SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite Assessment: Gaming Overkill?

The bottom station has one other neat trick; it may cost and home a second battery. I acquired virtually 30 hours of use on a single cost, simply wanting SteelSeries’ quoted life, however so long as you’re close to the bottom station, you primarily have infinite battery life. When the battery will get low, simply swap the spare and the useless battery, and your headset will mechanically flip again on and reconnect inside a couple of seconds. The spare battery fees in lower than two hours, and there’s a sneaky USB-C port on the left ear cup simply in case you’re away from dwelling for too lengthy.

Finely Completed

{Photograph}: Brad Bourque

Match and end could be my different huge motive to decide on these over the Arctis Professional or BlackShark V3 Professional. The Arctis Elite are tremendous sturdy, with an upgraded steel headband that feels actually critical. When you may get them in black, you need to as an alternative go for the sage and gold shade. It is immediately eye-catching and chic, significantly amongst gaming headsets, which are usually both darkish and drab or excessively gamer-coded. Sadly, this feature-packed headset can also be the heaviest I’ve examined but at 380 grams, nearly 10 grams heavier than the Razer. SteelSeries headbands are probably the most comfy round, because of the “goggle band” suspension strap that helps unfold the burden throughout the highest of your head, however it may solely achieve this a lot.

In the meantime, the ear cups are comprised of fake leather-based that will get a bit sweaty, particularly over lengthy gaming periods. Razer has managed to crack the code on breathable ear cups and ANC, however the noise discount within the SteelSeries is healthier because of this. The distinction in consolation between these two can be a matter of desire, however I would not advocate both if you do not have robust neck muscular tissues.

If the worth tag right here offers you any pause in any respect, I feel you need to take a look at different choices, together with the superb Nova Professional, which has an identical base station and app help. The $250-$350 hole between the Nova Elite and every other gaming headset is sufficient for a soar to a extra highly effective GPU, or to make quite a lot of smaller efficiency enhancements throughout your system.

Finally, past the flexibility to attach extra consoles, the upgrades are principally significant for listening to music, and fewer impactful for gaming. For multi-console house owners with deep pockets and an expansive music library, it is a feature-packed headset with no actual opponents, however I do know I would have bother discovering room for them in my new PC price range.