What if you could decode the pulse of public opinion or track breaking trends in real-time, all in just minutes? Enter Grok 4.1, the latest AI model that’s making waves for its ability to analyze social sentiment and integrate live data like no other. But here’s the twist: while it excels in these niche areas, […]
The post Grok 4.1 xAI Model Tested : Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Geeky Gadgets.
The iOS 26 update brings a significant leap forward in lock screen personalization, offering a suite of tools designed to enhance both the aesthetic appeal and functionality of your iPhone. With features like 3D effects, adjustable fonts, color options, and widget integration, you now have the ability to tailor your lock screen to reflect your […]
The post How to Customize iPhone Lock Screen in iOS 26 appeared first on Geeky Gadgets.
Samsung’s Odyssey G8 OLED monitor is now down to $950 for Black Friday, saving you $350. It’s one of Samsung’s best 32-inch displays, offering a crisp 4K resolution, a 240Hz refresh rate and vivid OLED contrast that makes games and movies look incredible.
The 32-inch Odyssey G8 has earned high marks for its blend of image quality and gaming performance. Its 4K OLED panel produces deep blacks and bright highlights, with 99 percent DCI-P3 color coverage for vibrant visuals. The 240Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms response time deliver exceptional smoothness in fast-paced games, while AMD FreeSync Premium Pro keeps everything tear-free.
Design-wise, it’s sleek and minimal, with a slim metal frame that looks just as good in a work setup as it does in a gaming room. The monitor supports DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 inputs, plus USB-C connectivity for charging and data transfer. Built-in speakers and Smart TV features let you stream directly from apps like Netflix or Prime Video without connecting to a PC or console.
You also get Samsung’s SmartThings integration, so the Odyssey G8 can double as a smart home hub, controlling compatible IoT devices from lights to thermostats. It even supports cloud gaming through Xbox Game Pass and NVIDIA GeForce Now, meaning you can play high-end titles without extra hardware. The combination of OLED contrast, motion clarity and built-in streaming makes it one of the most versatile monitors in Samsung’s lineup.
If you want something even larger, the Odyssey G9 is also discounted by $300, bringing the 49-inch curved DQHD model down to $700. It offers a wide field of view and 144Hz refresh rate, making it a great pick for simulation and racing fans.
The Odyssey G7 is another strong choice, now $600 after a $300 discount. This 37-inch 4K display runs at 165Hz with a curved design and supports both HDR and AMD FreeSync for smooth gameplay.
Finally, Samsung’s Smart Monitor M9 is available for $1,300, $300 off its regular price. It combines 4K OLED visuals with built-in streaming and AI-powered vision tools, making it a good all-rounder for work and entertainment.
If you’ve been waiting to upgrade your gaming setup, now’s the time. Samsung’s Odyssey G8 monitor is on sale for $950 for Black Friday, a $350 discount off its regular price. It’s one of the best 32-inch gaming monitors on the market, combining stunning picture quality with ultra-smooth performance.
The 32-inch Odyssey G8 has earned high marks for its blend of image quality and gaming performance. Its 4K OLED panel produces deep blacks and bright highlights, with 99 percent DCI-P3 color coverage for vibrant visuals. The 240Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms response time deliver exceptional smoothness in fast-paced games, while AMD FreeSync Premium Pro keeps everything tear-free.
Design-wise, it’s sleek and minimal, with a slim metal frame that looks just as good in a work setup as it does in a gaming room. The monitor supports DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 inputs, plus USB-C connectivity for charging and data transfer. Built-in speakers and Smart TV features let you stream directly from apps like Netflix or Prime Video without connecting to a PC or console.
You also get Samsung’s SmartThings integration, so the Odyssey G8 can double as a smart home hub, controlling compatible IoT devices from lights to thermostats. It even supports cloud gaming through Xbox Game Pass and NVIDIA GeForce Now, meaning you can play high-end titles without extra hardware. The combination of OLED contrast, motion clarity and built-in streaming makes it one of the most versatile monitors in Samsung’s lineup.
If you want something even larger, the Odyssey G9 is also discounted by $300, bringing the 49-inch curved DQHD model down to $700. It offers a wide field of view and 144Hz refresh rate, making it a great pick for simulation and racing fans.
The Odyssey G7 is another strong choice, now $600 after a $300 discount. This 37-inch 4K display runs at 165Hz with a curved design and supports both HDR and AMD FreeSync for smooth gameplay.
Finally, Samsung’s Smart Monitor M9 is available for $1,300, $300 off its regular price. It combines 4K OLED visuals with built-in streaming and AI-powered vision tools, making it a good all-rounder for work and entertainment.
What if you could delegate your most complex research tasks to an AI that not only understands your objectives but also plans, executes, and refines its approach with precision? Enter Gemini 3, a innovative AI model designed to transform the way we approach research. Paired with the versatile Deep Agents harness, this duo doesn’t just […]
The post Gemini 3 Research Agent : Builds Reports While You Sleep appeared first on Geeky Gadgets.
Sometimes, the best gaming headset doesn’t have to be a “gaming headset” at all. While many people view these devices as their own category, they’re ultimately still headphones, just with a boom mic and some fancy branding attached. While the overall quality of dedicated headsets has improved over time, they still tend to cost extra compared to a good pair of wired headphones (which, yes, still exist). If you need to chat with friends, you can always buy a microphone separately and get superior sound quality there as well.
That said, we completely understand that many people just want the simplicity of a headset with a built-in mic. So after testing dozens of contenders over the past couple of years, we’ve rounded up a few commendable gaming headsets and headphones that work well for gaming — which aren’t quite the same thing. Whichever way you go, all of our picks should make your game time more enjoyable, whether you play competitively or just for fun.
Note: This is a selection of noteworthy gaming headsets and headphones we’ve put through their paces, not a comprehensive list of everything we’ve ever tried.
The PlayStation Pulse Elite is a reasonable alternative to the Turtle Beach Atlas Air for PS5 owners, as it allows you to change volume, swap between different EQ presets, adjust the game-to-chat mix and mute the mic right from the console’s native UI. It’s similar to the way AirPods integrate with iPhones. This pair also lets you connect to a second device over Bluetooth at the same time, and the planar magnetic drivers — a rarity for $150 headphones — do a decent job of reproducing smaller details. The sound profile as a whole is narrower and more uneven in the bass and treble than the Atlas Air, however, while the all-plastic design is comfortable but flimsy-feeling. It also doesn’t do much to block outside noise, despite being closed-back, and the control buttons are awkward to reach.
We also tested the in-ear equivalent to the Pulse Elite, the PlayStation Pulse Explore, but found it too uncomfortable to wear over extended sessions. This one is limited to roughly five hours of battery life, too.
The Astro A50 (Gen 5) is effectively the same headset as the A50X, just without any HDMI ports on its base station. It costs $100 less, so it’s a worthy alternative to the Audeze Maxwell if you mainly play on one platform and want a superior microphone. But the ability to automatically switch between consoles is the thing that makes the A50X worth buying in the first place, so that convenience is still worth paying for if you game on multiple devices.
The Corsair Virtuoso Pro is another one of the few dedicated gaming headsets with an open-back design. It has a relatively dark sound with mostly underemphasized treble and elevated upper-bass, though the highs are clearer here than they are on the Astro A40 — a former top pick that's now discontinued — and it still delivers a wider soundstage than most gaming headsets. We preferred this signature over Astro’s pair with some games, though in others it felt less balanced. The Virtuoso Pro’s mic still sounds fairly thin as well, so it’s merely decent compared to the wider headset market. Its headband adjustment mechanism feels cheap, too, and you can’t detach the mic without swapping cables out entirely. Its round, breathable ear cups and manageable weight do make it easy to wear, though, and it comes with a sturdy travel case for protection. Ultimately, it’s a decent buy, but it’s hard to justify over the more featured and easier-sounding Atlas Air.
The HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless can last well over 300 hours at moderate volumes, which is remarkable and by far the best of any wireless model we’ve tested. It’s light and not too snug on the head, and its powerful bass lends a real sense of excitement to in-game action. But it blunts more detail than the Atlas Air, Maxwell and A50 X, and its mic isn’t as good. Several users have also reported latency issues when using the headset with HyperX’s Ngenuity software, and there’s no Xbox, Bluetooth or wired audio support. Still, if battery life is paramount, you may be able to look past all of that.
If the Audeze Maxwell is out of stock, the Logitech G Pro X 2 Lightspeed is another quality wireless headset worth considering. It sounds better than something like the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless, with satisfying but more controlled bass and more accurate mids. It’s also lighter on the head than the Maxwell. Logitech rates its battery life at 50 hours, but we found it to last much longer at moderate volumes.
However, similar to the Astro A50 X, a dip in the treble makes it sound darker and more veiled than the Maxwell, and it doesn’t have any HDMI-switching tricks to fall back on. Its mic also sounds less natural than those of the Maxwell and A50 X. Plus, while it can connect over a USB dongle, Bluetooth or a 3.5mm cable, it can’t pair to two devices at once like Audeze’s and Astro’s pairs. Our biggest issue is the price: Value-wise, it’s in something of a no man’s land at its MSRP of $280. It’s a fine choice if it ever dips around $200, though.
The wireless Razer BlackShark V2 Pro is tremendously comfortable and has a good mic, but its boomy sound is less refined and detailed than the Audeze Maxwell. As a closed-back headset, it also lacks the width of the Atlas Air. There’s no support for wired audio either.
It's worth noting that Razer has released a new BlackShark V3 Pro model that adds active noise cancellation, wired audio support and the ability to listen to multiple audio sources simultaneously, among other tweaks. We haven't tested it yet, but it also costs $50 more at $250.
The Logitech G535 is an impressively light (0.52 pounds) and comfy wireless headset that’s often available for $100 or less. It has a relatively neutral sound signature: not flat, but not beholden to big, thumping bass. It can make details in the mids sound thin, and if anything it could use a little more sub-bass, but it’s an agreeable listen overall. However, its mic isn't especially full, and its 35-or-so-hour battery life is a significant drop from our top recommendations. It doesn’t work with Xbox’s wireless protocol or Bluetooth either, and it forces you to crank the volume to reach a listenable level. But if you don’t want to spend a ton on a wireless headset, it’s a fine value.
Xbox owners who want a more affordable wireless headset than the Audeze Maxwell could do worse than the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7X. It’s another bass-forward pair, and its mic is comparable to that of the Cloud Alpha Wireless. It offers multiple connectivity options, including Bluetooth and a 3.5mm cable. While it's marketed for Xbox, it can also connect to PCs and PS5s. Its 30-ish-hour battery life is well short of the Maxwell and Cloud Alpha Wireless, however, and its uneven treble can cause things like in-game dialogue to sound masked in certain titles.
SteelSeries sells a cheaper Arctis Nova 5X model with longer battery life, though we haven't been able to test that one yet, and it doesn't support wired connections.
The wired HyperX Cloud Alpha often goes for $80 or less, and at that price it’s fine as a mild step-up from the Cloud Stinger 2 if you really want a closed-back gaming headset. It’s old, but its plush earpads and headband are comfy, and its detachable mic, while not superb, is still serviceable. Its treble is underemphasized, however, and again it sounds more “in your head” than our open-back picks.
The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro is a comfortable wired-only headset with a good mic and a useful DAC that makes it easy to adjust the headset’s EQ and game-to-chat mix on the fly. However, its closed-back design can’t provide the same enveloping sense of width, and its default sound can sound piercing in the treble. It’s also pricier, typically fluctuating between $200 to $280 these days.
The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless is largely similar to its wired counterpart but adds a passable level of active noise cancellation. Being able to hot-swap battery packs and connect to multiple devices at once is also nice. It’s not as convenient for multi-console play as the Astro A50 X, though, and it's usually not much cheaper than the Audeze Maxwell, which sounds better, has a superior mic and lasts longer on a charge.
There’s nothing particularly bad about the Beyerdynamic MMX 300 Pro: It uses the same drivers as the DT 900 Pro X, its velour earpads are comfy and its mic works well. It’s just hard to recommend spending $380 on a wired-only headset when the Audeze Maxwell offers wireless functionality and similarly excellent sound — with slightly less spiky treble and more even bass — for $80 less. The MMX 300 Pro’s mic isn’t detachable either, and the closed-back design keeps it from sounding as wide as the DT 900 Pro X.
The HyperX Cloud III Wireless is comfy and can last up to 120 hours per charge, but it sounds less dynamic than the older Cloud Alpha Wireless, with weaker bass response. Like that pair, it also lacks a 3.5mm jack, Bluetooth audio support and Xbox compatibility. The Cloud Alpha Wireless still gets nearly three times the battery life, too, so it remains a better buy if you want a wireless headset for PS5 or PC gaming in the $150 range. The Cloud III Wireless has also become harder to find in stock in recent months.
The Sennheiser HD 490 Pro are studio-focused open-back headphones that also work well for gaming. They come with two sets of ear pads, one that slightly elevates the bass and another that bumps the midrange, though they deliver impressive width and detail either way without pushing too hard in one direction. They’re also a pleasure to wear over long periods, both lighter than the DT 900 Pro X and less stiff than the HD 560S. That said, they're often priced around $400, and their sound profile is more of a nice alternative to our top picks than something clearly more natural or resolving. Most people don’t need to pay the premium.
Evaluating headphones is a particularly subjective exercise, so calling one pair the absolute “best” is something of a fool’s errand. At a certain point, whether you're an audiophile or not, everything becomes a matter of taste. For most, a headphone with a wide soundscape and strong imaging performance — i.e., the ability to position sounds correctly, so you can more precisely tell where footsteps and other gameplay effects are coming from — will provide the most immersive gaming experience, the kind that makes you feel like your head is within a given scene.
For that, you want a high-quality pair of open-back headphones. That is to say, an over-ear pair whose ear cups do not completely seal off the ear from air and outside noise. These are inherently terrible at isolating you from external sound and preventing others from hearing what you’re playing, so if you often play games in a noisy environment, their benefits will be blunted. But in a quiet room, the best open-back pairs sound significantly wider and more precise than more common closed-back models.
More up for debate is how a good gaming headphone should sound. If you want something that’ll help you in competitive multiplayer games, you may prefer a headphone with a flatter sound signature, which'll keep a game’s mix from being overly boosted in one direction and is less likely to mask the smaller details of what’s happening around you. A slightly brighter sound, one that pushes the upper frequencies a tad, may also work. Open-back headphones almost never have huge sub-bass, so you rarely have to worry about low-end sounds muddying up the rest of the signature. In this light, the fact that an overwhelming amount of gaming headsets are closed-back and bass-heavy seems counterintuitive.
Lots of people love bass, though. And if you don't really care about competitive play, some extra low-end can add a touch of excitement to action scenes or rousing soundtracks. You still don’t want a pair that boosts the low-end too hard — as many gaming headsets do — but the point is that what makes a pair “immersive” to one person may sound dull to another.
November 2025: We’ve updated this guide for clarity and made sure all pricing and availability details are accurate. We’ve also removed the Astro A40 TR, our longtime favorite wired headset, as it appears to have been discontinued (and since our top wireless pick comes with a cable in the box anyway).
April 2025: We’ve updated this guide to ensure our recommendations are still accurate and removed our testing notes for the Beyerdynamic MMX 200, which is no longer available.
January 2025: We’ve looked over this guide to ensure our picks are still accurate and added notes on a few more headsets we’ve recently tested, including the PlayStation Pulse Elite, Astro A50 (Gen 5) and Beyerdynamic MMX 300 Pro.
November 2024: We've updated this guide with a new recommendation for the best dedicated gaming headset, the Turtle Beach Atlas Air, and reorganized our picks accordingly. We've also added notes on other gaming-friendly headphones we've tested, including the Sennheiser HD 490 Pro and Razer BlackShark V2 Pro, and removed a couple of write-ups on headsets that are no longer available.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/best-gaming-headset-130006477.html?src=rssThe Apple Watch has become a cornerstone of wearable technology, celebrated for its versatility and seamless integration into daily life. While its native features are robust, many users overlook the wealth of third-party apps that can significantly enhance its functionality. These apps, often developed to address specific needs, can improve health tracking, boost productivity, and […]
The post Underrated Apple Watch Apps You Need to Install appeared first on Geeky Gadgets.
What if you didn’t have to wait for Valve’s much-anticipated Steam Machine to hit the shelves in 2026? Imagine having a gaming system right now that not only rivals the Steam Machine but also reflects your personal preferences and performance goals. Bold claim? Not quite. By using the power of the Minis Forum HX100G, a […]
The post Waiting For Steam Machine? Build Your Own 4K Games Machine Now! appeared first on Geeky Gadgets.
Handheld gamers obsess over battery life like it’s a matter of survival. We swap cells, carry backup chargers, and baby old consoles through one more dungeon before the screen flickers off. Battery anxiety is real, especially for something like the Game Boy Advance SP, where the original cell barely lasted through a single flight. This mod responds to that anxiety by going completely overboard, bolting a GBA SP onto a DeWALT power-tool battery big enough to run drills and apparently several full-length RPGs.
The project comes from a Reddit build where a modder mounts a GBA SP onto a DeWALT XR FLEXVOLT lithium-ion pack, creating what commenters immediately dubbed the “jobsite Game Boy.” The console’s original tiny battery is gone, replaced by a buck converter that steps down the tool battery’s eighteen volts to the four-ish volts the SP expects. The result looks like Nintendo and DeWALT secretly collaborated on a rugged portable for construction workers.
Designer: Bangoo H
The battery is rated at nine amp-hours at 18 volts, which works out to around 162 watt-hours compared to the few watt-hours of the original cell. Reddit did the math and estimated hundreds of hours of runtime, with one commenter joking that the battery might finally die fifteen minutes after the nukes start flying and another suggesting you could finish your entire childhood backlog before needing a recharge.
The wiring is straightforward if you squint. The modder dropped a buck converter into the SP where the original battery lived, wired it to the battery contacts via a dummy cell, then connected that to a custom holder that slides onto the DeWALT pack’s rail. Charging still happens through the regular DeWALT charger, so the Game Boy just thinks it has an absurdly large external battery that never quits.
The aesthetics are what really sell it. The SP shell has been resprayed in black with yellow buttons, and the lid wears a big DeWALT logo, so when it’s closed, the whole thing reads like a tiny power-tool accessory. Open it up, and the screen pops out of the battery like a work light. It even has a little Nintendo badge on the back, making the mashup feel weirdly official.
Of course, the DeWALT pack turns the SP from a pocketable handheld into a luggable brick. Commenters joked about dropping it on your face in bed or finally silencing anyone who says the SP is too small for their hands. It’s not exactly travel-friendly unless your idea of travel involves rolling a toolbox around, but it does give the console a much larger grip.
The DeWALT GBA SP mod turns battery anxiety into a punchline and shows how far you can push an idea just because it makes you laugh. By strapping a beloved handheld to a power-tool battery, it mixes serious electrical work with a sense of humor, reminding us that modding can be joyful and completely unnecessary in the best possible way.
The post GBA SP With DeWALT Battery Will Outlast the Apocalypse first appeared on Yanko Design.