SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless review: premium drivers and sound profiles in an affordable gaming headset
Getting more for less money
🏆 Review score: 5 out of 5
🏅 Editor’s Choice Award
Pros
✅ 🖍️ Lively colors and comfy, breathable design
✅ 🔊 Same premium drivers as the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Wireless
✅ 🎛️ Full customizable EQ dramatically changes how lows, mids, and highs sound
✅ 🎮 266 preset profiles help make games sound as they were meant to be heard
✅ 🔌 15-minute quick charge gives you nine hours of gameplay
Cons
❌ 🪫 Comparatively short 30-hour battery life
❌ 🎙️ Microphone lacks noise-cancelling
The Shortcut Review
The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless is a true rarity in today's age in that it’s a product that gives you more for less money. This $109 wireless gaming headset almost replaces the $129 SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 Wireless with all the same sound profiles and wireless/Bluetooth quick-switch. It also features premium drivers pulled from the even more expensive $199 SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Wireless.
For $109, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 puts other affordable gaming headsets to shame. Its flexible 40mm drivers are almost infinitely customizable with a fully tweakable equalizer and 266 game profiles. The smartphone and PC app lets you easily swap between profiles and hear COD: Black Ops 6, games as they were meant to be heard. It doesn’t have the longest battery life at just 30 hours, but a 15-minute quick charge will give you back nine hours of gameplay.
Full Review
🌈 Colors Colors Colors. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless is available in two refreshingly colorful shades: Lavender and Aqua. You can also get this headset in a more traditional white and black, but it’s nice to get some offbeat colors other than the usual red, blue, or green. I also love how the colors mix darker and lighter tones, so the Nova 3 Wireless doesn’t look like a monochromatic pair of Beats Studio Pros.
😌 Comfortable fit. SteelSeries has adorned the Arctis Nova 3 Wireless with its trademark ski-goggle fabric ear cups and headband. The springy material gently conforms to the shape of your head, and the fabric is perforated to make the headset breathable. It also helps that the headset only weighs 260g, making it lighter than the PS5 DualSense or Xbox Series controller.
🔊 Premium drivers and features. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless might be marketed as an affordable gaming headset, but it features the same 40mm Neodymium Magnetic drivers as the company’s premium Arctis 7 Wireless headset. The Nova 3 also has the same wireless/Bluetooth quick switch as the mid-range and profile switch smartphone app as the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 Wireless.
🎛️ Flexible sound. Out of the box, the Arctis Nova 3 Wireless sounds very flat, and that’s by design. The default sound profile presents highs, mids, and lows at nearly the same level together – but this is also what makes it a flexible-sounding headset. You can easily adjust the 20Hz to 20KHz band equalizer to achieve punchier bass, clearer dialogue/vocals in the mids, or more pronounced highs for sound effects.
🎮 266 gaming presets. If tweaking the EQ feels too technical, SteelSeries has worked with developers to create 266 game profiles. This includes profiles for popular games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Cyberpunk 2077, and Marvel Rivals. Additionally, for the first time, there are Nintendo-made presets, so you can hear Tears of the Kingdom or Mario Kart World as they were intended to be heard. This is what makes the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless the best gaming headset for the Nintendo Swtich 2.
👾 Switching profiles. The impact of the different profiles is dramatic. With them, I heard more atmospheric rain and wind effects in Ghost of Tsushima, more bass from machines stomping around in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, and louder gunshots in Helldivers 2.
😇 Surround sound all around. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless also gives you spatial sound on any platform. The gaming headset works with PlayStation’s 3D Tempest and Microsoft’s Sonic surround sound. I could even get surround sound while playing Tears of the Kingdom on the Nintendo Switch 2. I could hear the Light Dragon swing from left to right and above me as I was gliding down from the Bridge of Hylia.
🗣️ GameChat ready. SteelSeries opted for a simpler detachable microphone for the Nova 3 Wireless over the stowable, built-in microphones available on the wired Nova 3 and wireless Nova 5. Despite this change, the microphone still utilizes a high-bandwidth (32KHz/16-bit) microphone to capture your voice better while chatting over Discord or Nintendo GameChat. From my colleagues, I sounded as good as I would from my SteelSeries Arctis Nova Wireless Pro headset. That said, this microphone introduces a lot of noise-cancelling and compression to capture your voice clearly, at the expense of full-bodied sound quality. So don’t rely on this headset microphone if you’re planning on streaming or recording yourself for videos.
🔋15-min Fast charging. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless packs in decent battery life with 30 hours over wireless and 40 hours over Bluetooth. That’s about half compared to the 60+ hours I got from the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 Wireless, but you get nine hours of play after a 15-minute quick charge, so you can get back to gaming even if this headset won’t last more than a whole week of gaming.
Should you buy the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 Wireless?
Yes, if…
✅ 🎧 You want an affordable and flexible gaming headset
✅ 🎚️ You want to hear gaming audio as the game developers intended
✅ 🎮 You want a wireless gaming headset for all platforms, including the Nintendo Switch 2
No, if…
❌ 🔋 Longer battery life is a priority (get the $119 HyperX Cloud III Wireless instead)
❌ 🎙️ You need a higher voice quality microphone (get the $129 Corsair Void V2 instead)
❌ 📲 You love listening to podcasts or music while gaming (get the $199 SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Wireless instead)
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.