SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Review: Great but Imperfect Gaming Headset
A successor to SteelSeries\\\’ beloved flagship Arctis Pro gaming headset line, which turned four this year, the new SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro keeps some of the best aspects of its predecessor and other Arctis kin, like the hot-swappable battery, dual 2.4GHz and Bluetooth wireless connectivity, speaker drivers designed for high-res audio and signature Arctis design and comfort. For the Nova Pros, SteelSeries upgraded aspects of the design and mic, increased battery life, switched connection types to match modern ports and consoles, swapped its spatial audio to a proprietary system, upgraded the GameDAC 2 (still only for the wired model) and more. The result is a fresh flagship headset that\\\’s lost none of its gaming cred, but still feels a bit pricey. There are five models in the Nova Pro line: $250 for the wired Nova Pro and its Xbox-specific sibling and $350 for the wireless models for PC, Xbox and PlayStation. There isn\\\’t a ton of variation among them. The Xbox models swap a USB connection and the second USB-C port on the base station for the necessary Xbox-compatible USB connector but are otherwise identical to their respective linemates. All the headsets are PS5-compatible: The PS5 model simply has different packaging for sale at retail. I tested the Nova Pro Wireless, which means I didn\\\’t get to evaluate the new GameDAC. In addition to connecting to a PC or Mac via USB, you can output to the headset from a PS5 or Android phone equipped with a USB-C port via the base station (which is essentially the dongle), a Nintendo Switch (in TV mode) or anything that has a 3.5mm analog jack. The base station accepts an analog input as well, for mixing a stream on your PC. Among other things, SteelSeries removed the optical connections, which means if you\\\’ve got an older console this isn\\\’t a great choice. Sounds great SteelSeries updated the acoustic pipeline (all the hardware between the incoming audio and your ear) and it sounds excellent, with clear lows, midrange and highs. My admittedly sub-audiophile ears couldn\\\’t make out any unintended distortion with Doom Eternal\\\’s heavy metal pounding as loud as my ears could stand. The earcups deliver solid noise isolation, and a transparency toggle decreases isolation so you can sort of hear outside noises like the air conditioner and someone talking too loudly on a conference call. The base station is capable of high-res audio up to 48kHz/24-bit and the serious parametric equalizer in SteelSeries\\\’ new Sonar software (which lives within the company\\\’s GG utility software) is excellent. (Compared with a graphic equalizer, which adjusts based on groups of frequencies, a parametric equalizer takes into account continuous transitions between the key frequencies. Besides, like magnets, Beziers make everything better.) So, for instance, you can narrow the frequency of the output of a specific voice, footstep, vehicle and so on in a game to make it easier to hear and track them based on your own hearing characteristics. It comes with presets for a handful of popular multiplayer games as well as a generic \\\”FPS Footsteps,\\\” but you can tweak and save custom presets to your ears\\\’ desire. You can use the individual 10-step graphic equalizers for chat and the mic, so you can optimize one for clarity and the other for your best broadcast voice. The updated ClearCast 2 mic definitely hits SteelSeries\\\’ goal for optimum clarity, though for plain old voice it lacks some of the warmth that some other mics provide. Sonar also provides ClearCast AI noise cancellation, which seems to work really well without making your voice sound tinny or overprocessed. It lets you separately adjust the amount of NR for background noise (low, continuous sounds like fans) and impact noise, like keyboard pounding. It does a really good job on the latter, significantly muffling the sound of my seriously loud mechanical keyboard (tactile clicky FTW!). SteelSeries switches from standard DTS surround sound to its own Sonar Spatial Audio, which translates position data within games into its own directional system. It works pretty well, but that\\\’s partly because of how effective its tuning is. It has two sliders, a scale of performance to immersion and distance. Performance narrows the directionality of the sound, so you can better isolate (for example) footsteps, while immersion expands it for a more continuous 360-degree sound, like the voices in Senua\\\’s head in Hellblade: Senua\\\’s Sacrifice that seem to come from everywhere. It doesn\\\’t let you adjust individual speaker locations, like Razer\\\’s THX does, but I don\\\’t miss that here: The left and right rear channels, which I frequently hear too close to left and right, were correctly positioned. Using spatial also seems the best way to listen to music. Without it, music sounds kind of flat, even with equalizer tweaks. The headset seems to consider movies an afterthought and music an after-afterthought, with only a couple of movie presets and no music presets. There are also separate configuration settings as part of the main GG Engine, which can get confusing where they overlap; for instance, there\\\’s also a graphic equalizer in settings, which is disabled if you have the Sonar equalizer active. It does have a toggle between optimizing the wireless signal for performance (lowest latency) or range. That didn\\\’t seem to make much of a difference to me, though — at about 30 feet (through a couple of walls) it started to get a bit wonky. It\\\’s pretty typical, though. Battery life seems middle of the road. For instance, extrapolating from my current experience it should hit about 18 hours or so just from listening to music with no mic use. There are a lot of variables to consider here, though, such as the number of devices connected. SteelSeries mitigates it a bit with the battery swappability. In theory, you could buy more batteries and keep going forever. New design The Nova Pro headset and the wireless base station have gotten a makeover from the Arctis Pro, and the headset looks a lot cleaner, with smaller outer earcups, a mic that retracts completely into the earcup and redesigned
See Skydiving Salamanders Show Off Their Complex Aerial Maneuvers
Wandering salamanders are the flying squirrels of the amphibian world. Wandering salamanders get to around 4 inches (10 centimeters) long and live high up in redwood trees. High up in the canopy of the California redwood forests, the wandering salamander lives, eats and soars. Scientists are marveling at the skydiving amphibians and their ability to effortlessly glide and pull off complex aerial maneuvers. A study led by researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) and the University of California at Berkeley investigated Aneides vagrans\\\’ gliding skills using a wind tunnel to capture slow-motion footage of the amphibians in action. The wind tunnel simulated the conditions of falling through the air. The paper appeared in the journal Current Biology on Monday. \\\”They are able to turn. They are able to flip themselves over if they go upside down. They\\\’re able to maintain that skydiving posture and kind of pump their tail up and down to make horizontal maneuvers,\\\” USF biologist and lead author Christian Brown said in a UC Berkeley statement on Monday. \\\”The level of control is just impressive.\\\” The research team compared wandering salamanders with other salamanders, including ground-dwelling ones. The ground-dwelling amphibians essentially sucked at the wind tunnel experiment. Brown said they \\\”just kind of hover in the wind tunnel freaking out.\\\” By comparison, A. vagrans was comfortable and dexterous in the air. The biologists ascend into the trees to study the animals, which is how they first noticed the salamanders\\\’ leaping and gliding abilities. The wandering salamanders seem to be using their flying skills as a way to stay up in the canopy in case of a fall or when they need to jump to avoid predators or to descend a tree. The gliding comes in handy considering the creatures live 150 feet (46 meters) off the ground in towering redwoods. Another UC Berkeley video shows what the salamanders look like when they jump. The researchers are fascinated by how the salamanders are pulling off these aerial ballets since the amphibians look the same as other salamanders and don\\\’t have any obvious aerodynamic adaptations that would help them parachute. The team is calling for further study to better understand how subtle physical features might play a role in the skydiving. The amphibians spend their entire lives in the canopy, and it seems they\\\’ve developed an efficient and safe way to navigate their arboreal habitat. It shows you don\\\’t necessarily need wings or skin flaps to be a great glider.
How to Watch One of 2022\’s Biggest Asteroids Zoom Past Earth
A massive asteroid is heading our way, and it\\\’ll make its closest pass by our planet in centuries on May 27. Called 1989 JA (or sometimes just asteroid 7335), it\\\’s 1.2 miles (1.8 kilometers) in diameter, which helps earn it the classification of a \\\”potentially hazardous\\\” object according to astronomers, even though it poses no real risk to our planet. At that size, it\\\’s about twice the size of Dubai\\\’s Burj Khalifa or the same size as Plum Island in New York. When the distance between this space rock and us is shortest, at 7:26 a.m. PT Friday morning, it will still be 10 times farther away than the moon. So there\\\’s clearly no reason for any asteroid anxiety with 1989 JA, but still it\\\’s expected to be the largest asteroid to make a close pass by Earth during 2022, according to NASA\\\’s database of near-earth objects. Because it\\\’s so big, astronomers have already been able to observe it. The object isn\\\’t quite big enough or close enough to see with the naked eye, but it might be possible to see with a powerful telescope and the help of an app like Stellarium. As its label indicates, the asteroid was discovered in 1989, and it\\\’s not expected to fly this close to us again between now and the end of the 22nd century. If you don\\\’t have the equipment or ability to check this monster out for yourself, the Virtual Telescope Project based in Italy will be streaming an online watch party that you can attend via the feed above. Or if you\\\’re more interested in much smaller space rocks that might actually be possible to see with the naked eye, don\\\’t forget to add Monday\\\’s potential meteor storm to your agenda.
iPhone 14 – All The Rumours and Leaks So Far
Rumours about the next iPhone continue to grow. It seems as though we’ve barely got used to the current one before a new model is being teased. The iPhone 14 is expected to be the next release in Apple’s 2022 Flagship line. There are rumours buzzing around regarding the design, price, and features, but these should all be handled with caution. Plenty of the iPhone 13 rumours turned out to be false, so we can expect to see similar with the iPhone 14. We have not seen specific rumours regarding the iPhone 14’s suspected release date. But what we do know is that Apple is hosting WWDC 2022 starting June 6 and it is likely that iOS 16 will be announced, the next major software version for the iPhone. There has been no date announced from Apple for an Autumn event, which is typically when the next iPhone is announced. Generally, the Autumn event in the US is sometime in September, with releases coming shortly after. The latest buzz points to the iPhone 14 receiving a better front-facing camera, thanks to a potential new lens supplier. We’ve also heard that the iPhone 14 series may have an under-display Touch ID, a more durable titanium alloy body, a hole-and-pill shaped display, and a bigger camera bump. A shakeup of the lineup also seems likely as Apple is expected to say goodbye to the Mini. We may also finally see the rumoured satellite communication connectivity in the iPhone 14 series. Whilst the feature was expected to debut with the iPhone 13 series, it’s been rumoured that Apple has been working on enabling users to make calls and send texts in areas without cellular coverage. This could be a huge gamechanger, and a significant safety feature if true. New iPhones always include camera improvements, and the iPhone 14 is no exception. There are rumoured improvements to the Ultra Wide camera, and a possibility that Apple will introduce a periscope zoom lens that allows for much greater optical zoom, but it’s still not yet clear if this will come in 2022 or 2023. There are conflicting rumours regarding the iPhone 14’s rear camera bump. Some reports have stated that a redesign for the upcoming phones would remove the chunky camera bump, whilst Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that the bump will actually be expanded to accommodate a wider camera with a 48-mega pixel camera system. Starting in 2022, high-end iPhone models are likely to adopt a vapour chamber thermal system, which Apple is rumoured to be “aggressively testing.” The VC thermal system will be required for the high-end iPhones due to their stronger computing power and faster 5G connection speeds. There are already smartphones from companies like Samsung, Razer, and LG that use vapour chamber cooling technology, which is used to keep a device cooler when it is under heavy stress. There have been rumours that Apple is aiming to remove the Lightning port from the iPhone for a portless design with charging done over MagSafe, but it’s not clear if that technology will be introduced with the 2022 iPhone models. Apple is working on a car crash detection feature for the iPhone and the Apple Watch, which could come out in 2022. It would use sensors like the accelerometer to detect car accidents when they occur by measuring a spike in gravitational force. When a car crash is detected, the iPhone or the Apple Watch would automatically dial emergency services to get help. Since it’s planned for 2022, this could be a feature designed for the iPhone 14 models and the Apple Watch Series 8, though it’s not likely to be limited to those devices. It would be an expansion of the Fall Detection feature that’s in existing Apple Watch and iPhone models. The iPhone 14 is expected to feature WiFi 6E connectivity, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo says that WiFi 6E will offer the high-speed wireless transmissions necessary for AR and VR experiences, and it is also expected to be used in the mixed reality headset that could come out in 2022. The iPhone 14 models may launch without a physical SIM slot, with Apple transitioning to an eSIM-only design. Apple is allegedly advising major U.S. carriers to prepare for the launch of eSIM-only smartphones by 2022, which suggests some iPhone 14 models may be the first to come without a SIM slot. As always, new rumours and leaks are being reported every day, but all should be handled with a grain of salt until legitimate verification can be acquired.
