Am looking for a new pair of headphones, mostly for gaming. The two aspects I care mostly about are comfort and good audio. Therefore wondering about people’s recommendations and experiences with headphones. What’s been your best headphones so far and why?
I’ve been using a pair of Sennheiser HD210s for closer to 10 years. Light and comfy and decent audio quality for the price.
I got the same pair many years ago for just 20€. They were amazing for the price, but sadly the rubber for the earpads and headband got flakey and i wasn’t able to enjoy them anymore… I’m using the HD569 now with replacable cables and earpads, but they are a bit pricey compared to the HD210.
Steelseries arctics 7
Reasonably comfortable, reasonably priced (if you catch a sale about $100usd), good mic with monitoring, wireless, but most importantly: they just work. I’ve had the same pair for 5ish years and have never had to troubleshoot.
Arctis 7 was truly the best headset, I have three pairs at this point. None of them broken - all were purchased because the headset was so good I wanted one for the office and for my wife.
However, Steelseries seems deadset on making worse versions of the Arctis with every iteration. The 9 was altogether disappointing and they are really trying to force all the features like the chat mix into Sonar software instead. Really disappointing.
I have a pair of these and I absolutely love them, so much so I convinced a few others to get them too.
Two of us have since had mic issues over he last couple of years where the mic is garbled and not clear. Not sure if it’s a uemser error or issue with them.
Other than that they have good batter, good ange from base, easy to setup, good audio quality, good controls, don’t weigh too much. Would buy again.
I’ve been using my Sennheiser HD 598 s for over 10 years. I’d recommend anything the same shape/size: being large over ears means it doesn’t touch or squeeze your ears at all. Being open backed and velvet padded stop my ears getting hot and sweaty. Being wired saves weight, prevents lag/quality concerns and isn’t too big a deal in a stationary gaming situation.
I do need to use an external mic for chatting, which is not ideal if you’re gonna be always in voice chats when gaming. Dedicated gaming headsets tend to not sound as good for the same price, but can’t deny the convenience.
Here is a recent rundown of recommendations by audiophile youtubers for gaming headphones might be worth watching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIwgVzSiZ68
Sennheiser pc38x if you want a headset, I’ve just been using monoprice bt600ancs with a vmoda boom mic on it. They’re fine, it’s ye old v shape in terms of frequency response.
The pc38xs were nice. They are open back so if bleed is a concern, be mindful. (The pc38xs were my friend’s headset, I just tried them when I visited)
I tried a bunch of different gaming headsets over the years but as I got older and gave up on online games, I grabbed a pair of AudioTechnica ATH-M50 and have probably had them at least a decade now. They’re closed ear studio monitor headphones so they sound great and are comfortable with long use. I’ve replaced both the cushions and the cable and they still work great.
I think the current variant is the ATH-M50x.
