A Guide to Buying a Gaming Laptop Headset

If you’re a gamer, a good headset is essential. It lets you communicate with fellow players and hear the audio of your games in a comfortable manner. The best gaming headsets offer excellent audio quality, a high-quality microphone, and a lightweight design that’s comfortable for long gaming sessions. In this guide, we’ll take a look at the features to consider when buying one, and review our top picks for the best gaming laptop headset on the market.

Gaming headsets come in all shapes and sizes, from earbuds to large over-ear headphones. Some have removable boom microphones, while others are wireless and connect to your laptop via a USB or Bluetooth connection. The type of connection can impact sound quality and latency. Gaming headsets with proprietary wireless connections tend to deliver better audio quality and lower latency than those that rely on Bluetooth.

Most gaming headphones are built to amplify in-game audio, but some offer additional enhancements like virtual surround sound. Surround sound can give you the sense of immersion and location in your games, but it’s worth pointing out that this feature isn’t universally well-received by gamers.

The HyperX Cloud Alpha is an impressively comfortable, well-built wired headset that delivers a great-sounding audio experience for its price. Its earcup drivers are separated into their own chambers, which helps to reduce distortion that might otherwise muddy the bass with the mids and maximises articulation. The Cloud Alpha also stands out for its excellent noise cancellation, which does a fantastic job of keeping you isolated from the racket of your neighbours or co-gamers.

These budget-friendly, ANC earbuds are another solid pick for fans of PC gaming. Their companion app offers a range of useful gaming-centric features, and their mic does an outstanding job of separating your voice from background noise. However, they’re slightly heavier than the other headsets in this guide, and their battery life is shorter.

These over-ear headphones are a solid option for fans of PC gaming, thanks to their padded earcups and headband that feel comfortable on even long gaming sessions. Their companion app provides a range of useful gaming-centric features, including a custom EQ that lets you tailor them to your liking. They can also connect to your PC and PS4 simultaneously, although their HDMI 2.1 passthrough doesn’t work on Xbox, and their battery life is only around 30 hours. The HS55’s sound profile is warm and exciting, and they present footsteps, explosions, and soundtracks in a clear and detailed manner. They can be a little muddy in the low mids, though, which can make voices difficult to understand.