Earlier in the year, PC Gamer packed me up and shipped me off to Denmark to take a look at some new SteelSeries gear. After filing into a SteelSeries office with a handful of other journos and SteelSeries PRs, it was revealed that The Big News were these new tiny earbuds. And my heart sank. I can’t stand earbuds, I thought. They really picked the wrong person to bring out here.
How wrong I was, though. Perhaps by some premonitory magic, the SteelSeries folks happened to pick the one person who could be brought not just on-side but yanked out of the depths of anti-earbud abyss, and on-side.
This wouldn’t have been possible if the Arctis GameBuds weren’t damn solid, though.
No, SteelSeries isn’t twisting my arm to write this, I’ve just been genuinely blown away by these buds. I’m sure that’s in part because I’m surprised to be giving any earphones at all the time of day again, but it’s also because these ones in particular genuinely impressed me.
Why’s that? Well, for one, they actually fit my weird little ears…
Anyway, moving on.
I actually ended up using the GameBuds in different ways than I thought I would. For instance, they’ve got me listening to audiobooks while tootling around the house doing chores, and they’ve even got me running to pick them up when I receive a phonecall. I shudder to think of the number of times my friends must have heard me say “call you back in a second, I’m just grabbing my earphones.” There’s just something about chatting hands-free, you know?
Maybe this is old news to everyone who didn’t write off earbuds for the last decade. But part of the reason for me writing them off—apart from most earbuds not comfortably fitting my ears—is that there’s rarely enough benefit to weigh against the dreadful feeling of having your ears clogged.
But wait, what’s that, Transparency Mode (think the inverse of ANC) works a charm and makes your ears feel positively de-clogged? Yep, the GameBuds shine in that regard, too.
They simply work, in pretty much any circumstance I’ve put them in—any time, any place.
In fact, every barrier that I wanted to put up, the GameBuds smashed them down. Like a pushy but loveable puppy, they clawed their way through my protective barriers and made me admit: Okay, I’ll give you a shot.
And that’s why I gave them such a high score in my Arctis GameBuds review: because there’s not a single area in which I feel they should be improved. (Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration because I later found out some third-party tips prevent them from fitting in their charging case, but that’s a small gripe.)
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Audio quality’s the obvious area to start with, and in this department they’ve been a blast. I’m used to my open-back Sennheiser HD 599 headphones, and while the earbuds don’t quite get there—and it’d be a miracle if any 6 mm drivers did—they get close. This has made my train journeys 100x more pleasant than before, especially given I was previously using bone conduction earphones (ie, not earbuds, but over-ear earphones).
The GameBuds have been the perfect little guides back into the world of in-ear monitors not just because of this but because they’re so versatile and easy to use. I just take them out of their case and they connect to Bluetooth, and then if I want to do some handheld gaming I can switch over to 2.4 GHz with a quick toggle. They charge as soon as I put them back into their cosy little pod, too, and I can charge that pod by simply placing it on top of my Qi charger.
After spending just a day or two with them, I no longer had to think about it. They simply work, in pretty much any circumstance I’ve put them in—any time, any place.
And they fit my weird little ears. There’s that, too. That makes the Arctis GameBuds a 2024 champion in my ears… I mean eyes. I didn’t expect to consider a pair of earbuds to be my fave tech of 2024, either, but here we are.