
There still isn’t much in the way of deep sub-bass, as expected, but there’s enough warmth to give in-game explosions a bit more juice without muddying up the mid-range frequencies. Bass is a little more present here than on many open-back headphones as well. This pair has great imaging performance and the kind of spacious soundstage expected from an open-back design.
#BEST PC GAMING HEADSET WITH MIC QUALITY PRO#
The Beyerdynamic DT 900 Pro X should please a wide swath of people willing to pay for a capital-N nice set of headphones for their gaming sessions. Best headphones for gaming: Beyerdynamic DT 900 Pro X You still don’t want a pair that boosts it too hard – which many dedicated gaming headsets do – but the point is that what makes a pair “immersive” to one person may sound dull to another. And if you aren’t just worried about competitive play, some extra low-end can add a touch of excitement to heavy action scenes or a rousing soundtrack. In this light, the fact that an overwhelming amount of gaming headsets are closed-back and bass-heavy seems counterintuitive. Open-back headphones almost never have huge sub-bass, so you rarely have to worry about low-end sounds muddying up the rest of the signature. A slightly brighter sound, one that pushes the upper frequencies a smidge, may also work. If you want something that’ll help you in competitive multiplayer games, you'll likely prefer a headphone with a flatter sound signature, so a game’s mix won’t be overly boosted in one direction and mask the smaller details of what’s happening around you. More up for debate is how a good gaming headphone should sound. But in a quiet room, the best open-back pairs sounds significantly wider and more precise than more common closed-back models. So if you often play games in a noisy environment, their benefits will be blunted. The big trade-off is that these are inherently terrible at isolating you from external sound and preventing others from hearing what you’re playing. That is to say, an over-ear pair whose earcups do not completely seal off the ear from air and outside noise. For most, a headphone with a wide soundstage and strong imaging performance – i.e., the ability to position sounds correctly, so you can more precisely tell where footsteps and other game effects are coming from – will provide the most immersive gaming experience, the kind that makes you feel like your head is within a given scene.įor that, you want a high-quality headphone with an open-back design. At a certain point, everything becomes a matter of taste. What to look for in good gaming headphonesĮvaluating headphones is a particularly subjective exercise, so calling one pair the absolute “best” is something of a fool’s errand. We recommend you consider the former first, but all of them should make your play time more enjoyable. So after testing out a few dozen pairs over the past several months, we’ve put together a list of good headphones for gaming and dedicated gaming headsets.

In many cases, those will make your voice sound clearer and fuller than the ones included with a gaming headset.īut we do recognize that many people just want the convenience of an all-in-one combo, value and aesthetics be damned.

If you need to chat with friends, you can always buy an external microphone, whether it’s a USB mic, a cheaper clip-on mic or a standalone headset mic like the Antlion ModMic or V-Moda BoomPro. Best premium wireless gaming headset Audeze MaxwellĪ good wired headphone remains your best bet if you want the most detailed sound possible at a given price point and don’t need something especially portable, which is usually the case whether you’re gaming on a console or PC.
