Gamers tend to place a lot of emphasis on their PC’s hardware to get an edge in games, but the right gaming peripherals can be just as critical to performance outcomes. That’s why at PCWorld we review any gaming headsets we can get our hands on. You can see the fruits of our labor in our articles on the best gaming headsets and best wireless gaming headsets, which we update regularly.
In these articles we’ve done the heavy lifting for you, sorting the wheat from the chaff so to speak, so that you can simply have a read and select the gaming headset that’s right for you. But you might still want to know how our expert reviewers arrived at their decisions. Here, we’ve summarized our extensive reviewing process below.
How we evaluate gaming headsets based on sound quality
A headset’s sound quality is critical to how you will experience your game’s audio. When evaluating sound quality, nothing beats listening to them while gaming. We listen for two main things — any defects in the sound, and to see how good the headset’s audio fidelity is.
Some signs of defects include any rising or falling in the amplitude, static or popping noises, and/or tinniness in the audio profile. Most gaming headsets have already been vetted by the manufacturers for these defects and it’s rare to find one that exhibits these issues. Even so, we do occasionally find one and it’s our duty to let you know.
On the other hand, we frequently find big differences in the audio fidelity and clarity of headsets. When analyzing audio fidelity, a scale from 1 to 5 is a useful tool. The worst sounding headsets sit at 1. They tend to lack detail across their tonal range and often sound muffled and unclear.