A good set of gaming earbuds offers solid sound, a good battery life, and stable connectivity, all in a package that can easily fit in both your pockets and your ears. Luckily, the Steelseries Arctis GameBuds, our absolute favorite earbuds for gaming, do all that and come in at a mighty reasonable price.
Over at Amazon, you can pick this pair of earbuds for $148, which is more than $50 under its MSRP. This is the best ever price we've seen on a pair of buds we'd recommend even at their full price.
As one of our highest-rated bits of tech from the entirety of last year's PC Gamer reviews, our Jacob liked this pair of earbuds so much it made him finally return to earbuds for the first time in a decade. This is why I wasn't particularly surprised to see we gave it an incredibly high 94% in our Steelseries Arctis GameBuds review.
We said the GameBuds "come close to over-ear audio quality", and this is helped not only by their 6 mm neodymium magnetic drives but also game-specific audio profiles. These are fine-tuned to crank up the important parts in games, such as footsteps in Counter-Strike 2, for a competitive edge.
Outside of games, they still sound fantastic, with our Jacob saying they almost compare to a proper pair of over-ear cans. They come with a solid 40 hours of battery life (10 from the buds and 30 from the case) but are also Qi-enabled, which means you can charge them wirelessly and quickly. IP55 water resistance is an extra touch that makes them a good set for taking out and about, too.
Perhaps our biggest annoyance with testing out the GameBuds is that they can only connect to one Bluetooth device at a time. You can swap quickly from the 2.4 GHz connector to a Bluetooth device, but should you want to swap from PC to mobile to Steam Deck, you will need to either move the dongle around or disconnect and reconnect via Bluetooth.
We also noticed we could take the mesh inside the buds out, which happened during a vigorous clean, but we did manage to get it back on with some effort.
With these fairly tame critiques out of the way, the GameBuds are simply the best gaming earbuds right now, thanks to an excellent feel, sound, and battery life.
The GameBuds we've highlighted (which are the only set below $150 right now) are the Xbox version, which, aside from Xbox branding on the package, seems no different from the set our Jacob loves so much. They do come in Black, as opposed to the white of the PlayStation model, but work with PC, Xbox, PS5, Nintendo Switch, mobile, and handheld gaming PCs just fine. For the money, we wouldn't recommend a single set of earbuds over these right now.
1. Best overall: HyperX Cloud Alpha
2. Best budget: Corsair HS55 Stereo
3. Best wireless: HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless
4. Best mid-range wireless: Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 3
5. Best audiophile: Beyerdynamic MMX 330 Pro
6. Best wireless audiophile: Audeze Maxwell
7. Best for streaming: Audio-Technica ATH-M50xSTS StreamSet
8. Best noise-cancelling: AceZone A-Spire
9. Best earbuds: Steelseries Arctis GameBuds
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