The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 is one of the best gaming headsets in the $100 price bracket. SteelSeries trimmed down its outstanding Arctis Nova Pro in the luxury department but kept many of its great aspects intact while reducing the price by a whopping $160. That makes the Arctis Nova 3 almost a bargain.

There are many things to be liked about this headset, starting with its sound and microphone performance. The default sound signature leans heavily on the warm side with an audible veil in the treble region, but SteelSeries offers a feature-packed SteelSeries GG software suite, where you can tap into the powerful parametric equalizer to tune the Arctis Nova 3 more to your liking, assuming you don't prefer the stock sound signature. The built-in speaker drivers respond very well to equalization, so the sky is the limit. If you're after a more engaging sound with less coloration, you should focus your attention on removing the treble veil, which is best done by gradually boosting the 1-5 kHz region.

As for the microphone performance, SteelSeries integrated the same retractable ClearCast Gen 2 microphone it's using on the much more expensive Arctis Nova Pro and Nova Pro Wireless, so you're getting a microphone that sounds loud and clear and is capable of handling background noise well. The SteelSeries GG software suite even includes a 10-band microphone equalizer, a feature usually reserved for top-of-the-line gaming headsets, so that's another thing you can play around with.

The Arctis Nova 3 is also very comfortable to wear. It's equipped with AirWeave Memory Foam cloth ear pads instead of leatherette ones. They're a bit more finicky in terms of achieving a perfect seal and offer worse passive noise isolation, but they're also more breathable, making them a better choice for long gaming sessions.

Add to all that versatile connectivity options, with the Arctis Nova 3 happily cooperating with Windows and macOS computers, PlayStation 4/5 and Xbox consoles, the Nintendo Switch, mobile devices, and pretty much any other device with a USB port or a 3.5-mm analog output, what you get is a gaming headset that's very easy to recommend.