Budget headsets have a habit of reminding you exactly where the corners got cut, usually somewhere around hour three of a session when your neck starts filing a complaint. The HS35 v3 Wireless doesn’t really do that, and for £79.99, it’s one of the more impressive budget-em-ups (it’ll catch on) I’ve had on my desk in a while.
The first thing you notice pulling it out of the box is how light it is. There’s a real feather-light-nearly-forgot-it’s-there quality to it, and that lightness isn’t just a spec sheet boast, it actually changes how the headset behaves on your head over a long session. No creeping ache across the top of your skull, no need to keep readjusting every twenty minutes, no slow realisation halfway through a race that your ears have gone numb. It’s the kind of thing you only really appreciate by comparison, and once you’ve worn something this light for a few hours, going back to a heavier headset feels like strapping a brick to your head.
The design itself won’t turn any heads, and that’s clearly deliberate. No RGB, no chunky premium materials, just a clean plastic shell in either Carbon or White. There’s a small yellow accent around the earcup hinges that stops it looking totally utilitarian, but otherwise this is a headset that knows exactly what it is and isn’t trying to convince you otherwise. Build quality is solid enough too; it survived being tossed in a bag, sat on by a 12 year old (my clumsy son, not a random kid I borrowed for the experiment), and shoved off my desk at least three times by my cats, without so much as a creak.
Comfort holds up throughout a session, not just for the first twenty minutes. The earcups form a proper seal, insulating you nicely from the outside world, which is a genuinely nice surprise at this price point; a lot of budget headsets let outside noise leak in around the edges, but this one shuts the door properly. Good news if you share a house with someone who likes their TV loud, or a cat that’s decided 2am is conversation time. The fabric-covered padding stays breathable too, so you don’t end up with that sweaty, overheated feeling that some pleather earcups are guilty of after an hour or two.
Sound-wise it punches well above its price bracket. Positional audio is sharp, footsteps and distant gunfire land exactly where they should, and dialogue comes through clean rather than muddy. It’s tuned more for clarity than any real bass rumble, so it’s not going to replace a proper set of top-end cans for kicking back with an album, but for actually playing games it’s doing more than a headset at this price has any right to. The removable microphone matches that energy too, handling squad chat and Discord calls without the thin, tinny problems you sometimes get further down the budget ladder. Nobody’s going to mistake it for a proper streaming setup, but for actually being heard clearly by your mates, it does the job without complaint.
Battery life is a genuine strength as well, easily lasting through long sessions without needing a top-up, and the tri-mode connectivity (2.4GHz, Bluetooth, wired) means it’ll happily hop between your PC, console, and phone without much thought. There’s also no fiddly software to wrestle with. Plug in the dongle, or pair over Bluetooth, and you’re off. No firmware updates to chase, no companion app demanding your email address before it’ll let you adjust an EQ slider. It just works, which sounds like faint praise until you remember how rarely that’s actually true.
Now, the caveat, and it’s a proper one if this applies to you. The headband is adjustable, technically, but only via the elastic inner band, and mine arrived already sitting at its longest setting. It still fit, just about, but there was no room left to give if I’d needed it. If you’ve got an average or smaller head, you’ll likely never notice this. If you’ve got a bigger head, though, this is a genuine ceiling rather than a gentle limit; there’s no secondary adjustment point to fall back on, and once you’re maxed out, that’s it. This isn’t a minor nitpick I’m tossing in for balance, it’s the one thing that could make this headset a non-starter for some people regardless of how good everything else is. Try it on, or at least check sizing carefully, before you buy if you’ve had fit issues with headsets before, because there’s no fixing it after the fact.
So where does that leave it? A lightweight, comfortable, well-sealed headset with sound and mic quality that consistently overdelivers for the price, dragged down only by a headband that doesn’t leave much wiggle room for bigger heads. If you fall inside the sizing sweet spot, and most people will, this is an easy one to recommend, genuinely one of the better budget wireless options going right now. If you don’t, that one issue is significant enough to actually change the calculation, so weigh it up before you buy rather than after.
Reviewed on PC
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