New Xbox Wireless Headset Offers Dolby Atmos and a Longer Battery Life

After three long years, Xbox finally gave its proprietary wireless gaming headset a refresh. This iteration boasts the inclusion of Dolby Atmos, an extended battery life, an upgraded mic, and the new Bluetooth 5.3. The new headset is now available to order for $110 at the Xbox or Microsoft store.

Microsoft promises an exceptional sound experience on its new headset, owing to the Dolby Atmos advanced spatial audio tech, “now included at no extra cost.” It looks like the company worked on executing a more immersive experience compared to the past iteration. Coupled with Windows Sonic and Headphone X, Microsoft claims the audio is precise enough to help you in intense RPGs, by better identifying sources of gunshots, someone approaching, water trickling, and so on.

The other big upgrade on the new Xbox headset is a mic that offers auto-mute and voice isolation. This means it’ll reduce your ambient noise for your teammates, so they can hear you well and not be bothered by your loud fan in the background. The mic is still a bendable boom one, with the inclusion of an illuminated LED for indicating that it’s on. The predecessor for this headset offered a 15-hour battery life, and this one extends that range to 20 hours. It also supports quick charging, with a 30-minute charge providing around four hours of use. The recharge time is still substantial, though; it takes three hours for the headset to go from dead to fully replenished.

In terms of aesthetics and design, it’s the same adjustable steel headband and soft leather and foam ear cups that adorned the past iteration. Like the 2021 release, it’s still only available in an all-black colorway. The earcups sport easily navigable control dials that can tweak game/chat balance on-the-fly. The left cup offers a dedicated game/chat audio balance dial, while the right earcup hosts a volume dial. There’s also a power/pair control and a mute button. For additional tweaking, you can always head to the Xbox Accessories app. There, you can adjust equalizer settings, bass boost, auto-mute, LED brightness, and mic monitoring.

Upgrading to the latest Bluetooth version, Bluetooth 5.3, is a standard and expected update. You still get direct pairing with Xbox and Bluetooth pairing with PC and mobile. The Qualcomm S5 Gen 2 tech guarantees an ultra-low latency connection, ensuring minimal lag.