Headset with Bluetooth and Wired

Question

I have recently gotten back into online gaming after being introduced to Overwatch. I've found that in order to get the most out of the game it's important to be on voice. I have a pair of bluetooth headphones that also doubles as a headset which is what I am currently using to talk to my teammates.

However I've run into two issues. The first is that the quality of the game sound and mic is not very good when the headphones are in headset mode and the second is that the battery has died on me a few times in game.

The solution for this would be to get a wired headset in order to talk while in game, wired (USB or analog) provides better quality then bluetooth and usually doesn't consume any power. However, I like having a pair of bluetooth headphones that I can use to listen to music while I'm doing stuff around the house.

Are there any headphones that support bluetooth and a wired option that also have a mic built in? I've been googling around but most headsets for gaming look to support wireless audio over wifi only. The closest I've come is these and I'm not sure the mic quality would be very good.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I've been looking around a bit, and first one note about the problem with bluetooth quality: The standard only supports either stereo music or mono plus microphone (I think I even found this explained somewhere on http://superuser.com). Anyway, so far I've found the following two candidates, coincidentally all from SteelSeries (no, I am not affiliated, apparently they just are good):

• The SteelSeries Siberia 840 can be used both wired (full quality, not using bluetooth) and wireless, has two battery packs for quick exchange and recharge, and additional bluetooth connectivity. Obviously that comes at a price around 300$
• The Arcits 3 Bluetooth is probably what you're actually looking for, wired but with bluetooth support, and from its description apparently even working synchronously (I'm not sure if bluetooth still works with wires disconnected, but why else would a battery be included?). At ~150€ it's also much cheaper than the Siberia 840. Just remember with bluetooth you cannot use the microphone and have stereo quality at the same time (though the description suggests you can listen to stereo quality over wire and use the mono+microphone bluetooth in parallel)
• The Arctis 7 can be used wired and wireless, but unfortunately it lacks bluetoth. But maybe bluetooth is not what you actually wanted, but rather wireless in general. The disadvantage is it only works via USB in wireless mode