket you have without an amplifier. Build and comfort are first class: soft velour pads, a rugged frame, and parts you can still replace years from now, so it is maintained rather than discarded. Its bright tuning gives up a great deal of midrange and treble information, which is exactly what games reward when the cues you need sit above the bass. Closed cups shut the room out. The price is roughly $257, which puts it in premium territory.

Compromises: it is nowhere near warm or relaxed, and the brightness will not suit everyone, particularly across very long sessions. The enclosed design creates less space than the open models here, so you trade airiness for privacy. Roughly $257 is also awkward money, because the same sum would take home the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless, base station and swappable cells included, or the Kithara, with open planar drivers and a boom microphone. Choose it because of the microphone and the way it is put together, not because of the figure on the tag.

Open-Back Or Closed-Back

In the first half of this guide, no other decision matters as much, and your room makes it rather than your taste.

Open headphones have perforated cups. Air and sound move through them freely, so the driver is not working against a sealed pocket of air behind it, and the result is a stage that projects outward instead of sitting inside your skull. In a game that is not decoration. Distance and direction are easier to judge when sound has room to spread, and the outer layer of a busy scene stays readable instead of collapsing into one lump.

What it costs you is every bit of isolation you own. Anyone in the room can hear your game, and every fan, keyboard and appliance in that room reaches your ears unmixed. Use a separate microphone with an open-back pair and your voice channel may carry a ghost of the game as well.

Closed headphones seal the cup instead. Nothing goes out and nothing comes in, and in a noisy house the isolation is worth more than a wider stage, because a precise stage you cannot hear is worth nothing. Sealed cups also hold pressure better, which usually means more weight down low.

The trade is space. Everything sits closer and more centrally, and sound bouncing around inside a sealed cup blurs placement slightly where a comparable open pair does not. The DT 770 PRO listed above is the exception worth knowing about, unusually roomy for a sealed design, though it still cannot match an open pair for space. The rule, then: quiet room, open. Shared room, closed. Isolation is a signal advantage first and a comfort second.

Before committing, run a one-minute test. Wear the pair at your normal volume and have somebody stand a metre away and describe what they can hear. If they can follow what is happening on screen, the room is going to share your sessions whether you like it or not. Then check your own microphone for game bleed, and if it is there, either move the microphone closer with a tighter pattern or accept the room as part of the setup.

Impedance, Sensitivity, And What Your PC Can Drive

There are two numbers to know, and most buying advice mentions only one. Mixing them up is the usual reason somebody concludes that a perfectly good headphone is faulty.

Impedance, in ohms, is resistance. A higher figure means more voltage is needed before the headphone reaches a given loudness. Sensitivity, in decibels, describes how loud the headphone gets for the power it is given, and it is the figure people skip past. Skipping it is a mistake, because it frequently matters more.

Here is the trap: a low impedance does not promise an easy load. The Edition XS is rated at 18Ω, the lowest in the first half, and only 92 dB, which means it wants real current and improves audibly on an amplifier. The SHP9500 is 32Ω at 101 dB and is content on a motherboard jack. Read the two figures as a pair and ignore impedance on its own.

Before comparing anything, level the volumes. Louder nearly always sounds clearer and more detailed, which is why an informal test at unequal levels flatters the wrong headphone. Bring the two as close as you can by ear and judge only what survives that, because that difference is the one you will still hear in a month.

Three rough groups follow from the numbers. The easy group needs nothing at all: SHP9500, ATH-AD700X, DT 900 PRO X, TYGR 300 R and Kithara all run from a motherboard. The middle group works from most sources and tightens up on a dongle or amplifier: HD 560S, DT 770 PRO, Sundara. The hungry group produces sound from anything and stays flat until it is fed properly: Edition XS and HE400se.

Then there is a problem unique to desktop PCs. Motherboard audio is a noisy place, and front-panel jacks are the worst of it because their cable runs past everything inside the case. The symptom is a hiss in the background, sometimes with a whine that shifts pitch when you move the mouse. Sensitive low-impedance headphones reveal it most, and it is not the headphone’s fault.

Moving the conversion out of the case fixes it. A USB DAC sends the signal out as data and does the converting somewhere the electrical noise cannot reach; a cheap dongle covers most of the first half and supplies plenty of power, while the 250Ω DT 990 PRO and the planars want a desktop amplifier before they give their best. If you route game audio through PullzeAudio’s Tune output, the device selected in the app is the one doing that conversion, so choose it on purpose. Most of the second half avoids the problem entirely, since the Arctis base station, the 2.4GHz dongles and the Sony audio box all keep conversion out of the case. The wired analogue headsets do not, and they will reproduce whatever noise your board makes.

Adding A Microphone To Bare Headphones

The one real cost of choosing a bare headphone, and a smaller one than it looks. Four routes, cheapest first:

1. Reuse whatever is in a drawer, for nothing. An old headset around your neck with its audio muted in Windows works as a microphone immediately. Do this on day one: it confirms you like the headphones before you spend anything else.
2. A clip-on boom, roughly $25 to $40. A small arm that grips the cable or headband and plugs into the PC on its own. This is the pairing that made the SHP9500 famous, and it still works. Quality ranges from usable to surprisingly good.
3. A magnetic attachable microphone, roughly $50 to $70. A base sticks to the cup and the arm clips onto that. It sounds cleaner than a clip-on and looks like original equipment rather than an afterthought. Nothing hangs off your desk.
4. A desk microphone, roughly $60 and up. A condenser on a desk stand or arm, and the biggest jump in quality here. It also takes every gram off your head and connects over USB, so your motherboard’s noisy input is not involved. The catch is that it hears the room: keyboard clatter and leakage from open-back headphones both land in the recording. A cardioid pattern and careful placement deal with most of it.

One Windows detail: two devices rather than one means two settings. Point your game and your voice application at the right input, because a good share of “my microphone is broken” problems are one application quietly using the wrong device.

On pure voice quality, routes three and four beat the built-in microphone on most of the headsets in the second half. Two of them are worth naming as exceptions: the BlackShark V2 Pro and the MMX 300 carry microphones that would embarrass a cheap desk microphone.

Every Pick Side By Side

Two lists, in case you came straight to the bottom.

Headphones, no microphone

Headsets, microphone included

The One-Paragraph Version

If you own a microphone and game in a silent room, the HD 560S from Sennheiser, roughly $188, is the most accurate pick here without spending a lot. Spend more and the HiFiMan Edition XS at roughly $209 gives you more detail and a larger stage, on the condition that you amplify it and can wear 405 g without complaint.

One device that covers everything is the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless from SteelSeries, roughly $229, the most complete headset in the guide. When how it sounds matters more than what it can do, the Audeze Maxwell 2 is the best headset here. The ASUS ROG Kithara is the one product that sits in both halves, wrapping planar open-back drivers and a boom microphone into a single device that needs no amplifier.

Working to a tight budget, roughly $84 buys the Razer BlackShark V2 Pro, a flagship from a previous generation at a fraction of its original cost, and roughly $43 is enough for the HyperX Cloud III, the cheapest option here that is still worth owning.

Two free experiments before you buy anything: move the plug from the front of the case to the back, and give your virtual surround a week switched off. Neither costs anything, and either can change what you hear more than a new purchase would.