When I first got my hands and ears on SteelSeries’ newest headline addition to its gaming headset range, I immediately knew there was one big comparison that needed to be made. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite is hugely expensive and basically as good as a gaming headset can get right now – but is it a better buy than the previously top-end Arctis Nova Pro Wireless?
If you’re in the market for a new headset, and you’re still unsure which to go for, even after browsing our list of the best headsets overall, I’m going to go into a little more detail about these two favourites right here. Keep reading to find out which is better, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite or Nova Pro Wireless.
SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite
This is SteelSeries’ most finely-tuned headset ever, and a true audio powerhouse that can even manage Hi-Res wireless audio. It’s almost peerless, frankly, but that also goes for its staggering price, which puts it in a tier of its own.
SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless
The Nova Pro Wireless was my daily driver headset for years, with good reason – it’s a super all-rounder with a price tag that has looked chunky for years, but now seems quaint by comparison to the Elite.
Price
(Image credit: Future)
So, let’s hit the big one immediately – there’s a huge difference in the pricing of the Nova Elite and the Nova Pro Wireless. Taking the Elite first of all, it has a headline-grabbing price of $599.99 in the US, £599.99 in the UK, and €649.99 in the EU. That’s a wedge that you’d almost struggle to spend on any other mainstream headset, and it’s the priciest one I’ve tested in years of experience.
The Nova Pro Wireless, meanwhile, was released at $349.99 in the US and £329 in the UK, but hasn’t stuck at that price for a good while. You can now regularly find it for more like $250 or £230 even outside of sales periods, making it generally less than half the price of the Elite.
When SteelSeries first told me the Nova Elite’s price, I was taken aback, and I did ask spokespeople if they were worried about going to that level of the market. They were adamant that they thought there was a space for it, and I suspect they’re right, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy pill to swallow.
So, for most people, there’s a clear winner on price here: the Nova Pro Wireless, which never really looked like a value-conscious buy until now.
Design and features
(Image credit: Future)
One of the funny things about comparing these headsets is that, from the outside, they look extremely similar. I tested the Arctis Nova Elite in its new Sage Green colour, with gold accents, which obviously makes that a little harder to prove, but if you held the black version next to the Nova Pro Wireless it would be a truly minute game of spot-the-difference.
They both have the same headband design, with a metal band on the top, and a suspended stretchy band that actually sits on your head, keeping the weight of the headset from resting directly on your head. The arms and earcups are also hard to tell apart, while the microphone looks the same (and hides in the same way). They also both have the same removable earcup plates, one of them hiding a USB-C charging port and the other hiding the removable and swappable battery.
That’s what things look like, but if you actually hold the headsets you can feel clear differences. Principally, the Nova Elite has much more metal in its construction, including key details like the volume wheel, and those arms – it’s far more premium in the hand, as a result. The ear cushioning also feels plusher, to me, although given my Nova Pro Wireless is far from new, that’s harder to judge objectively.
Both headsets come with a control station, and these also look incredibly similar, but they have some key differences under the hood, as I’ll come to.
In design terms, then, there’s not really a giant difference to be had, but the Nova Elite edges things because of its quality of materials.
Sound and performance
(Image credit: Future)
So, if their designs are really similar, and their pricing leaves a huge gap between the two models, quite a lot is riding on their sound and performance to figure out which headset wins.
The Nova Pro Wireless, when it came out, was close to as good as you could get in wireless audio. It sounds superb, and still stands as one of the best headsets you can get your hands on for pure quality. You can expect total immersion in your games, and really detailed representation of in-game precision, from tiny footsteps near you to booming explosions and soaring soundtracks.
The Nova Elite, by comparison, does manage to up the ante by being the world’s first wireless headset to manage to meet Hi-Res certification while wireless. It only manages this on PC (since console’s don’t support the feature), but that makes for pretty much the most impressive wireless audio in gaming – with extreme detail and precision. Noticing the difference isn’t always easy, but when you go back to the Nova Pro Wireless, you’ll feel the slight drop-off.
Away from pure sound quality, the Nova Pro Wireless also introduced the huge innovation of a swappable battery system, with each one lasting between 18 and 22 hours on a charge. When it runs low, you can simply swap it out for one that’s been charging in the control station, and if you’re quick, there’ll be no downtime in audio. That makes for near-limitless battery life, which is a marvel.
Now, on the Nova Elite, this is improved nicely, with up to 30 hours on a single charge and the system otherwise unchanged. In truth, this doesn’t matter much – since you just swap in a new one regardless, having to change the battery less often isn’t a game-changer, but rather just a tiny gain.
Both headsets also sport active noise-cancelling (ANC) and, again, there are welcome but modest gains for the Nova Elite. The Nova Pro Wireless has very solid performance on this front, with good dampening of background noise, but the Nova Elite is again clear of it, with more noise cancelled out and a better feeling of immersion as a result.
That control station also hides some additional secrets. The Nova Elite’s version has more inputs, and can allow simultaneous sound from potentially all of them at once, if you want it to – that’s a wild potential tool. The Nova Pro Wireless is more limited on this front, although I still think it’s more than enough for the vast majority of users.
Finally, there’s the microphone – big for multiplayer gamers. The Nova Pro Wireless has a great microphone, with some AI noise-cancelling to isolate your voice impressively. This is stepped up for the Nova Elite, though, which has superior recording quality and beefed-up noise-cancelling to really stand as one of the very best on the market.
So, when it comes to performance, it’s a nuanced situation. If you use them for extended periods, there’s no doubt that the Nova Elite comes out on top in most areas. However, it’s worth being clear – if the Nova Elite scores some 10/10s on sound and fidelity, the Nova Pro Wireless still manages 9/10s by comparison, making it a close-run thing in most cases.
Verdict
(Image credit: Future)
This is a hard one to conclude, because it involves quite a lot of qualifications – the Arctis Nova Elite and Nova Pro Wireless are both extremely impressive headsets that each raised the expectation of what a premium headset might cost, when they respectively released.
I’m loving the Nova Elite as my new daily headset, and it’s immersion me in games on a new level, while being extremely comfortable and well-designed. However, I think that its price means it only makes sense for a really quite small subsection of people – those with a whole heap to spend.
I can’t pretend the Nova Pro Wireless is a truly budget option by any stretch, of course, but when it costs less than half the price of the Elite, I think there’s basically no doubt that it’s the more sensible pick for a big majority of gamers. They’d still be spending a good chunk on a superb headset, but would leave with a huge amount of cash still in their account, and only a small drop-off in sound quality to account for it.
