Best Gaming Headsets in 2023 – Top 6 Picks

Gaming as a profession was once frowned upon but has taken off into new heights in the last decade. And nowadays, many gamers play games for a living, something some people could only dream of.

If you’re serious about gaming, having a great setup is imperative to your success. This includes a decent pair of gaming headphones. Therefore we decided to review the best gaming headsets currently available to find out which one was actually the best and why?

So let’s go through and find the perfect pair for you…

Best Gaming Headset Comparison Table

Product	Wireless	Microphone Quality	Sound	Extra Features	Rating
Also Great Beyerdynamic Custom Game Headset View Price	Wireless No	Microphone Quality Great	Sound Class leading	Extra Features Sound sliders	(4 / 5)
Also Great Astro Gaming A50 Wireless Headset View Price	Wireless Yes	Microphone Quality Below average	Sound Good	Extra Features SMicro-USB charging 14 Hours battery life	(4 / 5)
Best Choice HyperX Cloud Alpha View Price	Wireless No	Microphone Quality Great	Sound Good	Extra Features -	(5 / 5)
Also Great SteelSeries Arctis Pro + GameDAC View Price	Wireless No	Microphone Quality Good	Sound Great	Extra Features DAC unit offers a variety of customization	(4.3 / 5)
Also Great Logitech G533 Wireless Gaming Headset View Price	Wireless Yes	Microphone Quality Great	Sound Good	Extra Features 15 Hours of battery Micro-USB charging	(4.2 / 5)
Also Great Razer Kraken X Ultralight View Price	Wireless No	Microphone Quality Good	Sound Good	Extra Features -	(4.3 / 5)

Top 6 Best Gaming Headsets of 2023

1 Beyerdynamic Custom Game Headset

Beyerdynamic takes a stab at gaming headsets, and they aren’t playing games.

The Beyerdynamic has a detachable boom microphone, six ear cup covers, and 1.6-meter cable in the box. It is great to see them providing extra ear pads in the box since that is the first thing you usually need to replace.

The company treats these gaming headsets just like any of their other high-quality headphones, with the utmost of care and attention to detail. The headset is comfortable and provides enough space inside the earpad for your ears to breath. And the metal headband clamps on just hard enough for a stable yet comfortable fit, even if you wear glasses.

The headset comes equipped with large adjustable sliders on the bottom that control how much of the outside noise you’d like to let in. Being a closed-back design, opening the slider allows a lot of outside noise in, mimicking what an open-back headset sounds like. There are pros and cons to open-back headsets, and this provides you the best of both worlds.

Beyerdynamic provides a great balanced sound that serves as a jack of all trades. You can enjoy streaming movies, listening to music/podcasts, and gaming using the same headset. This is especially great considering the price of the headset. If you are on a strict budget and only want one pair of headphones, this is a great option.

If you close the slider, you’ll find that the headset provides great isolation and gives the bass some extra flavor. Great for listening to music or watching movies. Open the slider, and you get the full effects of an open-back headset. They provide great spatial awareness due to excellent sound staging and prevent ear fatigue by letting air in.

The boom microphone is great at isolating your voice and blocking out ambient noises. It is flexible, which makes adjusting it easy.

If you ‘de like to find out more, please check out our Beyerdynamic Custom Game review.

2 Astro Gaming A50 Wireless Headset

Some gamers swear by analog, especially if you game on a PC. However, a lot of gamers, especially console gamers, enjoy the convenience of wireless headsets for gaming.

Astro Gaming is one of the leading gaming headset brands, and with the A50 wireless, they took one of their top headsets and made it wireless.

You’ll find the design to be typical of gaming headsets. It’s mostly plastic with a hollow headband that helps make it lighter for comfort. The earpads are made of velour for a soft and comfy fit, even if you wear glasses. It regulates heat way better than the vinyl found on other premium headsets but doesn’t isolate sound as well.

However, the plastic design does feel a little cheap and finicky.

The sound is also very gaming headset oriented, with the bass being boosted for some extra emphasis on the explosions and guns firing in the game. The rest of the mix never sounds muddy or overshadowed by the bass, though.

The sound staging isn’t that great, and it was difficult at times to figure out where guns or footsteps were coming from. Even with the Dolby Audio surround sound on.

The headset sounds fine for music if you enjoy EDM or other bass-heavy genres. Other genres fall trap to audio masking, and some high-end frequencies sound raspy at high volumes. Also, there isn’t much isolation provided here. Therefore, if you’re in a noisy area, you’d most likely need to turn the volume up.

The microphone is the biggest let down of this headset. The microphone isn’t very loud and cuts most of the low-end frequencies out. This means most male and lower female voices will sound thin. It also allows some surrounding noises in, meaning you will really need to speak up to be heard.

These are wireless headphones, and the battery is good. You’ll get around 14 hours before they need to be charged with the charge station or micro-USB.

3 HyperX Cloud Alpha

HyperX makes some great gaming headsets at very affordable prices. And the Cloud Alpha is the reigning king of budget gaming headsets.

The HyperX Cloud Alpha comes with a durable vinyl wrapped aluminum frame, and super comfy vinyl wrapped padded earpads. The design still looks gamer-friendly but is more subdued with sleek looking red accents and oval-shaped earcups.

The headset provides great stability and doesn’t clamp on too hard that it becomes uncomfortable, even when wearing glasses.

The Cloud Alpha provides great sound at a low price. It works for consuming any and all types of media, whether you’re watching Netflix, listening to your favorite music, or blasting away at your foes.

It has a very balanced sound that provides the perfect platform for any sort of audio. You can listen to any genre of music and easily EQ it to your preference.

Gaming sounds great, and the sound staging is good enough that you can distinguish where gunfire or footsteps are coming from.

The flexible, detachable microphone offers great noise isolation and has your voice sounding clear and loud. No one will ever complain about not being able to understand you on the other side. In fact, this is one of the Best Gaming Headsets with microphone you can get at any price, regardless of how affordable this is.

The headset comes with a decent length 3.5 mm audio jack and has no wireless capabilities.

Want to know more? It’s all in our informative HyperX Cloud Alpha review.

4 SteelSeries Arctis Pro + GameDAC

SteelSeries is synonymous with gaming. They have some great sounding headsets, and the Arctis Pro is no different. It’s also the first headset to be certified with Hi-Res audio.

The Arctis Pro comes with physical hardware to customize the sound of your headset. Great for gamers who don’t enjoy messing around on clumsy software. It can connect to the PC and PS4.

The Arctis Pro is bulky but sturdy. It has an aluminum headband, air weaved fabric earpads, and an elastic band that straps itself on like a pair of ski goggles. It’s a comfy and stable fit, and the band is adjustable with Velcro straps. While the microphone is not removable but is retractable.

The DAC unit comes with a ton of features. You can change volume, in-game/call voice mix, and toggle the surround on or off. Turning on the menu, shown with the unit’s LED screen, you can change the EQ settings, microphone volume, input and output settings, and many others.

The headset uses DTS Headphone X2 technology, which provides stunning 3D surround sound. It won’t make you any better at playing the game but provides a more immersive experience.

The headsets bass is boosted, and some of the mid frequencies are lowered. Thus, audio masking is present in some bass-heavy tracks. Not the best for listening to music, but still mostly a pleasurable experience.

Games sound great because of the 3D surround sound, and the extra bass creates a lot of ambiance, especially when those cinematic rumbles kick in.

The microphone sounds alright. However, it cuts some of the bass away, making deeper voices sound a little thin. It has enough volume, sometimes a little too much. Peaking occurred when we spoke a little too loud. Nothing too bad that we’d call the microphone unusable, though.

5 Logitech G533 Wireless Gaming Headset

Logitech offers up a sleeper gaming headset, with a sleek black design and square earcups, it almost doesn’t look like a gaming headset at all.

It’s perfect for the current generation of gamers who aren’t all about RGB lighting or flashy designs. Instead, we have a matte black finish accentuated with a shiny black coating on the earcups.

Logitech offers up a comfortable, lightweight plastic design with Logitech’s hybrid mesh fabric. The fabric is soft and breathable. It doesn’t heat up much and works well with glasses as well. They are removable and washable, which is very convenient.

The headset sounds great with a flat and balanced studio sound. The G533 offers bright and clear highs with a tight and punchy low-end.

You can change the EQ to your liking on the Logitech app if you prefer more bass. However, the surround sound on offer here isn’t great. The sound staging on stereo mode doesn’t offer much separation, and it can be difficult hearing where footsteps are coming from.

With the surround sound on, it goes from sounding great to bad very quickly. More than often, the headset sounded hollow and echoey. It is ‘surround sound’ at its worst.

The microphone does well. It sounds clear and doesn’t suffer from any peaks when speaking louder. It’s fine for gaming but won’t do well for anything more professional.

The Bluetooth connection is stable, and we experienced no latency issues with the headset. It’s a great wireless option at a price, but there are far better sounding wired options in the same price range. The battery lasts just under 15 hours on a full charge and charges with Micro-USB.

6 Razer Kraken X Ultralight

The Razer Kraken X Ultralight is a super affordable headset that offers the essentials only.

The headset is made of Polycarbonate-ABS, a very durable plastic. It’s lightweight and super comfortable to wear, even with glasses on. The earpads are made of memory foam but aren’t replaceable. And there is no in-line controller with the volume dial and mute button built-in on the left earcup.

The headset comes with great-sounding 40 mm drivers that offer superb spatial awareness. You’ll never wonder where the enemy is shooting from whilst wearing these. They also have 7.1 surround sound that’s only supported on PCs.

The headset puts emphasis on the bass, like most gaming headsets, and provides amazing sounding explosions and gunfire.

Vocals are also boosted, making cinematics very immersive and easy to understand. Some of the high-end frequencies experience some audio masking, meaning these aren’t the best for listening to music.

The microphone is very loud and offers clear vocals. Some ambient noise does come through, but nothing that hinders the performance of the microphone too much. It’s a great boom microphone considering the price range of the headset.

Best Gaming Headset Buying Guide

If you’re on a tight budget, you should stick to wired headsets. This is because you’ll find a lot of budget wireless headsets come with too many problems to make them worth considering.

The best budget headset is the Razer Kraken X Ultralight. You won’t find any issues with it, and it sounds absolutely great. It’s built nice and sturdy and will last a very long time. Plus, it’s comfy to wear for long periods of time, even if you wear glasses.

Buying Razer also comes with its gamer bragging right, it’s definitely one of the more recognizable brands, even among people who don’t really game.

If you want a premium headset, the SteelSeries Arctis Pro is the best buy. It is still a little cheaper than some premium headsets, and the added DAC unit provides you with so many customizable options. They also sound terrific.

If you must have a wireless headset, Razer offers some stellar options like the Razer Nari. The Astro A50 is also a great option that takes a classic headset and offers it in a wireless design.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Headsets Do Pro Gamers Use?

Alliances Dota 2 team all use Sennheiser Game Zero headsets. It’s a premium wired headset with top of the range microphone and sound quality.

Danil Ashutin, better known as Dendi, uses HyperX’s Cloud 2. This is one of HyperX’s best headsets for gaming and has a premium price. Even if you can’t afford it, the Cloud Alpha is a great budget option.

Olofmeister, one of the best CS: GO players, uses the SteelSeries Arctis Pro headset.

Connor Prince, “Avast,” who plays Overwatch for his team Boston Uprising, uses a pair of Sennheiser HD201.

What Is The Best Gaming Headset With a Mic?

The HyperX Cloud has the best microphone and is the reason so many Esports players use it. Another headset you’ll see them use is the Logitech G Pro X.

Why Do Gamers Use Two Headsets?

Pro gamers will use earbuds and over-ear headphones together to block out a lot of the noise from the tournaments. It can get very loud with thousands of people attending and watching. White noise is fed through the large over-ear headphones to cancel out a lot of the low humming and crowd noises.

The in-game sound is played through the earbuds. Earbuds are great at blocking out most of the higher frequencies since they seal up most of your ear canal. This also makes it easy for the gamer to hear the game properly.

Sometimes you might even see a third set hanging around your favorite gamer’s neck. These are usually not for use but for sponsorship reasons.

Is Open-back Better For Gaming?

This really depends on the games you play and your sound preference.

Open-back headphones provide you with much more detail and spatial awareness. The sounds have a lot of air to move within, and you usually get a better sense of where it’s coming from. If you are playing FPS games where it is very important to know where your opponent is coming from, having a decent pair of open-back headsets could be of the utmost importance.

RPGs or MOBAs

If you’re playing RPGs or MOBAs, it might not really make a difference. Open-back headsets do lose a lot of the low-end frequencies and don’t sound as punchy. If you don’t plan on playing competitively at home, you will most likely be better off with a closed-back pair of headphones.

It’s also important to remember with open-back headphones that the noise isolation isn’t great. So if you are gaming in noisy environments, they aren’t the best.

How Long Do Gaming Headsets Last?

Premium headsets can last for more than five years before you will experience any issues. That is if you take care of them.

Headsets like the Beyerdynamic Custom Game have replaceable parts. This extends its life cycle by quite a few years. As long as you don’t break the sound drivers themselves, you won’t be needing a new headset anytime soon.

Cheaper headsets like the HyperX Alpha Cloud usually last around 2-3 years with good care and some occasional cleaning.

Looking For More Options

Need even more choice? If so, check out our in-depth reviews of the Playstation Gold Wireless, the Razor Kraken, or the Logitec G432.

So, What Are The Best Gaming Headsets?

If you are on a budget, it’s best to stick with trusted brands like HyperX and Razer. The HyperX Alpha Cloud is a great budget option, as well as the Kraken X Ultralight.

If you are shopping for premium headphones, Logitech has the largest share of gaming headsets within the Esports market. And the SteelSeries Arctis Pro is also a great headset used by many Esports gamers.

Happy gaming.