While a regular headset is designed primarily for calls and meetings, a gaming headset focuses on in-game audio, connectivity, and easy-to-access controls in addition to voice quality. Whatever your platform or specific communication needs, we’ve rounded up the best gaming headsets currently available. To achieve maximum sound performance, the headset uses titanium 50mm drives each split into three separate parts for precise tuning for low, high, and mid-tones. Additionally, this headset features 7.1 surround sound by THX, creating an immersive soundscape that is a boon for competitive gaming and a joy for audiophiles. The Blackshark V2 Pro is also exceptionally comfortable, with gel-infused cushions that reduce heat and pressure on your ears. The microphone is detachable and offers customizable tuning via Razer’s Synapse 3 software. Though it’s somewhat steeply priced, the Razer Blackshark V2 Pro easily wins its place as the best gaming headset. The HyperX Cloud II has 53mm drivers, along with a detachable noise cancelling condenser mic. If you want surround sound, there’s an in-line control box that provides virtual 7.1 surround sound, though this effect is kind of underwhelming. The cable is permanently connected to the Cloud II, so if the cable fails, it would be the end of the headset. Overall though, the HyperX Cloud II is a killer headset that offers wide compatibility. The headset works with most systems, including Xbox One, PC, PS4, and any other system with a 3.5mm audio jack. The main downsides are that it’s not a comfortable headset for people with glasses, and its construction is somewhat flimsy. This is a bargain model, so you’ll need to treat it with care to avoid damage. The surround sound is less than spectacular, but overall, this is easily the best pick for Xbox One gamers. The headset is also compatible with any other device with a 3.5mm port, so you can easily switch it between your PC and Xbox console. The audio is exceptional, as the set boasts Dolby Atmos technology. The lows bang like they should, and surround sound helps you to identify threats by allowing your ears to help your eyes. The detachable microphone allows for clear speech, and the earcups are comfortable too.  The battery life is decent at around 20 hours, and the range of around 30 feet is long enough for you to walk around your room. The price is a bit on the high end, but overall, this headset feels well constructed and performs consistently and reliably. Wireless communication is accomplished either via 2.4Ghz wireless communication with the base station or via Bluetooth. This, along with a beautiful minimalist design, means the Arctis Pro isn’t just for gamers, but it’s also a compelling option for anyone who needs high-quality wireless audio. It does come with a high price, so you’d expect the headset to be more comfortable. But considering the sheer quality and versatility of the Arctis Pro, it’s easy to recommend. The USB external sound card gives you plenty of control over your equalizer settings, and the on-board memory lets you store a five-band EQ setting for quick game startup. The frame is made of steel and aluminum for lightweight durability. The headset comes with noise-isolating memory foam earcups with either faux leather or breathable velour for extra comfort. It also comes packaged with a travel bag to protect your headset from damage. The Quantum One also includes active noise canceling, customizable RGB lighting, and, of course, a high-quality detachable mic. This headset is compatible with a wide range of systems such as Xbox, Playstation, PC, and more. Its premium build quality, coupled with excellent comfort for long gaming sessions, make this headset a desirable option. Ideal for virtual reality enthusiasts, it was designed specifically to work with Playstation VR goggles to provide an immersive VR experience. The noise-canceling microphone helps you communicate with allies, but does not protrude from the headset’s exterior. Perhaps most importantly, the Gold Wireless Headset is a bargain wireless headset. It’s also compatible with other devices, so you can also use it wirelessly with your PC or any device with a 3.5mm audio jack. You do need to use an adapter to make it wireless, even with the PS5, which seems odd since it was designed for the console. Another drawback is the 12-hour battery life. Otherwise, the headset is comfortable, features easy-to-access controls, a 3.5 mm jack, and 3D audio that sounds amazing. Alice Newcome-Beill is an avid gamer and has previously written for PC Gamer and PC Mag. She regularly uses the Kingston HyperX Cloud II for its comfortable and robust build. Resident tech commerce editor, Ajay Kumar, spends more time with gaming headsets than most editors put together. Regularly logging several hours a day in chat heavy games like Borderlands 2. Andy Zahn has written for Lifewire since 2019, and has been a passionate gamer for decades. When he’s not reviewing the latest games and gaming gear he may often be found diving into another match of World of Tanks or DOTA 2. Alex Williams has five years of experience writing about wearable technology like fitness trackers as well as video games. Alex also has worked with front end web development and UX design.  Taylor Clemons has three years of experience reviewing and writing about consumer tech and video games. She also has experience working in e-commerce and product management, curating products for customers across categories like homewares, outdoor/camping, and decor.

The Ultimate Gaming Headset Buying Guide

With the growth of streaming culture and the fact that gaming has become a precision performance industry almost as much as it is a hobbyist industry, gaming headset technology has taken major strides in recent years. While the actual gaming platform you’re using and the interface you use to control the games is arguably most important, the sound platform is a close second. Without detailed, immersive sound, you’re leaving a lot of the gaming experience on the table. When it comes to buying a gaming headset, though, much like other gaming peripherals, there are lots of considerations you’ll have to make. Is your budget completely open, or do you have to make some concessions? Are you hoping to party up and play competitively, meaning you’ll need the best mic possible, or are you simply looking for a comfortable way to hear your games better than you ever have? All of these questions lead to very different priority sets, and they’re important places to start. In this guide, we’ll rundown all the features you might find when exploring the gaming headset market, from microphone clarity and audio quality to fit, finish, and design. While there are some important audio and technical terms we’ll have to define, this guide will aim to focus on your feature priorities, rather than a detailed exposé on specs, because what’s most important here is that you know what kind of headset user you’ll be.

Design

With the exception of earbuds and non-gaming headsets (we’ll get into those in a later section), there are really two main camps of gaming headsets. Some manufacturers opt for a sleek, understated look sporting a single dark color that looks a lot closer to regular consumer over-ear headphones. The rest of the market really leans into the gaming aesthetic—sharp edges with bright pops of color and usually some sort of geometric pattern. Many headsets also offer an RGB lighting option so you can get your headset to sync up with your other peripherals. This category, admittedly, is an aesthetic one and doesn’t have a major effect on the performance of your headset in-game. As such, we wouldn’t recommend paying any extra for flashy design features unless that’s important to you, or unless you’re a streamer appearing often on camera. In short, if you aren’t going to have people watching you while you game, the aesthetic design of your headset isn’t super important because you aren’t often wearing these headphones outside of your home.

Comfort

The feel of the headset is probably the most important concern regarding its physical construction. That makes sense, because gaming sessions can continue long into the night, especially if you’re playing an immersive game or playing competitively. The first factor in the comfort department is the actual materials used in the headphones. Most high-end models will use a leather-esque covering and memory foam to craft the plushest-feeling earcups. Sometimes manufacturers will extend that foam to the headband to ensure that any contact with your head has a plush layer. On the budget side of the market, you’ll tend to sacrifice a bit in this department, as affordable brands will use firmer foam swathed in cheaper-feeling material. The other aspect of comfort to consider is the breathability of the headphones. This is admittedly difficult to gauge until you wear a given pair of headphones for a long period of time, so reading reviews can be a major boon. SteelSeries, for example, is known for providing really substantial headsets with great-feeling foam, but they tend to be somewhat stifling in the airflow department. That’s a general statement of course, and every user will have different tastes, so if possible, we recommend testing out the headphones before fully deciding on them. One final note on the breathability point: if the headphones do allow airflow so your ears don’t overheat, this likely means that the sound isolation suffers, ultimately diminishing some of the audio quality.

Build Quality and Durability

As a category, gaming headsets tend to be bulky, sporting a substantial build. They’re a lot like professional studio headphones in that way. That owes mostly to the fact that gaming headsets are by and large an at-home product, very rarely taken with you on the go. With portability not being a concern, the size doesn’t need to be terribly sleek and therefore, headphones in this category tend to be built like tanks. That doesn’t mean all models are created equal, though, so it’s important to keep a few things in mind. First, pay attention to the material of the earcups. While soft-touch coverings and delicate memory foam make for cozier listening experiences, this material does tend to fray and break down more easily over time. So if you’re prone to being rough with your headphones, you might want to go for more durable foam. This also goes for the headband, as the adjustment mechanism is one of the first things to loosen up over time. Finally, the most delicate part of a pair of headphones is its cable. We recommend a headset with a cable that detaches from the headphones so you can wrap the cable separately when storing the headset and, on the off chance that the cable crimps or frays, you can just replace this part rather than the entire unit.

Frequencies and Drivers

There are some unique features that relate to gaming headsets specifically, but before we get into those, it’s important to outline some of the basics of headphone technology. For our purposes here, the frequency spectrum and the speaker drivers are the key things to understand. Scientifically, humans can only hear sounds between 20Hz and 20kHz (bass through treble). Some headphones will offer a larger frequency range, but that doesn’t mean you can hear frequencies outside the range. What it means is that the headphones can adequately produce the full sound spectrum without being pushed to the limits. Some will also prioritize certain frequencies over others. This is important for gaming because it means that the lowest sounds (the rumble of a car engine or distant explosions in an FPS game) and the highest sounds (light leaves rustling in an RPG) will be portrayed with plenty of detail. The drivers in a pair of headphones are just the speaker cones that live inside each ear cup. In general, gaming headsets tend to feature drivers that are just a couple inches in diameter. The bigger the driver, the better that driver is at producing powerful lows and mids. Gaming headsets also use the isolation of the foam surrounding your ears and the larger ear cup construction to also bolster bass. You aren’t going to get quite the power that you’d get if you were running an external speaker or a subwoofer, but these drivers are leaps and bounds better than the tiny drivers found in earbuds.

Digital Processing and Surround Features

If you’re opting for a USB-connected headset, they’ll feature a built-in digital-analog converter (DAC) and a dedicated amp. This helps the headphones sustain their power, and also gives oomph to whatever EQ and digital processing that the manufacturer has included. In the case of gaming headsets, this processing tends to be a net positive because it’s been done specifically with gaming in mind. This way panning and positioning are enhanced, specific parts of the spectrum that are common in gaming are bolstered, and you even have some software options of your own to tailor to the type of game you’re playing. One gimmicky addition in this category is “surround sound” technology. We want to be clear here: with very few exceptions, all headphones that advertise surround technology are using digital processing and audio tricks in the headphones to approximate surround spread. Normally, surround sound requires at least 5 speakers to actually send sound to your ears from multiple directions, whereas headphones only feature two speakers. Many manufacturers, like SteelSeries and Turtle Beach, use clever tricks to help fake surround sound, and a lot of them can be effective in some games—but it isn’t true surround sound. If this is important to you, you’ll likely have to spend a bit more.

Microphone Quality

Think of the microphones on gaming headsets as improved versions of the microphones on your phone or earbuds. Gaming microphones are generally very directional and very focused on the part of the spectrum where human speech is heard. As a result, these headphones are better at isolating speech and leaving out as much background noise as possible. This is one category where the more money you spend, the better the mic tends to be at excluding background noise. It’s important to note that because of the heavy isolation and processing in headset mics that focus on noise isolation, your voice will sound very sharp and focused—not nearly as full and bassy as it would on a true broadcast microphone.

Audio Codecs

Bluetooth headsets make up a large part of the market, and we’ll get into their strengths and weaknesses in the next section. But before we leave the topic of sound quality, it’s important to understand how Bluetooth codecs work. Codecs are the protocol that your specific Bluetooth device uses to transfer the audio and data from its source. The most common codecs are SBC and AAC, and they also happen to be the ones that compress your sound files the most. This is important to keep in mind, because no matter how lossless your source audio is, when it’s transferred via SBC and AAC you’re getting data levels much more similar to mp3 files. If lossless audio is your goal, you can get the closest by opting for a better codec, like Qualcomm’s aptX.

Bluetooth Range and Stability

Modern Bluetooth devices will mostly use the latest two versions: Bluetooth 4 or Bluetooth 5. Version 4 gives you about 33 feet of range from your source device and is perfectly capable of maintaining a connection in low-interference areas. Bluetooth 5, on the other hand, nearly doubles that range. Most of us don’t live in 60-foot rooms, so you might think this is overkill. But think of it this way: the more range your headset allows for, the stronger the connection will be even at closer ranges. If you have a lot of Bluetooth devices or thick walls, Bluetooth 5 will be slightly more reliable. Additionally, version 5 also allows for two simultaneous host devices, meaning that it’s easier to seamlessly switch back and forth between sources.

USB vs. 3.5MM

The two standard connections for wired gaming headsets are a USB output and a 3.5mm jack. It’s not just a matter of output jacks, though—these two connection methods imply fundamentally different methods of data transfer. 3.5mm headsets are a little clearer, as they simply plug into the combination headphone jack on most computers, laptops, and gaming consoles. It’s important to note that a 3.5mm jack is the simplest way to use a headset during console gaming, and it’s virtually the only way to use a headset on the Nintendo Switch. USB-connected headsets tend to use bus power from the PC, and will ultimately bypass the soundcard on your computer. This is great if you’re using a PC where the soundcard is a little lackluster, but it does mean that you might have to download an external driver for the headphones to work. This usually also means that there are a separate DAC and amp in the headphones, typically providing more powerful sound and better control.

Controls

Most gaming headsets feature standard on-board controls including mute capabilities, a volume knob or slider, and sometimes some additional utility buttons. When you get higher on the price scale, you’ll start to see external remotes built into the wire, or even standalone desktop control services. The latter usually also contain the built-in DAC and amp, and allow for easier control of the headphones right at your fingertips. These external control surfaces can be a bit cumbersome though, so if size and footprint are a concern, go for a model that features this I/O on the headset itself.

Battery Life

Because Bluetooth headsets aren’t quite as prevalent in the gaming world as they are in the broader consumer audio space, battery life may not be a huge concern. Many high-end gaming headsets will offer around 20 hours of use on a single charge, though you can find much higher battery life on some models. Considering you’re likely using the headset at home, it isn’t a huge deal if you need to quickly charge up during a session (just make sure it’s a headset that still lets you operate it while it’s charging). The other concern on the battery front might be a little unexpected. If your headset uses USB bus power, you’ll need to make sure that you keep an eye on the battery of your gaming platform if you’re using a laptop. Because gaming can be such a CPU-intensive activity, adding an extra device that pulls power from your computer will further shorten its battery life.

Price

While you won’t find quite the astronomical dollar amounts that you’ll see on high-end audiophile headphones, there is still a pretty wide range of prices in the gaming headset market. In general, we don’t recommend buying a budget pair of gaming headphones for any less than $50—when you get below that threshold, you start to really sacrifice build quality and audio performance. On the higher end, you’ll pay between $200 and $300 for a nice set of headphones, featuring plenty of features and solid performance.

Razer: It’s no surprise to see a gaming staple like Razer here (we even have a dedicated roundup of the best Razer headsets). The Kraken series of headsets goes really well with most of this brand’s keyboard-and-mouse combos. If that’s your setup, it’s an easy way to get a quality headset that also keeps your aesthetic. SteelSeries: This brand offers a wide variety of price points to choose from, from entry-level products all the way to excellent high-end models. SteelSeries is also known for really solid USB-powered headsets with decent DACs and amps. Turtle Beach: You’ll likely find the best bang for your buck with this brand. While many of these budget headphones aren’t exactly the cheapest around, the brand does provide the best product for those prices, but you’ll also find headphones from this manufacturer topping best-of lists from time to time. Logitech: A computer giant like Logitech is a safe bet when you’re buying any sort of PC peripheral. While the gaming products this brand offers aren’t always the flashiest, or the best performing, you’ll find a lot of value across this company’s offerings. Corsair: This is another brand that is very comfortable in the budget end of the price range, and the HS series, in particular, gives you a ton of features and a great build quality for under $100. Sennheiser: The audio stalwart has its hands in a lot of different segments in the headphone market, from high-end audiophile products to workout earbuds. The gaming headset section of Sennheiser’s catalog is a little limited, but you can find some great options that also double as great pairs of music-centric headphones.

Accessories

Many high-end headphones already come with cases and pouches, but if your pair didn’t it’s smart to get a neoprene pouch or a padded storage case to keep your investment safe. Because many gaming headsets come with their own very specific design aesthetic, you might also consider matching the headset to your gaming mouse and keyboard. If you go for a Razer headset, this is easy because you can get clearly matching options in both categories. If not, you can still go for peripherals that also feature RGB lighting arrays to fully deck out your gaming setup.

Conclusion

While there aren’t quite as many options for gaming headsets out there as there are Bluetooth earbuds and consumer headphones, there are still plenty of choices to wrap your head around. If you want something that really enhances your PC gaming experience, feature-rich and with plenty of power, you’ll be shelling out a couple hundred for a USB-powered gaming headset. If you’re looking to save money while still stepping up your game, there are tons of 3.5mm models that will work across PCs, consoles, and with mobile devices. Like everything in the tech world, this is all a trade-off, so be sure to consider all the variables before making your purchase.