SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Gaming Headset Review

How Much Does it Cost?

The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Gaming Headset is available now from Amazon with an MSRP of around £330 when it launched earlier in the year, it was expensive, but as of this week, it seems to have dropped to just £219.99, which is obviously a lot better! This isn’t a cheap headset, but looking at the sheer volume of features it comes with, it’s not that bad for those looking to step up their audio.

Overview

SteelSeries has a great reputation for gaming audio, with many award-winning headsets over the last decade and beyond, and actually, I’ve given them many of those awards in that time, and can’t really recall the last time they had a bad headset, if they ever did. Their more affordable models are fantastic in their own right, but their flagships are absolutely some of the best on the market right now, and this latest generation addresses all the minor issues I’ve had with previous models.

The battery life was always good, but having to tether to a USB cable while playing so you can top up the charge is a big pain in the ass. With the new hot-swappable battery system, this is easily fixed. Furthermore, simply replacing a faulty battery could mean some soldering in the past. However, it’s a magnetic cover and simply flip the battery out and you’re good to put a new one in. Having two batteries included is fantastic, and with 20-36 hours of usage on a single battery depending on how you use the headset, it’s likely most users will need to swap them once a week. I work and game at home though, so for me, every three or four days I need to swap the battery, but again, it takes 10 seconds to do.

If you do somehow drain both batteries, such as if you’re travelling and take the spare with you to play on mobile or Switch, that’s still 40-72 hours of total usage. Plus in a USB Type-C cable to charge them for 15 minutes, and you’ll get up to three hours of extra play time, but a full charge takes a fair few hours.

Being able to use two USB-C inputs is awesome, that’s not a common feature for headsets. I can have my PS5 on one, PC on the other, and switch between the two without swapping a single cable, and that’s a big benefit for those with multiple gaming setups. The headset is wireless too, so cable-free gaming, but still retains support for a 3.5mm cable for other devices should you need it.

I love that I can pair my phone via Bluetooth too, it means I can use Amazon Music, Plex, Discord, take calls, etc, while simultaneously using the USB input. This means I can play Battlefield on PC, listen to music on my phone, chat on Discord with my teammates, and mix all the levels on the fly thanks to the feature-rich desktop control unit.

The sound quality is great, and while it needs a bit of tinkering, that’s the luxury of such a feature-rich headset. You can EQ, customise ANC, side-tone, mix levels, hook up multiple devices, set up profiles, and much more. This is a complex headset, but that’s kinda the point, it does so much and that is sure to appeal to the enthusiasts out there. If you want a plug-and-play simple headset, there are plenty of those on the market, but if you want options and versatility, this ticks all those boxes.