A good quality gaming headset can make or break your game. We look at a host of aspects to determine which gaming headset of 2018 provides the gamers with the best user experience. Let's have a look.
A good quality gaming headset can make or break your game. Although you will be able to hear all the necessary sounds on most of the gaming headsets, you might not be able to pinpoint the direction they are coming from. Another aspect is the soundstage, if it's too narrow, you will feel claustrophobic. A wider soundstage is always preferable to offer you an immersive experience. The sound signature varies a lot since manufacturers may choose to boost the low or mids according to the effect they are going for.
However, the best performing gaming headset will manage all these audio aspects without sacrificing too much on one of them. We also evaluate and compare the microphone quality on these headsets to select the winner who provides a wholesome gaming sound experience.
2018 Zero1 Award Winner: Audeze Mobius
Usually, every gaming headset boasts dynamic drivers. Even though some manufacturers have experimented by adding more than one dynamic drivers, there weren’t any changes in using a different driver to deliver audio. Enter Audeze, an audiophile-centric company that develops high-end planar-magnetic driver headphones and IEMs/earphones. This year, the company brought over the driver technology they use on premium headphones to a lower segment, in the form of the gaming headset.
The advantage of having a planar-magnetic driver is a better soundstage and bass that doesn’t distort the audio at higher volumes. Overall, the headset offered a wonderful and immersive gaming experience. Coming to the microphone quality, noise cancellation was the best out of all the headsets we tested this year. The Mobius offers the best experience not just in games but movies as well. Whether it’s gaming, music or movies, it delivers brilliant performance on all aspects.
Runner-up: Corsair HS70 Wireless
Wireless gaming headsets are extremely convenient. However, this shouldn’t make you want to sacrifice audio quality. The Corsair HS70 Wireless is a brilliant gaming headset with a wonderful soundstage and bass, however, it doesn’t match the Mobius. Immersion in 7.1 virtual surround mode was, at certain times, was better than the Mobius. Sometimes loud explosions and playing too long affected other sounds including vocals.
Music playback was decent as well. The connectivity and features were great but the microphone quality was a setback. Overall, it fell short on the audio quality front and more on the microphone quality. Nonetheless, the Corsair HS70 Wireless is a pretty great wireless gaming headset that will do its job.
Best Buy: Zebronics Orion
The Zebronics Orion performs surprisingly well for its price. The soundstage was wide but the bass wasn’t powerful enough. Music listening experience was a little above average. All these things are to be expected at this price. However, we were shocked by the amazing quality on the microphone.
The sound signature of the mic retained the reverb and clarity of the voice. In a blind test, you might not even know that this great recording quality is coming from the Orion. With a decent sound signature and acceptable clarity, along with the surprisingly good microphone quality, the Zebronics Orion deserves to be the Best Buy this year.
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Abhijit Dey
A Star Wars fan and sci-fi enthusiast. When I'm not playing games on my PC, I usually lurk around the Internet, mostly on Reddit. View Full Profile
