SteelSeries Launches Nova 7 Gen 2 Gaming Headset With Monster Battery Life
SteelSeries has unveiled the follow-up to its popular Arctis Nova 7 wireless headset, offering up to a 40% increase in battery life and greater audio customization. Also good news is that SteelSeries retained the same mid-range $200 price tag, despite inflation and tariffs.
Dual wireless connectivity is still onboard, but bear in mind that opting for simultaneous 2.4GHz and Bluetooth will eat into battery life—up to 38 hours instead of 54 hours, which still is no slouch. The upshot is that gamers can use the low-latency 2.4GHz dongle to pipe in, say, game audio from their PC, PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch, while concurrently connecting to their phone via Bluetooth, while still getting excellent battery life overall. This means users can mix game sound with music, answer a crucial phone call, or chat on Discord without ever leaving the action.
Audio quality has been a strong suit of the original Nova 7 even if bass was tuned a little too forward for music and movies, so we hope the 40-millimeter neodymium drivers have been given some love.
Most functions and features are controlled and deeply integrated within the SteelSeries Arctis mobile app, this time providing a library of over 200 audio presets of some of the most popular games, going beyond your standard EQ settings. These presets optimize the equalizer to amplify critical in-game sounds, such as enemy footsteps or reloads, which give a competitive edge to heighten the experience. PC gamers benefit further from the SteelSeries GG and Sonar Audio software, which can automatically switch the EQ profile based on the game being played.
Despite the internal improvements, the headset maintains the sleek, comfortable design of the Nova line, featuring the ComfortMAX headband. It includes the retractable ClearCast Gen 2 microphone, which utilizes bidirectional noise cancellation to filter out keyboard clacks and other background noise. Speaking of noise cancellation, the Gen 2 doesn't have ANC.
SteelSeries' Arctis Nova 7 Gen 2 is available now in system-specific configurations (Xbox, PlayStation, and PC) in Black, White, and a new Magenta colorway.
