Gaming in India right now is more popular than ever, with fans and brands alike bringing the best that they have to the table. With great audio being one of the quintessential aspects of a great gaming experience, we have seen many brands come in with headphones that have the potential to actually help you game better and get good. Technologies like spatial audio are almost a norm across budgets, and brands are pushing boundaries to get you the best gaming experience possible by packing in not only great features but also focusing on tuning their headphones better.
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Even wireless connectivity is not as unpopular as it used to be amongst the enjoyers of gaming genres that require prompt actions based on audio cues. Such has been the evolution of gaming audio. This year, when we pit the best-performing headphones against each other, the competition was pretty close, with the difference in performance between the first and second headphones on our list being minimal. But in the end, it was one pair of headphones that came out on top…
Price: ₹39,999
The wired cousin of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Wireless, released in 2022, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro, took the top spot on our scoring sheets and took home the Digit Zero1 Award for the Best Gaming Headphones in 2023. The Nova Pro carries over the same design as the Nova Pro Wireless and the performance as well. The headphones have a fairly balanced sound, with a subtle boost to the mids and the highs. However, they manage to preserve the bass well, reproducing every sound effect with great detail and the way that the developers intended to.
If you are someone who is into multiplayer games, communicating with your teammates, then the boost in the mids makes sure that their voices are heard by you clearly in the heat of the virtual battles that you are involved in. Talking about communication, the microphone on these headphones is also great. It does a great job of isolating your voice and filtering out the background noise in some relatively challenging environments as well. If you are a purist, then you might feel a boost in the highs, which might make you sound slightly shriller. But that’s about it.
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The out of box sound profile of these headphones makes them suitable for general content consumption as well. And, using the GameDAC that comes packed with these headphones, you can tune the sound to your liking as well. The positional accuracy of the sound coming from these headphones and the staging is also on point, ensuring that you are able to track everything that comes at you in the game with ease. Across platforms, these headphones carry their performance, ensuring that you will not have difficulty switching between platforms. With their excellent sound quality, be it in input or output, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro stood out amongst the gaming headphones launched in 2023.
Price: ₹26,999
When a brand that has been known to make great consumer audio products comes into the world of gaming with years of experience in audio, you get the JBL Quantum 910 Wireless gaming headphones. The winner of the Digit Best Buy Award in the Best Performing Gaming Headphones Category, the JBL Quantum 910 Wireless, also stood second in our performance standings. The reason why they bagged the Best Buy Award was simple – they perform great, they are built well, they are comfortable to wear for long gaming sessions, and carry looks that would appeal to every hardcore gamer.
These headphones come packing with JBL QuantumSPHERE 360 technology, which takes spatial audio to the next level by adding head tracking to the mix. This gives you great positional awareness in games while also maintaining the immersive experience that you were looking for in the first place. If you are not on your PC, then you will be missing out on the head tracking, but the JBL QuantumENGINE remains, which brings great positional audio with itself to whatever platform you are gaming on. These headphones also sport ANC, which honestly is better than some mainstream headphones which come at a similar price.
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Their wireless connectivity does not introduce any noticeable lag into your gaming experience, and the battery, which lasts over 30 hours, also ensures that you do not have to be tethered to your system. The microphone on these headphones is also one of the best of the lot we tested this year. On the topic of mics, the headphones come with a dedicated dial and dual connectivity, with certification from Discord. This means that while you game on one device, you can connect to the other for voice chat and control the amount of audio coming in from either of the two sources. As for the sound signature, it is bass-heavy out of the box, which is typical for JBL products, but not to the point where it drowns out other sounds of the game such as dialogues or other minute ambient sounds added in for immersion. And, as it is with the winner, the sound can be customised in the app. The design of the headphones allows them to sit comfortably on your head for longer periods of time without causing any discomfort. All this combined made the JBL Quantum 910 Wireless the top contender for the Digit Best Buy Award 2023 in the gaming headphones category.
For more information on Digit Zero1 Award winners across various categories of products, please visit: https://www.digit.in/zero1-awards
