Shacknews Best Gaming Accessory of 2024 - SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds

SteelSeries has quickly become one of our favorite hardware groups here at Shacknews. A big part of that is how it continues to innovate in gaming audio and bring the most versatile solutions to our gaming spaces, whether we want them filling up a room with sound or nestled in our pockets on a trip. The Arctis GameBuds fall into the latter end. They are SteelSeries’ first ever entry in the earbud space, and what a grand starting point.

The SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds start with a ridiculously easy-to-use design. They’re small and almost weightless. When you get them into your ears, they feel comfortable for long periods, and if they don’t feel perfect, you can always change the ear inserts to find a size that works best for you with the different-sized options. They also last forever. On a single charge, you can run them for about eight hours, and the recharge case contains another 32 hours’ worth of charge to juice them up quickly for your next use. You can connect them to Xbox, PlayStation, PCs, or mobile devices via the 2.4 GHz dongle or via Bluetooth, and while you can’t run 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth modes simultaneously, you’re always just one tap away from switching between the two modes as you please.

Of course, none of that matters if they don’t have good sound. Rest assured, they do. In fact, they have stellar sound for a $160 USD price point and being such a small form factor. The Arctis GameBuds also benefit from being able to access the SteelSeries Arctis Companion App, which gives you over 150 sound profiles to choose from, carefully balanced to bring the best out of a variety of popular games, with SteelSeries adding more as they go. Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Diablo 4 are represented, but so are games like Hi-Fi Rush, Armored Core 6, and so much more that allow you to bring the best sounds out of whatever you’re playing.

Finally, these puppies have wonderful Active Noise Canceling and Transparency modes where you can either block out noise clutter around you altogether or be able to hear outside noises as you’re doing whatever you want, and they even feature a mic that allows for clear voice chat whether you need to talk to your teammates or bring up a phone call on Bluetooth. Simply put, the GameBuds are a more-than-expected first step into the earbuds space for SteelSeries and they’ve easily become our go-to device for portable gaming audio. You can find them in PlayStation/PC and Xbox/PC variants on SteelSeries' website or at partnered retailers.

Be sure to read over the rest of the Shacknews Awards in our Year of the Games: 2024 feature.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on BlueSky @JohnnyChugs.