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Wireless headset recommendations

JackOfDiamonds

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Since discovering gaming headsets (currently I have a logitech G Pro X), I've found them to be way more comfortable than almost any other headphones. I guess they are designed for gamers to wear 12 hours straight. But the only downside is being attached to my computer by a cord. At first I thought a cordfull headset would be better, because I hate dealing with unreliable wireless connections, and I don't need more devices in my life that have batteries that can run out. I like plug + play, and corded does that. But if I could at least wander away from my computer and walk around my shop without having to take my headphones off, it would be that much more of a comfort factor (first world problems).

Can anyone recommend a gaming headset that is 1) super comfortable 2) super reliable and non-fiddly wireless and 3) sounds good, maybe even good enough for music? Money is almost no object because it's for "work".
 
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dcg9381

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I can't recommend a particular headset. I think what I use is one of the mono-price knock offs. But their battery life is pretty much all day.

Do look at a "noise cancelling" headset - big difference. The headset I have has noise-cancellation or a mode where it will transmit ambient sound (in case I'm listening for something).

Bluetooth connections are very reliable, but have limited range.

The best headsets (coming from the aviation space) are made by Bose.. I see they some "home" versions.
 
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JackOfDiamonds

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I've been told the Sony WH1000XM2 and Bose headsets are the best for noise cancelling and sound quality. I've also been told they have bad microphone quality for phone calls, which is what I will use it for 90% of the time, and have too much lag for gaming. That's why I went to gaming headsets, because they usually have good boom microphones. They usually are bad for listening to music and noise cancelling though...I don't know why the gods of capitalism can't give us good, comfortable wireless headphones with low latency and a good microphone and good sound quality. It seems you can't get that combination at any price.
 

gte718p

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I use Bose QC2 noise cancelling for my computer. They connect with Bluetooth, have a decent mike, and pretty good sound quality. I can wear them all day.

Not a gaming set, but has worked well for me for 8 years.
 

isb cornbinder

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I had a Sony model. My wife bought 2 BOSE headsets for me. I use on with my tablet nest to the bed and the other BOSE at my desk. The BOSE, while pricy ($450 each) are so much superior.
 

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midshipmen89

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I use two different Corsair headsets for gaming; an older HS70 and a newer Virtuoso XT. Both are great. The HS70 is lower profile, lighter, and has higher clamping pressure; the Virtuoso is bigger overall and has larger round earcups with very light pressure, almost too light. Shaking your head will unseat them easily. The Virtuoso sounds about 20% better, but the mic is a significant upgrade. No ANC on either headset, which is a drawback in an office environment. but seal reasonably well with Wicked Cushion pads.

The main upgrade with the Virtuosos is being able to pair them to two devices simultaneously. This function is intended to allow streamers to listen to copyrighted music in their cans while listening to and streaming their game audio - this feature also works well for video/audio calls. Volume can be controlled separately from your second audio source, so you can keep some background music going without disturbing neighbors or callers.

For pure comfort, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro gets my vote. They also have a retractable microphone - no misplacing a 3.5mm mic - and rechargable batteries. The headset comes with two, one for the headset and one to charge on a base station. The base station also acts as an interface between multiple sources and volume control. The batteries are proprietary, which *****, but it's a nice system in my opinion. Also, ANC, dual stream, and a pretty nondescript look.

Regardless of brand or price range, I highly recommend 2.4 gHz with a USB dongle over Bluetooth, both for latency improvements and connection stability.

Side note - the real pro tip here is to use proper high fidelity headphones with a separate mic; I use Sennheiser HD650s for the sound stage, as I live alone, and there's no noise to hear through the open backs. Antlion offers a line called the Mod Mic, which is a magnetically attachable microphone for use with any headphones you like. They offer wired and wireless mics, and the two I've used were good quality. Pair a good set of headphones with an amplifier to drive them properly and a high quality audio source - I recommend Tidal for relative ease of use - and you'll notice a surprising difference.

If you're looking for quality audio, headsets marketed towards gamers will disappoint you. As you listed audio quality in third place, this may not be the most relevant advice, but I figured I'd offer my $0.02.
 
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JackOfDiamonds

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If you're looking for quality audio, headsets marketed towards gamers will disappoint you.

I think you are right, so I should just grab some Bose or Sony wireless headphones, but if those would be useless for work meetings or gaming, I can't justify the purchase.

In a past life I used to collect music headphones, and I didn't mind paying $1000 or more for them. But it seems like the invisible hand of the market has decided we can have headphones with good sound quality, which don't work for gaming, or we can have gaming headsets, which have **** sound quality. Which is sort of surprising because gaming does benefit from good sound quality, and for that matter many games contain music, but alas.

The idea of having a separate mic is actually sort of brilliant so I'm going to do more research on that. Definitely not wireless though. I might have to just give up on wireless headphones with good sound quality except maybe the Bose. Lots of people are telling me good wireless headsets just don't exist and I'm starting to think they might be right.

Edit: I just realized my logitec headphones have that feature where you can hear your voice through the headphones. If I buy separate headphones and mic, then I guess I don't get that? Unless there's a way to do it with the PC software.
 
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jpaw

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The sonys are at xm5 now. I have xm4 and use them while mowing the lawn.
The sonys have superior noise canceling and audio over the bose. The bose are more comfortable and have a better mic.

There are a lot of other options out there if you don't need noise canceling.
I believe best buy has both the sony and bose on display that you can try.
 

Citation

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I'm a really big fan of the Plantronics Voyager Focus UC and specifically the gen 1 version, not the gen 2.
https://www.amazon.com/Plantronics-...-Canceling/dp/B013F4LKWO?tag=atomicindus08-20
(For reference only, not suggesting buying from that listing)
I can't say anything about their lag. I've never noticed it but I also don't game with them. As for price, well my first pair was free from work. I've since looked on ebay and picked them up used in great condition for as little as $25.

OK, why do I like them?
1. They are comfortable - this is one of the primary reason I prefer Gen 1 over Gen 2. These are relatively light and designed to be on your head all day.
2. They work with two devices at once. I have a work and personal cell phone. These will pair with both at the same time. If you are listening to music on your personal phone, that will pause if you get a work call.
3. They have very good audio for calls. These headphones not only have noise canceling for you the wearer, but also for the people on the other end of the call. If you don't remember to lower the boom mike people on the other end won't hear you. On the other hand, if you have a noisy old pickup, well people will hear you, not the truck and road noise. Note that they have very limited passive noise blocking so these aren't like the BOSE where they really isolate you from outside noise. Instead they do a good job of cutting out background AC/fan noise, etc. They make a notable difference when driving my car/riding in a plane.
4. They have a good set of controls on the headphones. A dedicated volume control, play/pause, fwd/bk buttons, a mute button etc.
5. They have side tone. This is like an old school land line where you can hear your own voice thought the speaker. So if there is wind noise from your mic you will hear it. I recall my old StarTac phone had that feature but most phones after didn't. If nothing else, if the line goes dead the side tone will stop and you know the line is dead.

Mixed or bad things:
1. They use USB micro - it's a **** plug design but I do have a lot of them. You can also get them with a charging stand which avoids
2. The 12 hr battery life is probably based on not using noise cancellation. They will last me most of the day so long as I'm not on a bunch of calls.
3. They are an older BT standard. I'm not sure why that's bad but reviewers of other devices seem to think the BT 5.0 standard is better than 4.something.
4. They are not rugged. These are for the office, not the construction site. Keep that in mind when thinking about durability.

As a side note, I've really become a fan of several of the PLT/Plantronics models. Often it's because you can get refurb models off ebay for very good prices. I've got the Backbeat Go 410 (around the neck, BT earbuds that support two phones, noise canceling and side tone) and the Plantronics Voyager 8200 which is meant to be a larger, over the ear setup with better sound quality (more BOSE like). It's got basically the same features as the Voyager but better sound quality, more noise isolation and a mic array so there is no boom mic but you still get the great isolation of background noise when on a call. They also have much better battery life. However, since I am mostly listening to podcasts I don't use them as much as the other two. The Go 410 can typically be found refurb on ebay (properly clean/unused) for $20 or less. I use them till I break them then replace them.

Still with all that said, I can't say how any of them do for latency. They are all primarily about voice quality.
 

Ohio Andy

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Why do you care about latency?
Especially if you're in a phone call latency can be a big deal with causes before you respond to them and then takes a while for them to respond to you, or at least until you're here what they say.

I connected my phone using Bluetooth to my Toyota Camry and then I started playing a YouTube video and the audio is at least 2 seconds behind the video that shows on the display. So if I'm hanging in the car watching a video waiting for something. I do not want the audio to go through the car even though it will sound better through that stereo because the video is not watchable
 

pizza

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i'm very ignorant of bluetooth technologies, maybe someone can educate me some.

but something i've noticed is that 'duplex' connections (where the mic is active) results in the audio bitrate for listening dropping quite a bit.

is there a newer protocol out that addresses that, or would the product basically have to open up a second bluetooth connection as a workaround? are there any products that do that?
 

Citation

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i'm very ignorant of bluetooth technologies, maybe someone can educate me some.

but something i've noticed is that 'duplex' connections (where the mic is active) results in the audio bitrate for listening dropping quite a bit.

is there a newer protocol out that addresses that, or would the product basically have to open up a second bluetooth connection as a workaround? are there any products that do that?
There is a mode on the Plantronics called HD voice. It's supposed to result in better sound at the expense of battery life. I've never tried it but my PLT Voyager Focus has it.
 

bwringer

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Are you looking for sound isolation, or would "on-ear" rather than "over ear" do the trick?

I use a set of these inexpensive JLab Go Work wireless on-ear headphones for at least a couple of hours of meetings a day:

The mic is on a boom, which sounds a LOT better than anything without a boom.

I find them far more comfortable than over-ear style. They sound pretty dang good with music as well, although maybe a true audiophile would

I can say that Bluetooth implementation has gotten dramatically better across the board in the last year or two. Even the super-cheap in-ear plugs I use for mowing sound great and the connection is 1,000% rock-solid.

Of course, both ends of the connection have to be current as well; I have older devices that can't seem to maintain a good connection very well even with newer headphones.
 
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gte718p

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I think you are right, so I should just grab some Bose or Sony wireless headphones, but if those would be useless for work meetings or gaming, I can't justify the purchase.

In a past life I used to collect music headphones, and I didn't mind paying $1000 or more for them. But it seems like the invisible hand of the market has decided we can have headphones with good sound quality, which don't work for gaming, or we can have gaming headsets, which have **** sound quality. Which is sort of surprising because gaming does benefit from good sound quality, and for that matter many games contain music, but alas.

The idea of having a separate mic is actually sort of brilliant so I'm going to do more research on that. Definitely not wireless though. I might have to just give up on wireless headphones with good sound quality except maybe the Bose. Lots of people are telling me good wireless headsets just don't exist and I'm starting to think they might be right.

Edit: I just realized my logitec headphones have that feature where you can hear your voice through the headphones. If I buy separate headphones and mic, then I guess I don't get that? Unless there's a way to do it with the PC software.

I personally don't like the Sony. However, that is preference. With the Bose the mike is only okay. You absolutely can use it in a business meeting. I works. That is what I use when I'm on my laptop. However at my desktop, I greatly prefer a separate mike. I was a sound tech at one point in my life and I like toys. I think it also sounds better and gives you more options. My go to is a Yeti Blue USB. It sounds pretty good and is easy, but has some trade offs in sound quality. I also have a cheap sound board with USB out and have used a Beta 57 and Shure lavaliere in different situations. I don't generally use the headphone on video calls and more, the lav give me a lot of room to move around and still be in the sweet spot of the microphone. I tend to move around to much for the wired stand mic.
 

Mas78

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If you are looking for a good work headset I agree with Citation above.

The Plantronics headsets have pretty decent comfort, good noise cancelling, you can wear them with the boom mic on the left or right, which ever you prefer. When you flip the boom mic up it mutes the mic automatically which is nice when you have a cough or need to quickly answer someone in person without needing to click the mute icon on the computer. The boom mic also does really good at not picking up people talking 5' or less away which my co-workers appreciate.

They Bluetooth connect to you computer, or you can use the USB dongle to connect to.
30'+ connection to my work laptop with direct Bluetooth connection

I've bought 2 of this model B825 to have one to leave on my desk all the time and a 2nd for offsite work since I liked it.

I really do like the stand it comes with as well, headset is always charged and ready for the next Teams meeting or for when i want to play music to drown out others.

I haven't used them for gaming, but I think they would be ok for that. Likely not as well as over the ear headsets out anymore but if you need a headset for work meetings at all this is the best I've found so far.
 

Citation

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If you are looking for a good work headset I agree with Citation above.

The Plantronics headsets have pretty decent comfort, good noise cancelling, you can wear them with the boom mic on the left or right, which ever you prefer. When you flip the boom mic up it mutes the mic automatically which is nice when you have a cough or need to quickly answer someone in person without needing to click the mute icon on the computer. The boom mic also does really good at not picking up people talking 5' or less away which my co-workers appreciate.

They Bluetooth connect to you computer, or you can use the USB dongle to connect to.
30'+ connection to my work laptop with direct Bluetooth connection

I've bought 2 of this model B825 to have one to leave on my desk all the time and a 2nd for offsite work since I liked it.

I really do like the stand it comes with as well, headset is always charged and ready for the next Teams meeting or for when i want to play music to drown out others.

I haven't used them for gaming, but I think they would be ok for that. Likely not as well as over the ear headsets out anymore but if you need a headset for work meetings at all this is the best I've found so far.
The Voyager focus and B825 are the same model. I forgot to mention the long range. I've accidentally left my phone on the car and got 100+ ft away before I realized! Really easy to recommend!
 
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no704

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I’d like to find something we could wear into containment at a nuke plant to be able to communicate with coworkers. Hearing protection and has to work with a hard hat.
 
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JackOfDiamonds

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I bought one of the 4th-generation Sony headsets, which just dropped to $200. The sound quality is good enough for music and the noise cancelling is amazing. But people right away noticed my voice sounded worse in meetings, so probably won't be able to use these for work.

Also they smoosh my ears so I bought some thicker pads hoping those make it comfortable to wear on these 13h flights to Japan I have to do.

For now I will go back to using my logitech prox-X wired headset for meetings, but it was for meetings that I really wanted wireless, so I can get up and stretch or wander around during meetings. Since I'm happy with my Pro-X wired I bought a Pro-X wireless for $100, which I'm hoping is exactly the same thing as my wired headset, and plan to use that just for work calls and gaming, but I need to wait for it to be delivered to be sure.

It looks like I need to give up on finding headphones that work for everything, and get busy building a rack for all the different headphones at this point.
 
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niget2002

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I use the corsair Void headset for both gaming and work. They do use a USB dongle instead of just bluetooth. They've worked really well for me. Amazon says a 40ft range, but I can walk around most of my house and still have signal. They're wireless, but will still work if hooked up to a USB cable for charging. I usually use them hooked to the charger and only pull the plug if I really need to walk away while still listening to something.
 
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JackOfDiamonds

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Ok update to my adventure.

First I bought the wireless version of my wired gaming headset, the Logitech G Pro X Wireless. It was about $200.

It worked, and had no perceptible lag when gaming, but the sound quality was basically garbage compared to the wired version. I expected it to be the same as my wired headset, which is why I bought the same model, but not even close. Since I wasn't going to pay $200 for worse sound quality just to not have a wire when gaming, I returned it. I didn't test the voice quality which I now regret.

I gave up on wireless for gaming for the moment...I'm normally sitting still when gaming, so I don't need wireless as much, but I do want wireless and good sidetone for work presentations. Sidetone is when you can hear your own voice in the headset. It's an essential feature for headsets. Without it, you can't hear yourself, and often end up talking too loud and getting fatigued.

I decided to stop messing around and bought a professional headset: The Jabra Evolve2 65. It was about $175. It was garbage! It was comfortable, sound quality was OK (don't really care for conferences), but the VOICE quality was bad! I had people telling me they couldn't understand me, etc. To verify this I made recording of myself comparing all my headphones and the voice quality of this Jabra headset was on the level of the cheapest generic earbuds....maybe worse. I even repeated the test with Teams, Zoom, and Windows Sound recorder, and no doubt about it...voice quality was terrible. It's currently packaged up ready to be returned.

Here is how voice quality stacked up:
Logitec G pro WIREFUL headset by USB: perfect voice quality. Almost like real-life.
Logitec H390 USB headset: perfect. This is a $20-30 unit. It has no sidetone, and it's not comfortable, but it's what I'm using.
Logitec G pro WIREFUL headset by laptop soundcard: distinctly worse than by USB, but still very good
Random wired earbuds: usable if I can keep the cord mic in place.
Laptop speakers alone: Not as bad as expected. Actually usable.
Wireless Edifier earbuds: Slightly worse than laptop
Jabra Evolve2 wireless headset: Worse than laptop, with bonus cutouts
Samsung Buds2 pro: Unusable (it turns out these have a known bug and don't work with Windows at all)

I'm currently using my $30 Logitec H390 wired USB headset which hurts my ears and has no sidetone. Still looking for a good headset with good sidetone but I might have to just give up on wireless and either try a Jabra USB headset to at least get better comfort and good sidetone, or shell out for the Nova Pro Wireless gaming headset, but I just can't shell out $300 without knowing if they are going to be bad like the Jabra was.
 

Citation

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I don't want to suggest a specific ebay seller but the Plantronics B825 is a really good set of cans for conference calls and OK for music too. Here is a "new" set for around $50 on ebay
https://www.ebay.com/itm/204970596687 (no knowledge of the seller, use at your own risk!) If you go used you can get cheaper. I saw preowned for under $30.
 

Git

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A couple of weeks ago, I bought the 'SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Headset' - Woot had 'factory refurbished' for $179. Not only are they very comfortable, but they also come with two batteries and a DAC.

Extremely pleased, probably the best headset I have ever owned

https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-...em-Headset/dp/B09ZWCYQTX?tag=atomicindus08-20


D24-1289.jpg
 
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JackOfDiamonds

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I tried a Jabra Evolve 65, it was garbage and I returned it.

I bought a used Poly 8200 on eBay, the one with the charging stand, and it's really good for a work headset. Not suitable for music or gaming, but good for work meetings and podcasts.

The lag on wireless is still annoying, even on conference calls. I noticed significantly more cases of people talking over each other when I'm using a wireless headset, and it's probably worse when the other people are too. I still use my wireful Logitec G gaming headset whenever I don't need the portability and better noise-cancelling mic of the Poly.
 

Citation

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Anything that includes a "video" so gaming, TV, watching videos, and, to a lesser extent, "phone calls".

Very annoying when sound lags the video
You said that on August 16th :D

This is what happens when a spam poster (since deleted) brings a that back.
 

Citation

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I tried a Jabra Evolve 65, it was garbage and I returned it.

I bought a used Poly 8200 on eBay, the one with the charging stand, and it's really good for a work headset. Not suitable for music or gaming, but good for work meetings and podcasts.

The lag on wireless is still annoying, even on conference calls. I noticed significantly more cases of people talking over each other when I'm using a wireless headset, and it's probably worse when the other people are too. I still use my wireful Logitec G gaming headset whenever I don't need the portability and better noise-cancelling mic of the Poly.
I've never noticed the lag on my headsets. On conference calls I bet much notice lag but I don't think that is due to the wireless BT connection. I think it's due to network lag, Teams processing etc. I've found the lag to be similar regardless of how I'm connected. It's very distracting if I can hear one of the meeting people both in real life and through the system. But that lag seems like half a second. I've never noticed it on videos on my phone. Perhaps the phone is smart enough to compensate.
 

Old tool guy

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I use these for zoom calls at work, and for listening to xm radio. They work very well, no adverse comments from others on the calls.

1731944112111.jpeg
 
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