SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5X Gaming Headset Review: An App Makes It a Great Console Choice

Purveyor of well-regarded gaming headsets, SteelSeries shoehorns another Arctis Nova in the middle of the product line currently brought to you by the numbers 1,3,4 and 7 and the word Pro. This model, the $130 Nova 5, covers similar territory to the higher-end models: It’s an entry-premium wireless headset intended for use with PCs, consoles and most anything else with a USB-C port, plus limited Bluetooth.

The Nova 5 comes in three versions: The 5X for the Xbox and PC, 5P for the PlayStation and PC, and 5 for just PC. The specificity of “for” is a bit loose, though. The Xbox model works on all platforms; Microsoft requires a license (and therefore extra silicon in the dongle for the Xbox to accept it) and some love, so the X is the does-it-all version and the one I tested. It also means that there’s also a chat/mix dial on the earcup, which PlayStation doesn’t support and the 5P lacks. On the other hand, it still has a USB-C dongle that requires an adapter to work with the Xbox. The PS5’s Tempest 3D audio is compatible with every headset. The dongle works on other platforms with USB-C connections as well, like the Nintendo Switch, the Meta Quests, phones and more. And you can always use Bluetooth.

At its price, you might think about getting the Arctis Nova 7 instead if you find it on sale — I’ve seen it for $150, $30 less than the usual $180, which isn’t much extra to pay for what you get over the 5. The Nova 7 line adds simultaneous Bluetooth operation — that’s a big deal for me, since I want to hear notifications over Bluetooth, and the Nova 5 lets you hear only rings and toggle to your phone to take incoming calls. 

The Nova 7 also has an analog wired connection so you can connect to a controller, a metal rather than ABS plastic headband and swappable plates on the earcups and headband. (You can replace the foam and fabric ear cushions.) The Nova 5 has the same Clearcast Gen 2 mic but with a tweak to increase the bandwidth between the mic and the receiver so the signal theoretically doesn’t need as much compression.

Among the competitors to the Nova 5 in the same price band, it does stand out. The HyperX Cloud 3 Wireless, an excellent headset that lacks a lot you’d expect for the money — it compensates with phenomenal battery life — and the Razer BlackShark V2, a fine headset without Bluetooth or console compatibility. Corsair’s HS80 models are a little cheaper but lack Bluetooth and the mics seem especially fragile; many have broken on me. 

Design and features

As you’d expect from a mid-line addition, for the most part there’s no new tech here, just a mix and match of current models. If you’re not familiar with SteelSeries’ headsets, the 5 and up include wireless support, fully retractable mic, the updated high-fidelity drivers over the preceding line and Sonar software support (for the spatial audio, parametric equalizer, mic noise cancellation and more). It has rotating earcups with memory foam and fabric cushions, comfortable but a little loose on me — it sat on my head fine, but when I bent over they’d slide. You can adjust the length in two ways, but there’s no way to tighten it.  

SteelSeries doesn’t include the Steam Deck in its list of supported devices, but the dongle works as well on that as the others. Which is good, because I couldn’t get Bluetooth to work properly with the Deck. The wide dongle does block the power button, if that matters to you, and a USB-C extension cable doesn’t come with, just a USB-A to female USB-C.

They do differ by accent color in the suspension headband — green for Xbox, blue for PlayStation and gray for PC — for whatever that’s worth. At the moment, the headsets come only in black.

According to SteelSeries, the claimed 60-hour battery life is the highest it’s offered so far. The fine print is that’s for Bluetooth; over 2.4GHz wireless, it’s closer to 50. Extrapolating from my 15 or so hours of mixed usage, in practice it should be closer to about 35, though of course YMMV. You can get a 6-hour charge in 15 minutes over USB, and while you can’t use the headset over the connection, you can charge while you play.

The best upgrade to SteelSeries headset, debuting with the Nova 5, is the mobile Sonar app. The company’s app provides (well over 100) and lets you use use two custom parametric equalizer profiles created on the PC, both over both 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth, which means you’re not stuck with the few controls you might have on those platforms. It also lets you control sidetone and volume for the mic, but sadly it has no access to the mic EQ profiles. It can either sync the profiles between the connection types or you can set them individually per connection.

Performance

It’s great to have the app for what it does, but it could use some tuning. For one, mic profiles are important because people use the mic differently over Bluetooth and 2.4GHz, such as phone calls over Bluetooth and 2.4GHz for almost everything else, depending upon the device you’re connected to. The profiles are also in one big list, with, for example, the four music profiles buried between Movie: Immersion and Naraka: Bladepoint.

The desktop app clutters up your system as much as any of these, and it’s mostly Microsoft’s fault — it has to create a virtual device for each use case in it, such as Game or Media, meaning that four virtual devices appear in my already long in my already long list of audio devices. It makes figuring out which “device” I should be hearing from the way-too-long list of outputs an unfun game. 

SteelSeries now defaults to enabling its excellent ClearCast noise cancellation in software. The mic has built-in noise canceling but in brief testing I didn’t hear much of a difference on versus off. The mic captures excellent sound via the boom, without picking up ambient sounds (except for my really clicky keyboard), but the secondary mic for use when the boom is retracted is extremely compressed and tinny sounding.

More annoying, though, there’s no foam cover for the mic, and you’d just lose one the first time the boom retracted into the earcup. But the mic’s excellent pickup picks up breathy plosives (the sounds made by pushing them out of your mouth, like “p” and “t”), which require a lot of physical and software tweaking to minimize.

Given that the speakers are the same as others in the Nova headset line, I’m not surprised they sound pretty similar: Really good. They don’t have a lot of bass, but they do have a relatively broad soundstage, and didn’t detect any distortion when blasting sound at a volume way beyond what the limited would allow.

Aside from one little glitch about 60 feet from the receiver through a couple of walls and a huge amount of potential conflicts (I live in an apartment building), the signal seems pretty stable.

While I still like the Arctis Nova 7 series better, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5, 5X and 5P give you all the 7’s audio quality, some of the Bluetooth and a useful app at a lower price. And for the money, it’s a notable value compared with many similarly priced competitors.