Danish gaming peripherals and accessories manufacturer SteelSeries is back with another great little product the Arctis GameBuds Playstation 5 Edition. SteelSeries makes headsets, keyboards, mice, controllers and mousepads and needless to say over the years they have made some fantastic products all the Arctis GameBuds are no exception to that rule.

I was quite surprised with the packaging on these earbuds not being the SteelSeries orange we have all grown to see on their packaging, but it was the Sony blue which was fitting for the edition of wireless earbuds these were. You slide open the box to be greeted with this beautiful white charging case for the wireless earbuds with a nice flat finish of the SteelSeries logo on the top and the user manual that I’d be surprised if anyone reads.

Once you open the wireless charging case you are greeted with two white Arctis GameBuds in a beautiful white colour that could be described as a flat finish and a black SteelSeries logo in the middle of the ear GameBuds. There is also the 2.4ghz wireless dongle with a nice black finish which looked good when plugged in and would have looked weird if it was white. Each component had its own little home in the case. If you put that down and dive a little further into the box there is also a USB-C to USB-A conversion cable and a couple of extra earbud pieces if you have smaller or larger ears.

I’m starting to see more and more products coming out with multiple connection options which is fantastic and something I can get behind as you are not stuck with running multiple headsets because one might be compatible with Xbox and the other with Playstation.

The one thing that impressed me the most was the quick-switch wireless switch which allows you to be gaming if you are connected to Bluetooth on your mobile, running a 2.4ghz connection on your gaming console of choice, and you could accept the call whilst still playing the game without needing to pull the GameBuds out, it streamlines the process for those annoying people who ring in the middle of a gaming session. The little 2.4ghz dongle you get has a USB-C connection on it so using it on 99% of things is quite easy just plug and play and then paired with the software on the phone making all the adjustments a breeze.

I refuse to use headsets anymore that don’t have active noise cancellation, (ANC) due to environmental sounds around my house and also the noise my little aircon makes trying to keep the gaming space cool, which the ANC keeps blocked out so the gaming becomes more enjoyable. SteelSeries has pulled out all the stops with their ANC which is HiFI drivers paired with ANC which uses a 4-mic hybrid system that delivers something unlike anything I’ve heard.

To put it into perspective the door is not far away from me and I could not hear my partner knocking on it to come in the other day. There is another mode that can be cycled through via the software which is called “Transparency Mode”, which allows some of the background noise to come through so you can hear things like my aircon running or someone knocking. I’ll be honest, I’m running ANC cause I don’t want to hear the background so it well and truly did its job. 

I was quite impressed and surprised the Arctis GameBuds have an IP55 water-resistant rating which makes the GameBuds able to be used for more than just gaming, unless you are a complete sweat at gaming and your ears are producing mass amounts of sweat in your ears.

The GameBuds have been designed so well that they slide into your ears and sit there without feeling the need to rip them out because of them being uncomfortable. SteelSeries went to the next level with the comfort of these GameBuds and scanned over 62,000 ear scans to help build the perfect design and pair with the different silicone tips you can sit in comfort for hours.

You might be wondering what the features of the most important thing is with wireless hardware and that is the battery life we can expect from the product. SteelSeries broke this down nicely so all up you can run 40 hours of battery life so that is 10 hours per earbud. Then you can charge them three times from the wireless charging carry case, which is great battery life as most people work eight hours, so you can easily do a full workday uninterrupted and then a little bit more if you want before even needing to look into the charging case.

It does not stop there as there is a quick charge function built into the wireless charging carry case that gives you three hours of battery life just from fifteen minutes of charging. So you can get away with forgetting to charge them sometimes but I’m yet to meet anyone who does not put their wireless GameBuds back into the case when finished with them, unless you are like me and sometimes forget to charge the wireless charging case.

I liked how simplistic and easy the touch gestures on the GameBuds were to learn, with a couple of different options to quickly switch between 2.4ghz, Bluetooth, pause music, or even answer and end calls, everything was super simple and built into the GameBuds so you were never scrambling to try and make something happen when you needed to, it was just a matter of pressing the buttons on the GameBuds.

The SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds have a free application you can download from the App Store or Google Play, which pairs up nicely with the earbuds and allows you to use the functions that the earbuds have to offer.

The pairing process was flawless with this application, by the time I blinked it was ready which was fantastic if you are in a hurry and don’t have time to stuff around with connections. Once you are connected you will be taken to the home screen where you can see the charge percentage on the charging case or the GameBuds, and switch between Bluetooth connectivity and the 2.4ghz connection.

If you have looked into these GameBuds a little you will notice one of the biggest features of their headsets, and that is the pre-configured audio presets which in the current state have over 100 audio presets at your disposal. The best part of it being built into a phone application is that it can be updated and that list can keep growing, as long as they support the Arctis GameBuds. You can quickly click on a game you are playing as long as it’s on the list, and you can have the audio fine-tuned to that title if you are not quite happy with one of the audio settings. You can manually adjust it to your liking which was something I was super impressed with, but even rolling the GameBuds around in “Flat” seemed fine for certain things and still sounded amazing.

The SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds Playstation 5 Edition more or less feels like it is just the colour theme and not so much built for the console as the GameBuds work so well with everything I tried them with. They worked seamlessly with the PlayStation 5 and there was no point where I thought they could get better, being able to switch the audio setting between some of the games was awesome hearing the different levels of audio you could use. SteelSeries has also implemented its high-quality spatial audio support to the Arctis GameBuds to deliver unprecedented sound in beautiful 360-degree space.

The SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds are the smoothest design that fit so nicely into your ear that you sometimes forget you even have them in. The battery life is unbeatable and gives you ease of mind that you won’t be without audio for long. The usability and simplistic application to play around with the Arctis GameBuds was a breeze and the design taken after the PlayStation 5 was super sweet. You can pick the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds Playstation 5 Edition for $359 from JB-HI-FI.

Written by: Hayden Nelson