SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro X Gaming Headset for Xbox - Signature Arctis Sound

I am writing this review after an initial 2 weeks. I will come back and update if I have insightful longer term updates to provide. Before jumping into my $.02 I think it's useful to prefix review input with past experiences and what I'm comparing my product against. When thinking about music and overall sound quality, I have Apple AirPod Max's that blow these things out of the water. These can't touch the Max's bass, nor do they sound as smooth and natural out of the box (as everyone has said, these are quite flat out of the box). I also have SennHeiser MB660s that have been my work conference/music-at-the-desk and occasionally my gaming headphones w/o a mic and even they sound far, far better for music and even in some games (assuming OOB setup, not fully configured with Sonar). I am also going to address the lack of ANC outside of the pros/cons list, because I think the use cases of this headset are unique compared to general over the hear headphones. Despite my opinion, I do think it's odd the wireless version of these have ANC and these don't. However, I think if you want pure, fairly competitive or natural and detailed game sound quality above all else, you do not want ANC hissing and adding pressure to your ear. If you haven't owned in or over ear headphones with ANC you might not realize that the constant pressure they create on your ears cancelling out noise will fatigue your ears for long gaming sessions. I also don't think when I need to hear footsteps exactly where they are around me and where they're going in Warzone that I want to try to separate ANC hiss from game noise. I guess this could be easily addressed by putting the feature in the headphones and letting the game profile turn it on off. PROS: - the sound profile is very flat out of the box. I think that opens the most options wit the Sonar EQ software to adjust them to more peoples preferences. - if you read this and are a gamer who plays games that has voice chat, I totally under-estimated and under-valued what the GameDac can do. The GG software splits up game sound, your game mic, and your game chat mix into 3 individual audio streams. The best part of this, is games like Warzone let you split which audio device the game uses for those audio outputs. You can then press the dial on the dac once and adjust the output between chat and game sound. This means I can dynamically adjust hearing my team or the game - if people have low mics, are mumbling, or are obnoxious children blaring music into their mic during the game I can curtail that instantaneously. - despite no ANC the ear cushions do a really good job of blocking out most sound - I think the ear muffs and head band could be more comfortable than my Sennheisers and AirPod Maxes. These things just disappear on my head. I have never gamed more than an hour and a half straight without taking them off, but I thought nothing of them being on my head for that long. - the mic is excellent, especially with the ClearVoice "AI" filter - the game presets are pretty good out of the box. the sound quality and clarity are excellent. despite lacking in music impact, I have to admit these are probably are setup as they should to give the most accurate, clear in game sound. the sound imaging to pinpoint players is spot on, the volume levels are good. I cannot take these more than 75% in war zone without hurting my ears. CONS: - the Sonar software component of the GG suite requires a SteelSeries account to enable. This is totally unacceptable and just shows where SteelSeries is trying to monetize by getting your e-mail address. I have never found an aspect of Sonar that requires SteelSeries knowing who I am or utilizing an account to manage or enable my product. - I don't think if you're an audio snob you'll have a jack of all trades headset. as I mentioned above I have at least 2 over ear headphones that aren't even in the same solar system for music - stop buying the hype about the marginal better sound quality from the DAC. 99/100 normal people with untrained ears with average hearing can't tell the difference between compressed bluetooth audio and lossless wired headphones, all else equal. I bought the wired because I have so many bluetooth or wireless devices in my headset that when I want to game, I do not want interruptions, drop outs, hitches or blips.

Great headset and love the GG app very lightweight and comfortable for long gaming session and glad with the gen2 gameDAC they used a normal audio plug so you could use another headset if you wanted to the only complaint I have is the audio cord is rubber coated and you co standby have to disconnect and untwist it, its 2025 im sure there are better options for cord material that dosent twist up all the time. Overall a great buy

These headphones sound so incredible and has way more options than I thought I needed. Firstly these fit very comfortable and it is a snug fit to the sides of the head but the strap feels like it is floating above your head. I thought the strap would be weird or uncomfortable but it is not and I am happy with it. I just came from the Corsair Virtuoso Wireless and these are much more comfortable. The head strap on the Corasir was painful after extended use of a few hours so I had to buy a cushion that clips on the band. Back to the Arctis Nova Pro I love the dac and steelseries.gg app. The dac is very high quality and pushes these drivers way farther than I have heard a headset go. If your motherboard is not powerful enough to push high end headphones then this will fix that and push plenty of power to these. The sound quality is crazy and I have been listening to music that I listened to for decades and hear new sounds that I had no idea were there. It separates the l very well even for a closed back headset. I play plenty of Pubg so the footsteps are a must and every other headphones I used were never enough so I had to turn it way too high and add a separate app to push it even further. The clarity of foot steps even in smoke grenades is awesome. You need all sound awareness and direction and I can pin point directional audio with more clarity with these. I have only had them for a few days so I will update after a year or so with further details.

These were awful. Sounds terrible out of the box, apparently only good if you painstakingly engineer a useable sound in Sonar. People kept telling me the mic was too low even though the gain was on HIGH and the mic volume was 10 and all updates had been taken. Also they felt heavy to wear long term, they're so tight I can feel my heartbeat in my ears, and the earcups heat up in about 5 minutes. No idea how these are "Best of 2025"...

I have mixed feelings about the headset. I bought the wired version because I was reading online the quality of the wireless headset is only good when its wired. On one hand the sound quality is fantastic, they are comfortable, and they have a lot of cool features. Spatial sound is fantastic. Having said all that I had a huge problem when I first got the headset. I plugged in everything and got it up and running and the sound quality was atrocious. Well turns out I plugged in the headphone jack too much by MAYBE half a mm. I noticed on both the headset itself and the control port will do this if the cable isn't plugged in exactly right. So if you accidentally tug on the cable a little too hard, which isn't really hard to do, the sound goes in/out or goes L/R only, etc. For a $300 headset I would hope they used better equipment than what seems like cheap headphone cables and jacks. But like I said that's my only issue. Time will tell how bad the issue truly is.

I have been through a couple of different headsets, and this one foots the bill easily. No disconnects/drop-outs/ etc.. The audio and bass are top notch. Crystal clear audio and works well with the 5.1 surround. I can hear directionally where other players are or sounds are coming from. The DAC is a nice added feature as you can on-the-fly adjust game sound vs chat with friends. This works well as you assign each app a different audio output via virtual outputs. So for Discord I choose and audio output called CHAT, and for my game I choose an output called GAME. Then on the dac while playing you adjust the wheel to bring one audio up and the other down. It's as easy as turning the dial from left to right. Click the wheel and then you adjust the overall volume. it' super cool and I would buy it again. When I travel I just take the headest and not the DAC. My laptop supports the 5.1 natively so I don't need the DAC. This headset has nothing to recharge and is hard wired via 1 USB cable. Easy to use and the software gives you lots of additional options such as equalizer. I would highly recommend this headset.

The left ear did not work when it came out of the box also I got mine from Best buy just to get it the same day cuz I'm impatient. When I was comparing apples to apples the dial on the one from Amazon did not feel completely smooth it felt almost as if there was small piece of stuck in there kind of similar to how the dial feels after years of use. The one from Best buy that was not defective was super duper smooth when turning the knob.. obviously it'll be different sellers that you're buying it from but just know that the dial should be super smooth you should feel absolutely no obstruction and the headset is very loud if it's not very loud it's defective. The right ear that did work was not very loud. The one I got from Best buy that was working properly was very loud. I am still going to write five stars as the item came very quick and the item was as described. It is not the seller's fault that the manufacturer had a defective item.

The headphone hardware itself is outstanding. No question. And the DAC that comes with it is serviceable. But there are better options available if you also listen to high-fidelity music files and want multiple sound profiles for other sound sources. The problem here is the assumption that you’re this imaginary “Gamer” who does nothing but play video games. The headset only comes with two identical USB cables to attach to their DAC. If you want to connect to something else, you’ll need to purchase separate cabling. This is not the first time I’ve had issues simply connecting a Steelseries headset to standard audio hardware. I own the SteelSeries Arctis Pro High Fidelity Gaming Headset that also would not connect to anything but a computer via USB. In that case Steelseries support sent me the connecting hardware I needed to make it work. In this case their support said that I could not connect their headset in any other way without losing sound quality. This isn’t true. But, as I said, the headset itself is very good and, in my view, worth the extra six dollars or so to make it work. It’s much more comfortable than the earlier Arctis Pro. Its sound quality is superior. It’s only diminished by marketing and branding, targeting a single and likely imaginary demographic. Their slogan, “For Glory!” along with liberal use of acronyms like GLHF is just fluff. No one is going to choose to purchase this product based on that. And if you're like most people and listen to more than just the sounds of video games, you may find the Arctis DAC lacking. DTS is gone, replaced by their Sonar system, designed to aid in hearing the position of enemies in video games. Other DACs also target video game players but offer multiple profiles for various sound experiences.