Steelseries ARCTIS NOVA Pro Review – A little disappointing… 

Much like the Wireless version of the Steelseries ARCTIS NOVA Pro I reviewed last week, the NOVA Pro is the latest high end headset from Steelseries. It’s actually a spitting image of the Wireless version – sans all the fancy features mind you. It even has the removable magnetic covers, which on this headset cover… nothing. I must admit that having reviewed the fancier version first, I feel a little underwhelmed at what you get for the £250 price tag that these things command. The biggest difference should be audio quality. These are fully Hi Res Audio certified with 96KHz sampling at 24 bits via the GameDAC Gen 2. Specifically, that’s powered by an ESS Sabre 9218PQ40 digital to analogue converter which provides a signal to noise ratio of 111 dB – a pretty decent figure especially for anything to do with gaming.

The headphones themselves use 40 mm neodymium drivers, which is actually a fair bit smaller than I’d have expected – 50 mm is pretty standard in these sorts of headphones. They have 38 Ohms of impedance which is fairly low, 93 dB sound pressure level and a frequency range of 10Hz all the way up to 40,000 Hz. Considering human hearing on a very good day doesn’t go over 20,000Hz, that seems a little excessive to me but I guess it’s good to have more than you need!

Now I mentioned that the difference between these two SHOULD be audio quality – the NOVA Pro’s are wired with the fancy GameDAC to drive them, but in my experience I’m not sure I found these to be any better, in fact I could swear they aren’t as good. Now to be clear I’m not talking about a significant, marked quality difference, and moreover I’m no audiophile, but even my frankly untrained ears can pick up something weird going on here. On the whole they do have a pretty good, if flat, profile. I’d say the treble is perhaps a touch lacking – or more like a weird mix where sometimes higher pitch noises are sharp and uncomfortable, and sometimes you barely hear them. Strangely, on the “Smiley” EQ profile that you set with the display built into the GameDAC, I found a little better of an experience. It still isn’t quite right, but it’s a little better.

It feels a little strange to say, but I could swear these change how they sound every time I listen to them. Even the same songs seem just a little different on each playback. Since I unfortunately can’t afford the tens of thousands for the fancy audio testing equipment, I’m going to borrow from RTINGS review of these headphones – their review is linked in the description and while I’m sure you already know about them and their excellent work, I can highly recommend checking them out before making any purchasing decisions! The big things here are the treble response which as they describe is all over the place, and possibly more importantly, the frequency response over the course of multiple tests is equally messy. Test one and five start off low on the bass end, whereas tests two, three and four all start pretty high on the low end. They then diverge again between 1 and 2,000 Hz, and again between 2 and 5,000 Hz, then some spike dramatically up while others spike dramatically down, and again they diverge pretty greatly between 10 and 20,000 Hz. If I didn’t know any better, this could have been five different headphones on test – but it’s not! That explains my listening experience weirdness quite nicely, and means these 

Of course, none of this matters all that much for gaming. You still have decent directionality and even the flat profile does a decent job at relaying footsteps and gunshots around you. But for £250 I’d really hope that these would be a reliable, high end offering for all your sound consumption needs and I just don’t think they are. Of course comfort is a big part of a gaming headset – you want it to be a comfy thing to wear for hours on end while gaming – and I can’t tell you for sure that this will be a good fit on your head. You do have plenty of adjustment in both the ski goggle headband and in the earcups. They can slide out for larger heads, swivel to match your head or sit flat around your neck, and tilt a tiny amount. What’s really weird to me is that these earcups are completely different from the wireless version – the wireless one has what feels like memory foam inside, with a fairly quality feeling faux leather over the top. The wired ones have a considerably cheaper, already wrinkled, thinner vinyl cover, less foam inside to the point that they are visibly shorter, and as my wife described, the foam feels like a dish sponge in there. They sound like crinkled plastic bags when you put them on your head, compared to the proper quality feel you get from the wireless ones. That means these are less comfortable for me personally. I couldn’t wear the wireless ones for hours on end, but I could still appreciate the quality. The wired ones? Yeah an hour at most before they started to get uncomfortable. 

[Mic test in the video]

While I am glad the mic sounds better than the wireless version, I’m really quite confused by the NOVA Pro. The wireless version feels like a £300 headset – both in features, sound quality and build quality. This feels like a £50 headset with a £200 box to drive them. Even little things like the volume wheel. On the wireless version that is a nice quality, smooth scrolling wheel. On the wired ones it’s a cheap feeling, weirdly gritty wheel. That feels like a microcosm of the headset. The GameDAC feels great – the massive dial feels beautifully smooth and premium, the OLED is a nice usability feature (even if I know that’s rather similar to the OLED on my open source response time tools, and I know how much that costs to implement and use), but the second you look along the wire and up to the headset, I honestly think you’d be disappointed with where your money has gone. 

In short then, if you have this kind of money for a headset, and you still want Steelseries, the Wireless version is a significantly better option on pretty much all counts. If you aren’t too fussed about it being Steelseries branded, there are excellent options like the Beyerdynamic DT990 PRO which is more like £135 right now, plus a ModMic and something like the FiiO K3 to drive them which depending on the mod mic you get adds up to between £280 and £310, but for that you are going to be having an absolutely incredible experience. Of course, those are my thoughts but I’d love to hear yours in the comments down below, and of course if you do want to pick one of these NOVA Pro’s up – or just check out the pricing when and where you watch this, I’ll leave a link in the description for that.