I've been gaming with the Audeze Maxwell solidly for over a year and there is no better-sounding gaming headset deal I could recommend

Audeze Maxwell gaming headset
(Image credit: Audeze)
Audeze Maxwell | 10 Hz - 50,000 Hz | Wireless | 80hr battery | $299 $269 at Amazon (save $30)

Audeze Maxwell | 10 Hz - 50,000 Hz | Wireless | 80hr battery | $299 $269 at Amazon (save $30)
There's no getting away from it, $269 is still an awful lot of money to spend on a PC gaming headset, but the Maxwell delivers audiophile planar magnetic drivers, and that means you're getting wireless sound that standard PC gaming headsets cannot match. The tonal separation and detail in the Maxwell is second to none and they've never been more affordable. 'Cos yeah, I'm not going to say 'cheap', though compared with other planar magnetic headphones they kinda are.

Price check: Audeze $299

I've been justifiably obsessed with planar magnetic drivers since I got my first pair of Oppo PM-3, which just seemed to get better and better with age. Well, in terms of sound anyways... the faux leather headband started shedding 'bits' and they've been relegated to a box in my attic for years. But that's fine because I then had a pair of Audeze LCD-1 headphones, which still sound amazing.

But they're wired, and I'm a lazy audiophile and that meant I would perennially switch between the stunning wired sound of the LCD-1 and that actually-still-pretty-good wireless sound of Razer's BlackShark V2 Pro. Though. to anyone foolish enough to talk to me about audio, I would always complain about not having a good wireless audiophile alternative.

Until Audeze released the Maxwell headset. There was the Penrose, but that didn't hit the sweet spot the stunning sound and versatility of the Maxwell delivers. I gushed over the form and audio in my Audeze Maxwell review over a year ago and they've been on my head ever since.

And this is the first time I've actually seen them discounted below their $299 MSRP, with the Maxwell on sale today for $269 at Amazon. Sure, that's not the most stellar discount, and it's still a huge amount of money for anyone to spend on a gaming headset, but it's not a lot of money to spend on a planar magnetic set of headphones.

Planar magnetic drivers differ from standard dynamic drivers—which are effectively tiny speakers, with a wobbly conical diaphragm and magnetised coil—in that they have a completely flat shape. That delivers a broader, more detailed, more natural sound, and for me that makes them ideal for producing the expansive soundscapes we want in our PC games.

But they are heavy because of all the magnets in those drivers. The Maxwell is a pretty hefty headset, and after a really long gaming sesh, you might be happy to take them off for a while. But you will miss the gorgeous audio you leave behind, however.

I find they are generally still pretty comfortable on my bonce, though I have upgraded the faux leather ear cups with a set of memory foam Dekoni Elite Sheepskin pads, and they are the softest things to ever touch my head. They are some $80 at Amazon, however. Those aren't on sale today, but the memory foam velour version is. With a Prime membership, you can grab the Elite Velour for $40 at Amazon.

Dave James
Editor-in-Chief, Hardware

Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.

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