HELP - Arctis Nova Pro Wireless (Xbox Series X)

Howdy folks, new to the Steelseries family and unfortunately, I have not been welcomed as I had anticipated. I had a Hyperx headset that I had been using for years and the faux leather was falling apart so I figured I’d get an upgrade and found the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless that supposedly had great sound quality and allowed me to adjust EQs on the fly - perfect, so I thought.

Cue a couple of weeks ago when I received my headset. I was excited to set it all up and get ripping. To my dismay, it did not go as anticipated…

  • I plugged in the headset and base station and realized one of the batteries I received was dead. I contacted support and after a bunch of unnecessary exchanges and video proof (which I needed to upload to YouTube because they can’t receive large files via email or have any kind of drop area for videos) of the battery not working, they gave me a code for a new set of batteries - hooray! Well, when I went to the website to order the new batteries, they were out of stock - no longer hooraying. I asked the support associate when they would be back in stock and he didn’t know. I find this quite ridiculous that they don’t know when they will have batteries back in stock which are necessary for every wireless headset they create. Rip one off the production line and send it to me for all I care. It has been over a month and they are still not in stock.
  • Sonar does not work on console besides a couple of presets (my own fault for not realizing this). And after a lot of reading it seems like Sonar is required to get the full experience. I found the FPS Footsteps preset to be the best for now, but disappointed I can’t use Sonar to the full extent.
  • The sound coming from the headset was VERY tinny and did not have extensive depth. However, when turning on the ANC, the base seemed more punchy and sound direction became more accurate. This was quite a shock in how different the sound quality was between ANC on and ANC off.
  • I had Dolby Atmos installed from my hyperx and every time I opened a game, the Dolby Atmos settings turned on. Every time I play I have to go into the settings and change the sound options from Dolby Atmos to Stereo otherwise the sound is horrendous. While this is annoying it is manageable.
  • The mic is pretty terrible. And again without sonar, I can’t really adjust it the way it needs to be.
  • When talking through game chat or discord, the voices of my friends seemed very crackly and was obnoxious to hear all the time.

After all of these issues I thought maybe I received a faulty headset and exchanged it for another one. The new one came in and I had two working batteries - finally off to a good start. I also read that sonar could be causing some of the crackling voice issues so I plugged it into the Xbox without doing any updates or connecting to sonar and realized that the crackling was still an issue. However, the base station already had FPS Footsteps as an EQ preset so maybe it was connected to sonar before sending to me?? I tried everything I could to make it work properly wirelessly but didn’t have a solution so I thought maybe I just needed to plug the headset into the base station or controller to make it all work correctly. Well upon doing so, I found out that none of the buttons or volume wheel on the headset or base station work when plugging in the headset… wow. I just don’t know where to turn from here or how to fix any of these issues. Does anyone else have any experience with this headset on Xbox and any solutions? If not, I think I’ll be returning this second headset and going with a different company altogether. Any insight is appreciated!

TLDR: bought arctis nova pro wireless for Xbox. Came with dead battery, tinny sound quality, crackling voice chat. Exchanged for second headset and still have same exact issues and wired connection does not allow me to change settings, volume, mute, etc. Any help appreciated!