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I’ve been hooked on SteelSeries gaming headsets ever since the Arctis Pro launched more than five years ago. The Nova range upped the quality with feature, fit, and software improvements, and the company is now going one step further with a $599.99 Nova Elite headset — a price that I’ve been questioning every day during my last month of testing.
With the Nova Elite, SteelSeries has created a category of luxury gaming headsets that doesn’t really exist right now. It’s banking on hi-res wireless audio, carbon fiber speaker drivers, a metal frame, and the ability to simultaneously stream audio from a PC, Xbox, and PlayStation to make it the best gaming headset on the market.
But is $599.99 too much, even for the best gaming headset?
Aside from the new sage and gold color option, the Nova Elite looks very similar to the existing $379.99 Nova Pro — especially when comparing the black versions. The frame and control wheel are both metal now instead of plastic, and the memory foam ear cups are more plush and feel more comfortable on my ears this time around.
The mixture of aluminum and stainless steel materials also makes the Nova Elite a lot sturdier than the plastic Nova Pro, which also makes it fit better for me. I have a fairly large head so the Nova Elite fits snugly over my ears, instead of slightly loose like the Nova Pro. And while the active noise canceling nub inside the ear cans irritated me on the original Nova Pro, I don’t even notice it on the Elite.
The Nova Elite’s frame is metal instead of plastic. The plush memory foam ear cups are super comfortable. There’s an adjustable band to improve the fit. The GameHub DAC lets you control the headset and charge its batteries.
All of these material and comfort improvements are coupled with a first for a gaming headset: hi-res wireless audio. You can stream 96kHz / 24-bit audio over 2.4GHz with the included GameHub DAC or via Bluetooth with LC3+. It’s a little fiddly to set up thanks to the complex audio interface in Windows, and once enabled, you’ll really need the right game or audio file to tell the difference.
The hi-res audio support is a subtle enough improvement that I had trouble noticing it, but the overall sound quality improvements, along with the carbon fiber drivers, are more obvious. I played the Battlefield 6 beta for hours last month with the Nova Elite, and then I switched back to my Nova Pro headset. The explosions, tanks, and gunfire all sounded better with the Nova Elite, but it really depends on what games you’re playing.
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