SteelSeries did a great job with their top-of-the-line Arctis Nova Pro gaming headsets. That includes the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless (reviewed here), which is the best gaming headset currently on the market in more ways than one, but this extends to the $100/€100 cheaper wired Arctis Nova Pro. As explained earlier in the review, connectivity is the main difference between them. While the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless comes with a 2.4 GHz wireless base station and Bluetooth, the "regular" Arctis Nova Pro is an analog gaming headset supplied with an external USB sound card. It also omits the Active Noise Cancelling and Transparency Mode features, but is otherwise almost identical to its wireless sibling.

What all that means is that if you're after a wired gaming headset with no plans to take it outside of your home, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro is as good as they currently get. The build quality is excellent; it is superbly comfortable to wear, offers a host of useful features, has a good microphone, and sounds very good. Just as important, the built-in speaker drivers respond great to equalization, and the elaborate SteelSeries GG software suite has a parametric equalizer, so there are almost no limits to what you can do with the sound signature of the Arctis Nova Pro.

The headset itself is analog, but its box contains the GameDAC Gen 2 external USB sound card. The GameDAC Gen 2 is a substantial upgrade to the original GameDAC in terms of interfaces (among them are two individual USB-C inputs, together with separate volume controls) and overall user experience. The onboard controls are more intuitive, and the volume dial is much larger than before, which is always a plus.

In the end, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro is easy to recommend, even at its current $250/€280 price point. Sure, with that budget, you can get almost any other gaming headset on the market, but even with that in mind, the Arctis Nova Pro still comes out on top.