SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni

It's relatively easy to fall in love with a new SteelSeries headset if you already feel that their unique combination of features and design choices places them at the very pinnacle of the market. But that's just how I feel. It's deeply rooted in the specifications and design choices that I believe offer the perfect combination, and since these are repeated in the Arctis Pro, then the Arctis Nova Pro and most recently, the Arctis Elite, well, we're starting from a pretty positive "baseline", so to speak.

The latest addition to the range is called the Arctis Nova Pro Omni, and let's just start by listing these highlights, which admittedly recur elsewhere in SteelSeries' line-up, but which deserve praise time and again. First and foremost, SteelSeries' premium headsets remain the absolute best-built and most comfortable on the market. There is just the right amount of memory foam in the ear cushions to provide comfortable passive isolation from the outside world, and the construction is neither too flexible nor too rigid - it's just as it should be. On the sides, we once again find tactile, physical buttons that you'll quickly learn to use without having to look for them first.

Their wonderful OmniCast Pro microphone is still tucked away inside the ear cup itself, so you don't need to pull it out or flip it up when it's not in use. There's built-in Noise Rejection, which brilliantly manages to separate voice from background noise, and it really never gets in the way. It delivers sound at 32kHz/16-bit, and I have virtually no complaints here.

And it just carries on like that. GameHub is both the powerhouse from which the "Omni" functionality springs, but it's also where your brand-new battery sits ready when the headset inevitably runs out of power. It takes 10 seconds, as the battery is, as always, tucked away behind a magnetic cover in one of the ear cups, and then you're good to go. This solution means that you will never, truly never, find yourself in a situation where the headset doesn't have enough power when you really need it, and it's utterly shocking that no one has managed to copy it, or even run with the idea.

Comfort, convenience, physical buttons, a fantastic microphone that tucks away easily, so this is still a bit of a "victory lap", isn't it? The sound is also fantastic. It's delivered by custom 40mm neodymium magnet drivers, covering 10-40,000Hz. There's support for Hi-Res 96kHz/24-bit, and the active noise cancellation here is surprisingly effective. Not only that, but there's also Bluetooth 5.3 and LE Audio, which means you can connect a whole range of additional devices should the need arise.

And then there's the whole "Omni" aspect. What SteelSeries is essentially saying here is that the Arctis Nova Pro Omni is one of the few headsets on the market that is truly platform-agnostic. By that I mean you only need to buy this one model to be guaranteed access and the full feature set for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch and Switch 2, PC, Meta Quest, smartphones, you name it.. In fact, you can in principle use the GameHub box to access an Xbox Series X, PS5, and PC via the dedicated USB-C ports, connect to your phone via Bluetooth and optically to a dedicated microphone at the same time.

And it doesn't even stop there, as there's Spatial Audio support, plus support for Tempest 3D on PS5 and Windows Sonic Spatial on Xbox. In many other respects, there's a particular need for distinct Xbox versions of the same products, due to Microsoft's slightly annoying Wireless Protocol, but here it all works, and all at once, too.

The price is still high, but as we've argued, I honestly can't think of a headset that offers quite as much, and delivers the best version of every single one of those distinct features. SteelSeries just proves once again that their formula, their framework, is so precisely tuned that it's simply impossible not to be completely blown away by this. Well done.