I use wireless headphones nearly exclusively now but hate wireless mice and keyboards…
… why?
In my case, I really hate charging the keyboard. My Corsair keyboard stops working when it’s fully charged, what? But it only lasts two days on battery so I’m constantly plugging and unplugging it, turning it on and off (otherwise the cat might drain the entire battery by taking a nap on it)
I might as well have a wired keyboard if I have to charge so often. It barely works from 10 feet away, not like I can game from the couch
My Logitech wireless can work both plugged and unplugged, can connect to multiple computers at the same time and battery charge lasts for weeks.
It works plugged, but not if the battery is full
That’s fair. I don’t have a real use case for a wireless keyboard either, but the one I have isn’t particularly inconvenient. I would just leave it plugged in, and unplug it if I ever needed it to be wireless.
The best wireless option is still a dongle, longer range and better latency management. One like logi unifying dongle can connect multiple devices.
5ms Bluetooth latency is quite a few years away. The charging and backup has gotten better recently.
I heard the unifying dongle adds latency, though
audio quality too, man the difference that I have experienced is night and day between my 80$ DUNU Titan S IEM and the 200$ Razer Opus 2021, the Opus is now mostly sitting collecting dust
Go watch Crinacle:)
My wireless headphones have a double battery meaning I never have to charge them. My wireless mouse and keyboard are always connected as they run out of battery to fast…
I just prefer cable for those two. For the keyboard cable makes no difference to me. Mice cables have come a long way and a good one is barely noticeable.
Headphones though, I’m never going back to the cord. Both Sony XM and Bose QC work great for me.
The latency has been good for a while. The sound-quality has also caught up recently too with stuff like the Audeze Maxwell
I’ve been using wireless headsets since 2016 and even then the latency was decent. People are just ignorant and don’t have first hand experience
I did try wireless headsets back then but found the sound quality kinda sucked haha but yea latency was a non-issue
Audeze nuts in you face. Gottem
Fuckin’ what? Is this meme 10 years old or what?
I have Sony xm 3 headphones and I can’t game on them because everything is delayed like 100ms
I have xm4 and have absolutely 0 problems with it. I feel like unless you’re an actual pro gamer or a sweaty elitist it makes no difference.
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I have XM4s too and dont notice it at all.
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Gaming is the far from what they were designed for. When listening to music or whatever you couldn’t care less about a delay.
That’s not a gaming headphone. A proper gaming headphone have near zero latency, you can even play rhythm games with it. Usually it will come with it’s own wireless dongle and doesn’t use Bluetooth at all.
Couldn’t believe it at first and thought mine was a defective pair. The delay is atrocious
It’s because Bluetooth is primarily designed for low power usage.
Yep, but as someone pointed out those were $300 at launch. I know they’re not meant for gaming and reading about latency issues seems like a 1st world problem to me because my older Bluetooth headset had lower latency.
Come to think of it, I don’t even remember which pair they were but it would’ve been under $100 with some BT dac maybe
Bluetooth is a terrible standard for gaming. You’d want something with its own dedicated 2.4ghz dongle.
Next time buy headphones with AptX low latency support.
I bought headphones with aptxLL, only to find out that newer Qualcomm chipsets have depricared it in favor of aptx adaptive. It’s not backward compatible and at the time there wasn’t a single adaptive set of headphones on the market. I would either have to buy a >4 year old phone or get a new pair of overpriced headphones to use it now.
Deprecated doesn’t mean it’s not supported. But it might be disabled by your phone manufacturer because they decided to cheap out.
Sure would be cool if Windows supported anything but AAC and SBC though…
Windows has full support for AptX since forever.
Huh, must be my hardware then. It is getting kinda old…
When my PC didn’t have built-in Bluetooth stack, I was using ASUS single. It’s cheap and works just fine with my headphones without any noticeable latency. And there’s definitely a huge difference when I try to use my Bose 700 which don’t support shit.
From what I’ve seen this isn’t true. Search for “Windows AptX LL” and you’ll see dozens of ways you might install drivers that add support. The most common advice seems to be to buy a dongle that supports it.
All my laptops and PCs support AptX out of the box without any 3rd party stuff. There can be exceptions, sure, but I haven’t seen them myself.
AptX and AptX LL are not the same thing. AptX has the same latency as LDAC and SBC: >200ms; whereas AptX LL is actually decent at ~30ms. AptX is supported by Windows out of the box, AptX LL is not.
I have G533 which are even discontinued from production, they have no real latency.
Have you used a wireless set of headphones lately?
With Bluetooth latency isn’t an issue for media, but it’s noticeable while gaming. But over 2.4GHz… there’s no noticeable latency at all.
Bluetooth uses the 2.4GHz spectrum by the way
It employs UHF radio waves in the ISM bands, from 2.402 GHz to 2.48 GHz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth?wprov=sfla1
But I know what you mean, those headsets with a separate dongle work good enough. Shame really, that Bluetooth hasn’t caught up by now, except some barely supported low-latency codecs
It’s not the spectrum; it’s Bluetooth vs fixed-pair generic RF.
It’s not the band, it’s the Bluetooth stack. Bluetooth sucks as a standard.
Not only standard itself, but also low quality implementations both in hardware and software. And while major OSes’ BT stacks continue to gradually improve over time they won’t help you if you Bluetooth hardware or device you are trying to connect to (again both hardware and software) are trash. It’s a curse of every open standard, no matter how good or bad it is by itself - there always will be shitty implementations. And if there are a lot of them (like in case of BT) then majority of them will be shitty.
Barely noticeable while gaming. Rhythm games for sure, but otherwise my biggest complaint is that all 2.4ghz headphones are “gaming” headphones. Not many low latency high end options.
Every rhythm game worth its salt has visual offset nowadays so its not an issue
Unfortunately, my game is not a rhythm game. I basically can’t tell which of my shots hit the target. If I shoot 3 times in 300ms, I don’t hear the first shot until I click the second time, so if I miss the first shot, it sounds like I missed the second shot, it’s very jarring
Sennheiser headphones support AptX low latency. 40ms is very good for most uses. And you can plug them if you need.
It doesn’t compare since 2.4gh, is half at 15-20ms of latency. Though since I primarily play rhythm games, I like my headphones wired anyways.
I learn this lesson about twice a year. One of these years that shit is going to be good.
I really wish other PC guys would stop being like
“noooooo you don’t understand there’s a 10 millisecond lag time with wireless so it’s LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE TRASH, no I don’t care that’s about 1/10th as long as it takes you to blink, I totally notice it and it ruins it for me!!!”
It really seems like some people only get enjoyment from the idea of having the best possible version of something and being elitist about it. Rather than just enjoying their thing that plays games for what it is.
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If you play any games where timing matters, 10ms can be the difference between doing the thing and not doing the thing.
Rhythm games are a perfect example. The tightest timing window is often 1frame at 60fps, which is 16ms. If you are reacting to a headphone with 10ms latency then you’ll be missing over half of the timing window. If you also have a wireless keyboard with 10ms then you will react 10ms late, your input will be received another 10ms late and you will miss the entire window and have to adjust your timing to be a full frame early.
Fighting games also commonly use this 1frame window. It’s even worse when we are talking about mouse lag interrupting your hand-eye feedback loop on camera movement. I just tried to play the new Myst on an underpowered laptop with too much frame time with vsync enabled and that was enough to make me unable to navigate a curvy corridor, until I disabled vsync.
Latency is a real problem. To put it in the words of John Carmack
I can send an IP packet to Europe faster than I can send a pixel to the screen. How f’d up is that?
The other issue is that you start compounding latency. If you’re playing online with a 50ms ping, that hear > react > input registered cycle is suddenly 70ms instead of the 10ms you were expecting. Every single instance of latency you’re adding to the system is taking you another step away from reacting in time.
But my point is 99.99% of people aren’t competitive fighting game players that need to react to a 1 frame window and will be noticeably disadvanged by a 1/100th of a second delay. And any competitive fighting game player will be using a fight stick anyway.
Same with rhythm games. Yes, top level rhythm gamers might have a point with this but 99.999% of gamers are not top level rhythm gamers.
In a rhythm game the difference between a 10ms ping (wired average for just audio) and a 100-300ms ping (Bluetooth average for just audio) is definitely noticeable, at any level of play. With Bluetooth it isn’t even just 1 frame you’ll miss, it’s about a 3rd of a second in the worst case.
This isn’t necessarily a fair comparison because USB receiver headsets latency much closer to wired exist, but most people with wireless headsets will be using Bluetooth, and not aptX LL Bluetooth.
I don’t even play rhythm games, casually playing the music-synced rooms in Celeste (a 2D platformer) was enough to make me stop playing until I could find a wire for my Sony XM5’s.
You’re very passionate about headphones.
The latency is unbearable when playing on a midi keyboard. Gaming is not the only thing out there.
is this a common problem? I just use the same soundcore p3 earbuds for gaming or listening to music from my phone
I have their Space A40s. I can definitely feel the latency (~150-200ms), and Game Mode barely makes a difference at all. They’re actually lower latency compared to yours, according to Rtings…
Doesn’t help that they disable the EQ in Game Mode, because this specific model is just way too muddy and veiled for my tastes, otherwise.
strange I don’t really feel that latency even tho I should if it’s that high
I’ve noticed that on Android, some apps try to account for the latency and delay video to match and make it near-unnoticeable, ex. YouTube
It really only works for non-interactive content like videos as opposed to games, and it seems not every app I use actually does it 🤔
don’t feel it in games either
I play rhythm games on PC. I use ASIO4ALL to bypass any kind of audio processing being done by my OS to reduce audio latency as much as possible, and I do research before even attempting to buy any monitor. I got a Logitech Z407 for my birthday and even using the audio jack it introduces enough audio lag (~3ms) that I went back to play on wired headphones.
There is no way, you notice 3ms of latency
Probably not, I can’t inmediately notice it, but you see, games like Ez2On Reboot: R have a very robust customization suite, including timing adjustment and indicators for when you press a key too early or too late. The game combines both features on a single option where you play a song while the game automatically adjusts the delay between your keystrokes and the “target” you’re supposed to be hitting. Using that feature, the game added around 3ms window to my keystrokes, and after a couple of game sessions, you can actually feel the game being slightly off-beat (since those kind of games actually play sounds whenever you press a key, your “play” sounds slightly delayed using the rest of the song being auto played by the PC). Also, the early/late counter at the end of each song increases one way or another. Again, it’s not immediately noticeable, but you feel something’s off and the results screen can confirm it.
People don’t understand that while 3ms is extremely short, in rhythm games people can time the switches of their keys to hit a few ms window by consistently moving the fingers at the same speed
Something you may not be able to see (if you flash something for 3ms it’s not guaranteed we can be able to recognize it), but it’s a timing you can hit because of practice
The biggest issue imo is the microphone quality. Audio quality and latency have improved a lot over the years but so many wireless headsets still have garbage mic quality. The Logitech g pro lightspeed costs $250 and sounds worse than a $10 Webcam mic. I only went wireless after the razer blackshark 2023 came out. The microphone is by far the best mic I’ve heard in a wireless headset.
I’ve always used desktop microphones, but that’s an issue I didn’t even consider. Tbh it seems like most “gamer” headsets slap on the shittiest microphones because they affect you the least and it ticks another box on the product page.
Ironically, if they were analog wireless, thered be no latency at all
Even cable has latency…
You have a pretty noticeable fidelity drop when going over radio waves, though. Any pro audio devices like wireless microphones or IEMs will go over radio waves, though. Works fine for on stage use but isn’t ideal in other settings.
So basically radio? It would still be limited by the speed of light, you would have nanoseconds (or microseconds?) of latency!
Ten nanoseconds of travel time for every three meters of distance, or roughly one nanosecond per foot.
Wired head phones are also limited by the speed of light
I really like my steelseries artics 7. Battery last so long, I sometimes forget when I last recharge them.
Also amazing reach, I can go anywhere in my house while keep on listening.
I use wired keyboard and mouse, because they’re always in the same place and the cords don’t bother me.
If its the version where you can easily slide off and on the battery to replace it and charge the second one on the station, then its nice and I want one, they are nowhere to find and purchase.
If its the one that needs to open up a cap to change the battery, and only works with Windows only Sign-in Drivers then its the worst headset I ever come across.
I just forgot which one got the name because its the same company and series. (Maybe “Nova” were the worse ones, they are newer)
I think you can’t easily open up to replace the battery. But i don’t see the need for that. If it needs to be charged when i need it, just can plug in the power cord and keep on using is.
Don’t ever had any problems with the drivers, i just plug it, first time windows need it to set it up and worked great. With steelseries own software I also don’t have any problems. Only downside is that if you want better quality audio, you need to open the software.
I’m constantly unplugging and plugging in the receiver between my pc and ps5 without any problems.
Yeah I’ve got the same one and have had no issues with it (besides being too lazy about charging it and having to quickly plug in mid-meeting which is just user error).
It’s charge lasts a while but I only use it for a few hours at a time max so maybe that’s more of why I only have to charge it once every week or so.
Nice to be able to walk around most of the house without disconnecting and I haven’t noticed any latency issues.
Yeah no, I would recommend this to noone because you are literally forced to get an Account and let the software run constantly just to get pro feature, meanwhile you pay a heck ton of money to it. Huge downgrade, can’t use it with 90% of different devices because only Windows 10 and 11 is supported, no Xbox, Playstation, Phone, Linux PC or Steam Deck. Except you love bad Audio for which the price is not worth for.
A friend had the older ones that had the exact features but the software is purely on the Station. Additionally on the older ones you could slide the batteries in and out which seem to have a very satisfying feeling. (I guess swapping increased from 2 seconds to 60seconds for the newer ones?)
Found the post on which I created my opinion on the headset. https://www.reddit.com/r/steelseries/comments/v9kq26/steelseries_nova_pro_wireless_linux_and_bad/
I’ve got Nova Pro Wireless on my desk and they’re fucking great. No noticeable latency and the sound is impressive too.
Sennheiser GSP 370. I literally cannot tell if the have latency, and being Sennheisers they sound really nice, too.
But this particular pair beats one the big issue I’ve always had with wireless headphones, having to charge them… these have 100 hours of battery life.
I don’t charge them for weeks. And when they do finally complain about low battery, you still have more than enough juice to finish that night of gaming, and one more, before actually plugging them in. Unless you leave them unused for months, or don’t plug them in at the end of the session when they do get low, they are ALWAYS ready to be used.
Makes me want to try the wireless Sennheiser. I never stuck with the gaming wireless headsets I had gotten because I was not satisfied with the sound quality. I got the 599 I’ve been using, so I do like their headphones.
The low battery noise always made me jump because it was so foreign to me. I would regularly charge them when I just felt like it so hearing that noise always confused me at first. I had to replace the ear cups but just a few months ago the power switch finally broke on me. I still miss it.
A powerswitch seems like it’d be repairable.
The automatic standby on the GSP 370 is so good tho, that I’ve almost never touched the powerbutton after I first turned them on, years ago.
They wake up and go to sleep based on whether they receive audio. I have a keyboard shortcut set to switch between them and the speakers. I hit shift+f10 and put them on. No menus, no power switch, nothing.
Difficult to beat Sennheiser on sound and build quality. I have a 30 year old pair of their headphones, still work fine. Currently using the Momentum 4 wireless for gaming, didn’t even consider that there would be any significant delay. 60 hours battery life.
The weird thing about using them for PubG is plugging the USB connection rather than Bluetooth it selects a driver that sounds completely different. Not sure what’s going on there.
