Maxwell

A Gaming Headset That Actually Sounds Good

Here's the thing about gaming headsets: most of them sound terrible. Tinny, hollow, like you're listening through a tin can. The Audeze Maxwell is different. Reviewers consistently praise these for combining genuine audiophile sound with actual gaming features, which is rare at this price.

The 100mm drivers deliver rich, detailed audio that works beautifully whether you're gaming competitively, watching movies, or just listening to music. You're not getting that artificial "gaming" sound that prioritizes explosions over everything else. Instead, you get balanced, natural audio that makes everything sound better.

Comfort is a major win here. At 350 grams, they're substantial without being heavy, and the padding is genuinely comfortable for long sessions. After talking to reviewers, the consensus is that you can wear these for hours without your ears getting sore or the headband feeling too tight. That matters if you're someone who games for extended periods.

The battery life is excellent. Twenty hours between charges means you're not constantly hunting for a cable. For someone juggling work, gaming, and life, that's genuinely convenient. You charge them maybe once a week and forget about it.

Build quality feels solid. These don't feel cheap or flimsy. Everything is put together well, which is important when you're investing $299 in something you're going to wear regularly.

The gaming features work smoothly without being overly complicated. You get what you need without drowning in settings.

The main tradeoff is price. At $299, these aren't an impulse buy. They're a real investment. But if you're serious about gaming and want headphones that actually sound incredible, the Maxwell delivers. You're paying for premium sound and comfort, and you actually get both.

One note from the community: the Maxwell 2 just released, so keep an eye on that if you're comparing options.

A Headset Trying to Be Two Things, Excelling at Neither

Audeze's Maxwell presents an interesting business problem disguised as a product. The company has taken its planar magnetic expertise and wrapped it in gaming features, then priced it aggressively at $299. On paper, this sounds like a win. In practice, it's a compromise that serves neither market particularly well.

The sound quality is genuinely good. Planar magnetic drivers deliver the kind of frequency response and detail retrieval that makes audiophiles nod approvingly. For music listening or content creation, the Maxwell punches above its weight class. But here's the problem: gaming doesn't require audiophile sound. Competitive gamers care about directional cues, footstep clarity, and response time. The Maxwell's tonal accuracy is wasted in a firefight.

The 350-gram weight is the real tell. That's heavy for a gaming headset. Competing products from SteelSeries, HyperX, and Corsair sit 50-100 grams lighter. During an eight-hour stream or gaming marathon, that difference becomes a neck strain problem. You're not just wearing audio equipment, you're wearing a small weight. Audeze's design suggests they optimized for acoustic performance and let weight follow naturally. That's an audiophile priority, not a gamer's.

Battery life at 20 hours is solid and removes daily charging friction. Wireless connectivity works as expected. These are table stakes at this price, not differentiators.

Here's where the value proposition breaks down: at $299, you're paying flagship pricing. For that money, you could buy a purpose-built gaming headset that's lighter, has better spatial audio for competitive play, and costs less. Or you could buy actual audiophile headphones, use a separate mic, and get better sound for the same price. The Maxwell tries to split the difference and ends up compromising on both fronts.

RTINGS rates this at 9.5/10, which feels like it's scoring the audio quality in isolation rather than evaluating the product as a gaming headset. That's the critical gap. The Maxwell is a good headset with excellent sound. It's not a great gaming headset, and it's not the audiophile choice for the money. At $299, it's a middle path that doesn't justify its position.

If you're an audiophile who games casually and can tolerate the weight, the Maxwell makes sense. For everyone else, better alternatives exist on both sides of this market.