SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite Review

Introduction

The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite is the brand’s most premium offering yet.

It’s got everything you could ever want from a modern gaming headset, with all-new carbon fibre drivers, active noise cancellation, swappable batteries, a plush and premium chassis and some of the most versatile wireless connectivity out there.

This puts it right in contention as one of the best gaming headsets out there, although there are two immediate problems it needs to overcome. One is the sheer amount of top-level competition, including the Sony Inzone H9 II and Razer BlackShark V3 Pro, while the other is its immense £599.99/$599.99 price tag that makes it doubly expensive against its rivals and the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless it now sits above.

I’ve been putting the Arctis Nova Elite through its paces for the last couple of weeks to see if this ultra-premium headset can claim the top spot.

Design and Features

• Stylish two-tone colourway
• Comfortable fitment
• Rich connectivity and base station functions

With this new flagship version of the Arctis Nova lineup of headsets, SteelSeries hasn’t deviated too much from its winning formula, instead adding small but classy touches to help justify the large jump in price.

For instance, the colour scheme has shifted from simple black or white options to an intriguing baby blue and gold-accented number, which aids in providing a more premium look right out of the gate. Even the headset base station’s control dial is gold to match.

Elsewhere, we’ve got subtle changes in materials, including a faux leather wrap around the metal frame of the headband and a softer, neoprene-feeling cloth material on the suspension element. These aid in both feel and in comfort – the Arctis Nova Elite retains its predecessors’ excellent fitment and pleasant clamping force with optimal weight distribution across your noggin.

The earcups are thick and plush, and I think they are thicker than the ones on the Nova Pro Wireless, although they remain leatherette. Perhaps at this price, protein leather or even genuine leather would have been a good addition. To my knowledge, the similarly-priced Focal Bathys I use every day have genuine leather earcups, and exude even more of a luxurious and plush feel as a result.

Nonetheless, the Arctis Nova Elite’s earcups prioritise comfort and a good seal for the active noise cancellation over the breathability that a memory foam option would. They are also pleasantly deep and help provide excellent passive noise isolation without the need for active noise cancellation. These earcups are also replaceable, eschewing any complaints about long-term durability.

Headband adjustment is similar to the other Arctis Nova headsets, with the option to use both the suspension headband and the main metal one in tandem to get an optimal fit. Adjustment on the main headband is smooth, while you get three sizes for the suspension headband.

The Arctis Nova Elite’s on-board controls are mostly loaded onto the left side, with a power button, microphone mute and volume wheel. The right side merely houses a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button. The controls are tactile, although it is a little difficult to distinguish between the buttons at first use. You also get a 3.5mm jack for audio on the left side, while the USB-C port you’d expect is hidden behind the left earcup’s removable cover. 

Both of the earcup covers are removable to provide access to the USB-C port and swappable batteries, which has become a hallmark of the Arctis Nova Pro headset in the past. You get two swappable 700mAh batteries that provide 30 hours of endurance each, effectively giving these cans 60 hours of battery life. One sits in the right earcup of the headset, while the other charges with the headset’s base station.

I found SteelSeries’ claimed 30 hours of playtime to be bang-on accurate, with my experience in using these cans over a mix of 2.4GHz and Bluetooth at moderate volumes resulting in several days’ worth of listening before swapping the battery over. Each battery takes roughly three hours to charge fully, but SteelSeries claims its fast charging delivers four hours of playtime from just 15 minutes of charging via USB-C.

As was the case with the Nova Pro Wireless, the base station holds the key with this Elite model, allowing for up to four connections to a range of devices, plus the simultaneous mixing of audio from all of those sources. Add in Bluetooth and 2.4GHz channels, and you can theoretically connect the Arctis Nova Elite to up to six devices at once.

The base station deals with this through three USB-C ports (with Port 3 specifically designed for Xbox compatibility and marked accordingly), plus dedicated 3.5mm line-in and line-out jacks. It worked plug and play with my Windows gaming PC and Xbox Series X for some gaming, and pairing to my Honor Magic V3 over Bluetooth 5.3 worked a charm.

In addition, you can also control settings such as volume levels, change EQ settings and pair to 2.4GHz or Bluetooth means right from the base station. If you’ve got the Tidal music streaming service, it’ll also pull through track metadata to the little display on the base station; unfortunately, it didn’t work for Spotify in my casual listening.

The other big thing with the Arctis Nova Elite’s connectivity is that it works with everything out of the box, including both Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Previously, you’d have to choose which version of the Arctis Nova Pro to buy depending on which console you had. As well as working with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, this headset is also happy with PC and Mac, plus Android and iPhone, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, Meta Quest headsets, tablets and gaming handhelds. That’s certainly an exhaustive list.

Audio support is up to fully-fledged 24-bit/96kHz Hi-Res with supported content – handy if you want to pair these cans to a more specialist DAP for proper audiophile quality listening, or pair them to your phone with a Tidal subscription in tow. This works over either 2.4GHz or Bluetooth with the LC3+ codec (there is also SBC and LC3 on offer), although with the caveat of a reduced range against other models in SteelSeries’ canon. With the Arctis Nova  Elite, you can go around 30 feet before things go sour – on other Arctis Nova headsets, you’re looking at close to double.

Software support comes with the usual SteelSeries GG app that provides a means of dealing with its capable parametric EQ, plus its virtual mixing desk that’s handy for streamers who have multiple audio devices they want to keep in check. It’s in here where you can also deal with things such as the voluminous app of game-specific audio presets and spatial audio modes, with Dolby Atmos and Windows Sonic working on PC and Xbox, and Tempest 3D audio on PS5.

If that wasn’t enough, the Arctis Nova Elite also supports the Arctis mobile app which gives you the means of selecting settings on your phone, such as those game-specific presets and EQ settings. Considering this headset is marketed as a go-anywhere-do-anything one, it makes perfect sense.

This headset also features active noise cancellation, which I felt was a bit of a moot point on the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless, and it has been taken up a notch with this Elite model. I found it to cancel out a lot more noise, especially lower-pitched noises such as the drone of my computer fans or the noise of a radio in the next room. It effectively dealt with my deliberately loud keyboard, too. 

Audio and Microphone

• Tight, deep low end
• Rich mid-range with lovely detail and clarity
• Solid microphone

With the Arctis Nova Elite, SteelSeries has employed carbon fibre drivers, which are designed to enhance general clarity and detail and eliminate distortion through being stiffer than other dynamic driver types.

They haven’t deviated from the bass-first response that the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless had in my experience, although the general feel of these cans was one of sheer detail and width in conjunction with that tight, deep low end. On tracks such as Brand X’s Not Good Enough, See Me!, I noticed its deep bass and the rich, detailed mid-range with the track’s intricate drum work, courtesy of Phil Collins. 

Likewise, the busy Meanwhile from Steven Wilson demonstrated excellent extension and a tight feel in the track’s grittier parts, with lots of atmosphere and rumble. It wasn’t so much overbearing as reassuring, even if songs sometimes took on a darker character because of it.

It had the benefit of accentuating atmosphere in games, too. In my playthroughs of both Counter-Strike 2 and various missions in GTA Online, gunfire and explosions were deep and powerful, adding an immersive quality.

The mid-range here is lovely, with excellent extraction of fine detail, as found on a live cut on George Benson’s Love X Love. With it, his vocal was pushed to the front of the mix with a pleasant warmth to it. In addition, Jack Johnson’s Tape Deck provided a discernible depth to his vocals, plus I felt the crispness of the song’s percussion elements and his acoustic guitar.

I must also commend the wide and deep soundstage of the Arctis Nova Elite, both in music and in games. Brand X’s Dance of the Illegal Aliens is a notoriously busy track, with competing elements of bass, percussion, guitar and keyboards that were each given plenty of breathing room, while the brilliant preservation of detail across the soundstage allowed me to pick out inflexions in the bongos far off to the right side of the mix that may have been lost with other headphones.

In Counter-Strike 2, the placement of footsteps and distant gunfire was some of the best I’ve noted besides competition-centric headsets such as the AceZone A-Spire and Sony Inzone E9 IEMs. Footsteps had a crisp and sharp quality to them, which was pleasant, even if I was getting killed a lot.

The only chink in the Arctis Nova Elite’s armour, in my experience, was that while the top end preserves a lot of clarity and detail, I did find it a little jarring at times. For instance, in Ralph MacDonald’s Calypso Breakdown, the song’s incessant bell hits felt a little fatiguing to listen to, although I did note the width of the soundstage as the song built up with drums, bass and guitar in the opening couple of minutes.

As for the microphone, that’s probably one of the best you’ll find on any gaming headset, with a decently rich pickup and good overall clarity. The noise rejection is also excellent, with it able to eliminate my deliberately loud mechanical keyboard and the atmospheric noise of my PC’s case fans under my desk. 

Sure, you will get much stronger quality from any of the best microphones out there, although if you’re spending this much on a headset, you might already have one around to use.

Should you buy it?

FAQs