13 best gaming headsets for an immersive streaming experience

This headset looks and feels every inch as premium as its price point suggests. The best wireless gaming headset we’ve tested, it has a quietly refined fit and finish and a refreshingly minimalist aesthetic, steering well clear of the dazzling look-at-me RGB lighting effects found on rival headsets.

It sounds sensational, too, with loud 50mm drivers delivering a spacious and detailed soundstage across the spectrum. Bass is powerful but controlled, mids and vocal tones are clear, and highs are crisp, even with spatial audio activated. That performance means the stealth pro is a superb headset for music and movies as well as gaming.

It also offers excellent active noise cancellation, not often seen in gaming headsets, effectively eliminating external sounds, to immerse you more fully in the experience. It also comes with a wireless transmitter dock, which doubles as a charging point for the headset’s pair of swappable battery packs. Mic quality is decent, if a little flat and compressed-sounding by default, with directional pick up meaning you’re always heard clearly.

The Corsair HS55 punches above its weight at the budget end of the best gaming headsets. The muted design keeps things simple and neat, with none of the flashy RGB lighting found in the more attention-seeking headsets in our list, but the HS55s deliver where it counts. They feature a comfortable adjustable head strap and memory foam earpads, boast remarkable audio quality for a sub-£100 pair of cans, and pick up your voice with clarity and minimal distortion.

The lightweight build makes them comfortable for longer gaming sessions, and the fit of the headband avoids that clamping force found on some budget headsets. The 50mm drivers produce clear audio across genres, from explosive shooters to chilled out Sims sessions, with balanced mids and an overall neutral-sounding mix. Bass presence is there but not overpowering. We liked the classic volume roller on the earcup, too, which is easier to adjust with a single finger than a rocker or button.

This is a near-faultless premium gaming headset. Great-sounding, and stylish enough to replace your day-to-day headphones, the cans feature everything you’d expect from a pair costing more than £300.

The dual-diaphram, 40mm neodymium drivers provide crisp, rich and high-fidelity audio suited to music playback and gaming, while the impressive active noise-cancellation and transparency mode makes them ideal for commutes and travelling. Two batteries are included, so you can swap one out, for effectively infinite battery life.

The retro-styled base station acts as a charger for the battery you’re not using, a hub for switching between multiple audio sources, and a volume controller. There’s even a hidden USB-C port under one of the earcup plates, for charging on the go.

We’re big fans of the sleek, understated design – there are no gaudy RGB lightshows here – and the comfortable ski-band headband distributes the weight of the headset evenly.

The soundstage is nicely balanced out of the box but, if you want to fiddle with EQ, the Sonar audio app lets you finely adjust frequency bands for game audio and chat audio, activate virtual 7.1 surround sound and spatial audio, and adjust your mic settings on a per game basis. The mic is the best we’ve tested on any wireless gaming headset – aggressively filtering out keyboard taps and background noise, without muddying your vocals.

This is a do-it-all headset that excels in every aspect. Expensive at more than £300, it’s worth every penny.

If you don’t want to spend too much on a PC gaming headset but don’t want any old cheap tat, pick up the Turtle Beach recon 50. This £20 pair is wired – connecting to PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and PC, using the 3.5mm jack – and packs in a surprisingly decent sounding set of 40mm drivers for the price. The headset features an adjustable microphone with a foam cover, to cut out jarring sibilance and ear-popping plosives. Usefully, the microphone can be fully detached, if you don’t plan on chatting online.

Materials are plastic and lightweight, but not flimsy, and those pleather earpads feel anything but premium. However, build quality is otherwise impressive for such a cheap headset. The recon 50 can even be picked up in red and blue, to match the Nintendo Switch, if colour matching your accessories is a priority.

This headset is the tech brand’s latest flagship gaming headset, refining and improving on the legacy of its hugely successful predecessor. Logitech has done a remarkable job, too. Audio quality is superb, with redesigned 50mm graphene drivers delivering consistently well-balanced results across highs, mids and lows, and affording games a rich, cinema-quality soundstage. At the low-end, bass is textured and clear, so finer details such as booming gunshots and rumbling jet engines don’t get lost in the mix.

The headset is one of the most comfortable we’ve tested – 40g lighter than the original Logitech G pro, it’s built from lightweight materials and uses memory foam ear cups that grip snugly against the head, to reduce fatigue during longer play sessions. The detachable cardioid microphone does a capable job of noise reduction, too. Vocals are consistently clear and audible, though, like every gaming headset in our list, the mic falls way short of using a decent, dedicated USB microphone.

An unabashedly premium gaming headset with a price tag to match, the Logitech G pro X 2 is capable enough – and stylish enough – to work double shifts as your regular wireless headphones.

A super comfortable gaming headset, the Corsair HS80 max gets everything right. The fit is snug, thanks to a softened floating headband that rests atop the head without pinching, and a pair of plush, breathable memory foam earpads that are glasses-friendly and avoid putting much pressure on the ears. The simple silhouette looks great on camera, and we happily wore them for hours without getting that icky, toasty sensation.

Custom-tuned 50mm neodymium drivers provide superb audio fidelity across the spectrum and at high and low volumes – from rounded vocals and crisp delicate high notes to decent, if a little underdeveloped, bass. The omni-directional mic can be flipped up to mute, which is always a nice touch, while PC and PS5 players can take advantage of 3D audio or Dolby Atmos, depending on your platform. The bundled Bluetooth wireless receiver can also connect up to three devices, so you can swap easily between console, desktop and laptop.

The Audio-Technica ATH-M50xSTS is a bit of a mouthful, but this premium gaming headset is built on the revered audio brand’s professional-grade ATH-M50x monitor headphones. In fact, this is essentially that pair of headphones with the audiophile brand’s excellent 20-series cardioid condenser studio microphone attached, for streamers and online gaming.

This means you’re getting exceptional sound quality from 45mm large-aperture drivers, delivering crisp highs, detailed mids and punchy, rounded bass. You also get a flip-to-mute adjustable mic that delivers great voice clarity in-game, owing to a cardioid pickup pattern that passively tunes out unwanted external noise. Ostensibly designed to be worn all day by sound engineers, the headset comes with two sets of earpads, one for sound isolation and one for breathability, while the wide, padded headband is comfortable for long play sessions.

Another gaming headset from a revered audio company, the Audeze Maxwell wireless goes all in on top sound quality. Taking centre stage are the two 90mm planar magnetic drivers, a driver type typically reserved for high-end audiophile headphones.

This gives the Audeze Maxwell an unbeatable frequency range on paper. In testing the difference is stark compared to mid-range and budget headsets, producing impressive, immersive and noticeably more nuanced sound in cinematic games like The Last of Us and Spider-Man.

The design is plain and pleasingly retro, and the headset is comfortable to wear despite its relatively heavy weight. Mic performance is decent too, with automatic noise suppression working well to reduce background noise and focus on just your voice. The Audeze Maxwell could consistently tune out the hum of a nearby fan, as well as our mouse clicks.

This is the 2023 edition of the superb Razer Blackshark V2 Pro gaming headset, which adds a few notable improvements over the original. You now get Bluetooth connectivity as well as the usual PlayStation or Xbox USB wireless dongle – a small update that makes the Blackshark V2 Pro way more versatile, particularly if you want to pair them with your phone or use them as a regular pair of headphones.

The Razer brand has huge sway in the e-sports community, and with good reason. This headset looks and sounds amazing, is comfortable to wear for long play sessions and is tuned for gaming straight out of the box. The balanced soundstage and an emphasis on bass frequencies helps you pick out important aural cues like footsteps and reloading sounds, while the companion software gives you full freedom to tweak the EQ to your own preferences. We found that useful when playing more relaxed titles with richer orchestral soundtracks.

The boom mic performs well in noisy situations, and the price is remarkably good value – the Razer Blackshark V2 Pro punches above its weight in the mid-range gaming headset category. We tested the PS5/PC model, but there’s an Xbox version available too.

Striking a balance between affordability and functionality, the recon 500 sits in the middle of Turtle Beach’s extensive range of gaming headsets. A wired headset for Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and anything with a 3.5mm audio port, it delivers everything you need, in a well-priced package. The biggest upgrade over the cheap and cheerful recon 50 is in build quality – the recon 500s are better constructed, with a more premium metal-reinforced headband that’s more comfortable for extended wear.

The memory foam ear cushions are glasses-friendly and come wrapped in a fabric mesh, making them less clammy than pleather alternatives. The boost in audio quality is apparent, too, with 65mm drivers providing decent and detailed all-round sound. Bass is nicely prominent, though, predictably, a little muddier than higher-priced headsets. Overall, these sound great for the price.

Stock of the recon 500 is limited, with only the Arctic camo version available to buy at the time of writing.

This is one of the best mid-range gaming headset Logitech makes – coupling a balanced soundstage with a stylish and sleek design. Futuristic without looking too silly, the headset is complemented by some subtle RGB detailing that can be customised or switched off to conserve battery life.

They’re comfortable, too, with memory foam ear cups, a snug clamp and a soft inner strap that takes the pressure off the top of your head. Logitech’s lightspeed wireless protocol gives the G733 an impressive 29 hour battery life, too.

Sound quality is decent out of the box but Logitech’s excellent companion software can be used to tune the profile to your exacting preferences, delivering great tonal detail in noisy shooters while still rendering orchestral music and softer notes in laidback games. We found the detachable microphone to be flat and inconsistent at first, though, once you’ve adjusted settings and found a mic positioning that works, overall voice clarity improves.

While, at first glance, they appear to be exclusively PlayStation accessories, the Sony inzone range of gaming headsets, earbuds and monitors are designed and built by Sony Electronics, the folks behind some of the best wireless headphones and televisions around. The inzone H5 is an exceptionally slick-looking gaming headset, mirroring the minimalist white lines of the PS5, but actually performing at its best when connected to a PC.

Immersive spatial audio and a dynamic, crisp sound profile ensures your games are being experienced as the developers intended, and the lightweight (borderline-flimsy) construction means they’re comfortable to wear for hours on end.

Wireless connectivity is a little finicky, however: the H5 doesn’t have Bluetooth, relying instead on a 2.4GHz dongle to connect to your PC or PS5 (or even your phone, if you really wanted). You can also use Sony’s powerful tuning software on PC to tweak the inzone H5 to your tastes, while on console you can’t. That, oddly enough, means there are better gaming headsets to recommend to PS5 players than Sony’s very own.

A great value option, this gaming headset excels where it matters. Plush memory foam ear cups and a lightweight design create a pressure-free and comfortable fit, while the braided 3.5mm cable adds a premium touch to a sub-£100 pair of cans.

The 53mm drivers perform at their very best around the mids and highs, but they tend to give up a little detail at the extremes of the lower end. Some muddiness in the deepest end of the bass means darker sounds can lose their clarity, but the overall soundscape is balanced and zingy. The HyperX cloud III supports DTS headphone X spatial audio and are generally great-sounding headphones at this price point.

The 10mm microphone punches above its weight, taking advantage of its wired connection to give vocals a dynamic and well-rounded sound. Noise reduction is well-tuned, too, eradicating background noise such as keyboard taps and mouse clicks.