Nacon R5 Pro HS

It happens quite naturally that our partners tend to send us rather expensive headsets for review. This results in a rather obvious bias, something we are constantly trying to address, but it also means that when a model suddenly arrives that offers a lot for far less money than we are used to, the positive surprise is even greater.

Meet Nacon's RIG R5 Pro HS, a PlayStation-oriented wired headset that, for around £75, gives you much of what you want for considerably less.

The headset itself is surprisingly heavy, weighing in at 336 grams, but fortunately this is partly because the RIG R5 Pro HS feels much more expensive than it actually is. The headband itself is both strong and forgiving for different fits, there is a reasonable amount of memory foam on the aforementioned headband and on the ear cups, and the result is a snug but really comfortable headset. It's wired, with a jack, and that's what it is, but at least you don't have to worry about charging, and most wireless competitors in this price range have a habit of running out a little too often and a little too quickly.

The only real complaint is the microphone. Yes, it's a good microphone, and we'll get to that, but it's a flip microphone. It's an okay solution, but SteelSeries figured out a long time ago to store the entire microphone inside the cup itself, so this solution still seems a bit clunky, albeit not nearly as clunky as having to take the microphone out completely and store it in some strange place in the house.

Technically, Nacon uses 40-millimetre graphite-coated drivers here. Graphite is used because the associated membrane can be made even thinner, thus producing less distortion. The frequency is 20Hz-40kHz with an impedance of 32 ohms, and they are specially tuned in collaboration with Sony to officially support Sony's own Tempest 3D spatial audio protocol on PS5. All of this can be easily summed up by stating that the sound produced is clean, crisp, responsive, multifaceted, and deep. Thanks to Tempest, there is solid surround sound with clear directionality in the soundscape, and especially in tests in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and ARC Raiders (the latter being significantly better than the former), it became clear that the tuning itself (Nacon says they have worked specifically to highlight the upper midrange on footsteps, reloads, etc.) has been done with precision.

The microphone is not bad either, although it takes up space when not in use. It is unidirectional, runs at 50Hz-15kHz, and has good layer separation, so that both peaks and pops from the speaking voice are separated and eliminated, while absolutely no background noise finds its way into an intense gaming session. The tip is also bendable, as you would expect, so it can get very close to the user.

So far, so good, and for many, that's probably where it ends. A competitive price, solid comfort, good drivers, and a nice microphone. However, Nacon has also launched their SNAP+LOCK system, which we'll touch on at the end, and here we're a little more sceptical. In principle, it's just a piece of 3D-printed plastic with a logo that can be clipped onto each ear cup, and really it is just a way to make your headset your own. But these 3D-printed plates are clunky, and the headset looks clunky with them on. The idea is that you can print your own relatively easily, but we would have preferred Nacon to have produced a sleeker headset, possibly following the same route as SteelSeries, which only has the small, circular plates as removable.

That said, the Nacon RIG R5 Pro HS is a good deal all around, and if you don't care much about your headset being wireless, you can safely buy one for your PS5.