What is the Roccat Noz Gaming Headset?
The Roccat Noz Gaming Headset is a worthwhile budget offering, available for a reasonable £59.99. Despite its alluring price, it isn’t without issues, falling beneath the bar of quality I’ve come to expect from its competitors in a few key areas. Build quality is lacklustre and the sound blasted to your ears is inferior to rival headsets.
So, what’s to love? Turtle Beach’s Stealth 600 and Razer’s Electra V2 sit in a similar price bracket and feel better, sound better and offer a more versatile experience. Overall, unless you’re a sucker for the Roccat brand, there are better options available. That being said, it isn’t all doom and gloom.
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Roccat Noz Gaming Headset – Design
From a design perspective, the Roccat Noz is pedestrian. Much of the device is formed around a black plastic chassis that lacks a premium feel, arguably coming across as cheap and flimsy if I’m being critical. Its foam ear cups and padded headband are comfortable enough, and the overall small footprint meant that it’s supremely comfortable for long gameplay sessions and also ideal for taking with you on the go.
Gaming headsets are often quite heavy, abundant with exuberant bells and whistles, which means I’m often pulling them off following a few hours’ use developing a headache. Even whilst wearing glasses, the Roccat Noz sat upon my head without issue, so it’s a shame then that the remainder of its features seldom manage to impress.
Like most modern headsets, the left ear cup boasts a volume dial, mute button and 3.5 mm insertion point for a detachable microphone. They’re all conveniently placed that reaching them during a heated multiplayer session is easy. Adjusting the Noz to fit your head reveals a small piece of metal that feels great, although looks unusual when set against the otherwise plastic design.
The cable has an in-line Y splitter with separate inputs for both the headset audio and microphone, making it easy to use the Roccat Noz with a variety of platforms. Whether you’re playing on PC, console or even mobile, there’s a versatility here that makes hopping between them a breeze.
I also want to mention this headset’s weight: its lightness add to both its comfort and portability if you’re hitting up LAN parties or even fancy using it on your commute as a dedicated device for music and podcasts.
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A removable mic at this price is a welcome feature, given many of Turtle Beach’s offerings are impossible to remove unless you fancy breaking the peripheral completely. Otherwise, it feels like Roccat is going for less-is-more with the Noz headset, which I can definitely appreciate. Although cables and overall build quality feels unusually flimsy for the £60 price.
Roccat Noz Gaming Headset – Audio
In terms of gaming performance, the Roccat Noz is perfectly adequate for the price. It delivered a satisfactory mixture of tones as I ploughed through Judgment alongside a few lengthy sessions of Overwatch. Sound is clear and concise, with effects and dialogue easy to differentiate as you explore virtual environments. Beeping car horns and chatterbox civilians penetrated the soundscape with ease, seldom interrupting the core audio on which I wanted to focus.
However, given the lack of optional audio customisation and the headset’s small size, there isn’t a whole lot of bass to go around. If you’re a fan of first-person shooters or adventure titles chock-ful of explosive set-pieces, this is worth taking into account. Landing squarely in the mid-treble range, it simply doesn’t have a lot of impact, failing to establish an identity of its own.
I found the Noz worked for most situations, but with no way to alter the profile, you’ll have to grin and bear it. As I said before, with cheaper or only slightly more expensive rivals providing the option, it makes the Noz difficult to recommend, despite boasting a collection of worthwhile feathers in its cap. 50mm audio drivers and a supremely light 210g footprint help what audio there is to sing, but I was still left wanting.
Related: Judgment review
Why buy the Roccat Noz Gaming Headset?
The Roccat Noz is a perfectly servicable gaming headset offering decent audio and an attractive form factor. However, this versatility doesn’t make up for underwhelming audio performance and build quality that doesn’t match up to its £60 price.
If you find it with a tenner or so shaved off the price, take the plunge – but for now, this is a peripheral that sadly doesn’t do quite enough to stand out.
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