Sony Pulse Elite Review

About the Sony Pulse Elite

Sony Pulse Elite specs

• Price: $150
• Style: Over-ear, closed-back
• Colors: White with black accents
• Drivers: Planar magnetic drivers
• Connections: 2.4GHz via USB-A dongle, Bluetooth, 3.5mm analog
• Battery life: 30 hours
• Device compatibility: PC, PlayStation 5 (2.4 GHz wireless); other (Bluetooth, 3.5mm)
• Microphone: Retractable boom microphone, press-to-mute
• Virtual surround sound: Tempest 3D (PS5 only)
• Noise canceling: No
• Weight: 342 grams (12.1 ounces)
• Special features: Simultaneous wireless connections, fast charging (full charge in 2 hours and 10 minutes), included headset hanger with charging functionality
• Warranty: 1-year warranty

What we like

Audio is rich and crisp

The Sony Pulse Elite has pretty solid sound. You’ll want a fairly quiet environment to game in, as the noise isolation is surprisingly weak despite the seal made by the ear cushions. People talking or a fan blowing in the background will be easy to hear through the headset. But with the volume turned up, it’s easy enough to focus on the sound.

The speaker drivers have a strong range with deep bass. This is great for explosive effects and music alike. In Of Montreal’s “Coquet Coquette,” the MIDI lines high up in the treble stratosphere sizzle while the bass thumps away and deep drum riffs cut through. The presentation is well-balanced without overemphasizing anything.

Whether running around in The Finals or Overwatch 2, the audio presentation is well tuned towards the surroundings, with clear sound and useful positionality. In one match, I was able to use audio alone to keep track of where an enemy was moving toward an objective and avoid getting caught off guard.

Even the mic quality is decent. It doesn’t sound exceptional but does a good job of keeping background noise like keyboard and mouse chatter out of the audio stream.

Battery life is respectable

The Pulse Elite headset promises up to 30 hours of runtime and largely lives up to that. Throughout my testing, I used the headset heavily with only a brief period plugged into a PS5 to apply updates. The headset has never begged to be plugged in for a recharge.

Some gaming headsets can last longer, but 30 hours is a decent amount and should get users through the week or a long weekend of gaming without needing to be plugged in.

What we don’t like

Inconsistent connectivity

The audio quality of the headset’s planar magnetic drivers hardly matters if they can’t consistently deliver it, and that’s the case for the Pulse Elite. The wireless connection to the PlayStation Link adapter was spotty throughout the entirety of my testing.

The signal frequently degrades, adding artifacts to the audio coming from the cans akin to what I’ve heard from wireless headsets when getting close to the edge of their transmission range. The difference is that these artifacts happen with the headset only three feet from its transmitter.

That’s not even the worst of it. The signal frequently drops out altogether, sometimes for just an instant, but other times it’s for a second at a time. If it were only once or twice a day, it would be easier to brush away as a small hiccup. I would have suspected faulty hardware if I hadn’t encountered similar issues with the Sony Pulse Explore earbuds, which rely on the same PlayStation Link wireless transmitter.

Some of the issues might stem from the odd handling of data itself. Listening to a 20Hz-20kHz signal sweep, the headset introduced near-constant artifacts as the frequency moved higher beyond 10kHz. It may be attempting some compression of the higher frequencies, which isn’t what you want from hi-fi headphones—you know, the type that use planar magnetic drivers.

In one episode of Pluto, a high-pitch sound effect introduced the same artifacts, so the issue isn’t some anomaly that only crops up only under test conditions.

After a period of silence, the headset also periodically disconnects from the dongle for some reason. It doesn’t power off, it just stops listening to the dongle. So once audio starts playing again, you have to press the link button on the headset to get it reconnected. Strangely, this only occurred while connected to one specific laptop, and didn’t happen while connected to my desktop.

Just like the audio coming out, the audio going in also suffers from some connectivity issues. So the mic ends up spotty as well.

There are many design shortcomings

The Sony Pulse Elite is pretty much plastic as far as the eye can see, save for the leatherette ear cushions and the rubber suspension headband. This leaves it looking and feeling a little bit cheap. Even if it doesn’t creak or groan like other poorly assembled gaming headsets, it has an unfortunate linking mechanism between the headband structure and the ear cups.

They join at loose hinges to provide some swivel, but they’re so floppy that the ear cups can slap against the headband even without a particularly wide range of motion.

While the headset is thankfully more compact than the Inzone H9, it’s a bit heavier and it distributes the weight over a rubbery strip that floats below the plastic headband much like SteelSeries’ Arctis headsets. The rubber isn’t the most breathable material for bald users like myself, and I doubt it will feel all that pleasant tugging on hair, either.

The unique ear cup design didn’t leave much space for ports and buttons, so they’re all on the strange hanger on the right—something of an extrusion of the headband where it meets the ear cups that reaches forward toward the wearer’s mouth. This makes the ports a little awkward to get at.

The Pulse Elite also borrowed much of the design of the older Pulse 3D, albeit with adjusted ear cups to accommodate the new driver tech and extended arcs at the bottom to house a proper boom mic. The right arc has an always-on indicator light and sticks out far enough forward that it becomes a distraction as I frequently see it in my peripheral vision.

The controls are unintuitive

Sony advertises the intuitive controls of the headset, and while the volume up and down buttons certainly are, all of the interactions handled with the one remaining button are not. Generally, it’ll just be used for powering on and off. But it’s also responsible for setting the headset into pairing mode, canceling pairing searches, switching from the current connection to a different PlayStation Link or Bluetooth connection, resetting the headset without deleting all pairing data, and resetting all pairing data.

If that sounds like a lot, it is. And the headset communicates everything it’s doing with abstract beeps and boops.

Somehow, during my testing, the headset uncoupled from the PlayStation Link adapter and didn’t want to reconnect. Even following Sony’s instructions for switching connections and pairing for 20 minutes, I couldn’t get reconnected. This was in a busy cafe, so it’s possible that the radio interference was too great for the headset. But it still doesn’t bode well for the Pulse Elite if its dedicated wireless transmitter can’t hold up.

Should you buy the Sony Pulse Elite?

No, they need some work

Sony may have a knack for headphones, but its PlayStation-specific models have been a mixed bag. The Pulse Elite had such promise, fitting planar magnetic drivers into a wireless gaming headset at half the cost of Audeze’s previous offerings, but they struggle to deliver on that promise because of their unreliable connectivity. Just how many issues you may encounter will vary, but having tested many wireless headsets, I can’t recall many having had as many issues as the Pulse Elite.

There are plenty of options for gamers hoping to enjoy a wireless connection alongside planar magnetic drivers. The Audeze Maxwell is $299, but they’re a stunning example of what the technology can do and the best gaming headset you can buy for the PlayStation 5. The Audeze Penrose are a little dated and officially discontinued, but still a great value if you can find them at a deep enough discount.

Or you can get a more affordable and flexible option like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 if you’re willing to forgo the planar magnetic drivers.

With such serious issues and so many competent alternatives available, there’s little reason to choose the Sony Pulse Elite headset and too many reasons to avoid it.