Should you bother with... gaming earbuds?

In hindsight, it’s surprising that it took so long for hardware manufacturers to start making "gaming" earbuds. If the likes of chairs, glasses, and chewing gum can be painted stealth-bomber black and prefixed with the G word, why not something that can actually get off its harshly angled bum and help pipe the games themselves into your head?

Then again, maybe gaming earbuds were just waiting for their moment. Obviously the Nintendo Switch is the Nintendo Switch, but the rise of handhelds like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally has driven desires for more portable (yet games-friendly) noise-deliverers 'round these PC parts as well. Thus, for another edition of Should You Bother With – the RPS column where a diaphragm of testing vibrates advice directly into the cochlea of understanding – let’s have a listen of these wireless buds and find out whether they’re a worthy replacement for your current go-to headphones.

A good starting point would be how exactly these are, in fact, gaming earbuds. Ask their makers – heavy gaming hitters like Asus, Sony, SteelSeries, Razer, and HyperX all have skin in this game, as do more generalist audio brands like JBL – and they’ll probably tell you it’s down to latency, perhaps also muttering something about better mic quality for voice comms. Which does make sense, as with the exception of very specific Bluetooth 5.4 earbuds paired to very specific Qualcomm Snapdragon devices, true wireless buds can easily add hundreds of milliseconds to audio lag.

Not a big deal for music, but potentially a source of audiovisual iffiness for portable games, where what you hear won’t perfectly sync with what you see onscreen. Upgrading to a set of conventional Bluetooth 5.4 buds won’t help either, as besides their lack of Qualcomm APUs, handheld PCs have so far stuck to older and slower standards: the most up-to-date are the Steam Deck OLED and Zotac Zone, which can only manage version 5.3.

Testing out my own everyday earbuds, the otherwise sonically excellent Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2, confirmed the issue. With these Bluetooth 5.1 buds paired to a Steam Deck OLED, there was more than enough lag for games to feel off. Bordering unplayable, sometimes. Elden Ring spell sounds clearly played out of sync with their visual flourishes, while in Half-Life 2 I could watch the pistol’s entire firing and cycling animation complete before the shot rang out.

Wired earbuds are one solution, albeit with the defining advantage of modern earbuds removed. Another, the one posited by gaming earbuds, is to use something other than Bluetooth. And the mutually agreed-upon alternative, it seems, is a 2.4GHz radio connection. The kind favoured by almost every wireless PC peripheral under the sun, from full headsets to mice, keyboards, and controllers.

That’s why the most interesting gaming earbuds include, nestled away in their charging cases, a dinky USB-C dongle for connecting over 2.4GHz. That includes the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds you can see in these pictures, and which quickly make a compelling argument for carrying your Steam Deck around with a blackcurrant Wine Gum sticking out the top.

The latency issue? Gone. It might be physically impossible for 2.4GHz to be completely lag-free but as far as my naked eyes and ears are concerned, it comes close enough, matching sounds to sights far better than on Bluetooth. Those delayed Half-Life 2 gunshots could now pop off on cue, and the chimes of my Glintstone sorceries were much more in-sync as well.

It’s not like the Arctis GameBuds have cracked the secret to universal wireless speed upgrades; they’re just using a long-established connection technique that nonetheless happens to work better than the previous default. They can demonstrate this themselves by switching to their Bluetooth mode, which uses the same 5.3 version as the Steam Deck OLED. Despite this upgrade over my Sennheisers, the 'toothed-up GameBuds also exhibited noticeable latency, with even Hades II gaining a certain sluggish feeling from its various dash/slash/exploding skull SFX not quite matching up with the animations.

2.4GHz isn’t just better for latency either. Despite having a much higher polling rate than Bluetooth – meaning it can communicate with the receiver far much frequently, to the tune of up to 1000 times per second versus 125 – it also enjoys more data bandwidth, so audio isn’t as compressed as when it gets squeezed through a Bluetooth connection. On the Arctis GameBuds, at least, this manifests as a slightly cleaner sound on 2.4GHz mode, without the fuzzy white noise in quiet moments that Bluetooth suffers from.

Again, this won’t be particularly astonishing if you already own any 2.4GHz wireless peripherals for your desktop. Still, this headsettificationn did get me wondering: could the Arctis GameBuds, or similarly high-performance gaming earbuds, supplant a proper pair of over-ears?

...No, not really. Microphone-wise, the Arctis GameBuds are actually as good as a top headset at picking up crisp, clear speech, but also struggle to filter out the sound of mechanical keyboard clicking or the noise from a nearby TV. For comfort, I’d prefer a nice set of leatherette cushions than having a silicone nozzle filling up my ear canal; the GameBuds are fine to wear for about an hour at a time, but ultimately draw fatigue faster than a well-shaped headset.

Battery life is a concern too. With the GameBuds, you’re looking at a maximum ten hours per charge with up to 30 hours’ worth of backup juice in the case. That might not lead to many interrupted game sessions, but my HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless headset can go for hundreds of hours between charges, and even in the rare event that they run dry, I can just plug in a charging cable and top them back up as I wear them. That’s just not possible with any set of true wireless buds, which need popping back into their case to recharge.

Still, any handheld PC is likely to run out of steam well before your earbuds do, and for travelling/commuting it’s far more practical to drop a pair like these in your pocket than it is to pack an entire headset, or even to untangle a classic set of wired earbuds.

Verdict: Should you bother with gaming earbuds? Not if they’re just a regular set of Bluetooth-only buds masquerading as specialist gaming hardware, nor if you need something for at-home desktop audio. I am, on the other hand, completely sold on 2.4GHz earbuds for ambulatory Steam Decking, and portable PC usage in general. The USB receiver isn’t some huge imposition, yet it helps solve the biggest problem with conventional earbuds lagging behind on audio sync.

While I’m not saying every pair will match them on quality, it helps that the Arctic GameBuds are a fine set of earbuds in their own right, their steep price of £159 / $160 being offset by their strong overall sound (not quite as bassy as my Sennheisers, but nicely balanced), and high build quality. The latter extends to actual physical buttons on each bud, all too much of a rarity for a headphone form factor that typically deals in finicky touch sensors, as well as splashproofing and snug fit that in turn helps with the effectiveness of their very decent active noise cancellation. I can definitely see myself alternating between these and the Momentum True Wireless 2, depending on if I also have a portable PC in my satchel.

Other 2.4GHz earbuds are available, including the Sony Inzone Buds, the JBL Quantum TWS Air, and the Razer Hammerhead Hyperspeed, and you can expect more to come. The aural equivalent of a gaming chair, these are not – they make functional changes that produce tangible benefits to games specifically. Good stuff.