The Audio Archive
Explore our complete collection of curated insights, technical reviews, and buying guides.
Poly Voyager 5200 Review: One Ear, On Purpose
Almost everything this site measures is the wrong lens for the Voyager 5200. It has one earpiece, so stereo is not a concept that applies. Its battery is quoted in single-figure hours next to gaming headsets claiming eighty. It has no active noise cancellation for the listener at all. Every one of those reads as a failure on a spec sheet and none of them is, because this is not a device for listening to anything. It is a device for being heard, outdoors, while moving, and it has been quietly doing that for one of the largest owner bases of any product in our catalogue.
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SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Review: Never Charge It
Wireless gaming headsets compete on battery life the way phones compete on megapixels, and the numbers have reached the point of meaninglessness — eighty hours, a hundred, whatever the next one claims. SteelSeries went the other way with the Arctis Nova Pro. It ships two batteries and a base station that charges the spare while you use the other, so the runtime figure stops being a specification and becomes a question you never ask. That idea costs money, needs a desk, and is the reason to buy this over anything cheaper.
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Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 Review: Bought for Gemini
These are the first Google earbuds this site has reviewed, and the reason is not that we were avoiding them. It is that the buying case is unusually narrow. On paper the Pixel Buds Pro 2 are a conventional flagship: active cancellation, spatial audio, a custom chip, a fit system nobody else has. In the market they are priced above Apple's current flagship while satisfying their owners less than either Apple's or Samsung's. What is left to justify the difference is Gemini, and whether that counts depends almost entirely on which phone is in your pocket.
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Shokz OpenFit 2 Review: Same Price, Opposite Design
Shokz makes two flagship open-ear headphones and charges exactly the same for both. One is a bone conduction headband that vibrates your cheekbones. The other is a pair of air conduction earhooks that plays sound at your ears without covering them. Same money, opposite engineering, and no obvious signal about which is meant for you. The choice comes down to a single question, and it is not the one the marketing asks.
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Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 Review: Check the Box
The Stealth 700 Gen 3 comes in versions labelled for Xbox and PlayStation, and the platform list matters more than the colour or a small price gap. The Xbox version covers Xbox, PS5, PC and mobile; the PlayStation version includes PS4 but excludes Xbox. Compare the exact version, current offer and return terms before choosing.
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Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 Review: Not Purely Bone Anymore
Every bone conduction headphone has the same weakness, and it is not a flaw anyone can engineer away: low frequencies need a sealed ear canal to build pressure, and the entire point of the format is leaving that canal open. Shokz has spent three generations narrowing the gap. With the OpenRun Pro 2 it stopped narrowing and changed the architecture instead, adding a conventional air conduction driver alongside the bone transducers. That works. It also means the thing you are buying is no longer quite what the category name says.
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Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Review: 80 Hours, Two Versions
Most wireless gaming headsets under a hundred dollars ask you to charge them every second or third session. The Stealth 600 claims eighty hours, which would put it in a different category of ownership entirely — the kind you plug in monthly and otherwise forget. The specification is genuinely strong for the money. The thing that will actually decide whether you are happy is not on the specification sheet at all: there are two different headsets sold under this name, and picking the wrong one leaves you with hardware your console will not talk to.
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TOZO NC9 Review: 45dB ANC for $28
Budget earbuds normally make you choose: cancellation or water resistance, battery or bass, a decent app or none at all. The NC9 declines to choose, at twenty-eight dollars, and that is either remarkable or suspicious depending on how much you trust a specification sheet. Nearly fifty thousand owners suggest the first, with a caveat worth stating about where the numbers come from.
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JBL Vibe Beam Review: Budget Earbuds Without ANC
The JBL Vibe Beam offers straightforward wireless listening without active noise cancelling. That makes the buying decision depend on the current offer and the features you actually need: water resistance, fit and sound controls. If cancellation matters most, compare its checkout price with ANC alternatives before buying.
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Razer BlackShark V3 X Review: 70 Hours
This is a new headset, and that changes what a review can honestly claim. The specification is knowable today: seventy hours, 270 grams, wireless and Bluetooth and USB. What is not knowable is whether the hinges survive a year or the battery still holds seventy hours next winter. This page separates the two, because a product selling this well this early deserves to be covered — and covered with the caveat stated rather than buried.
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