Bose turned its Quiet Comfort 35 II noise-canceling headphones into a gaming headset

Bose’s Quiet Comfort 35 II aren’t its latest set of noise-canceling headphones (those are the $400 Noise Cancelling Headphones 700), but they’re in the news again today because the company has turned them into a wired gaming headset.

Simply called the Quiet Comfort 35 II gaming headset, the $329.95 package contains what seems to be the same old QC35 II over-ear headphones, as well as two new accessories: a detachable wired boom microphone that connects to your PC via a 3.5mm port and has Discord certification for voice chat, along with a USB desktop dial that lets you adjust both volume and cycle through four stages of mic monitoring. It’s available for preorder right now.

$329.95 is a high price for a gaming headset, but it’s alluring to have one (admittedly great) product that can be used both out of the house for podcasts and music, and at the PC for gaming. Few gaming headsets boast active noise cancellation, and no other options come to mind that also offer features, like Google Assistant, or Alexa voice support for when you’re on the go. The headphones alone usually go for around $300 these days, so getting a boom microphone and a desktop volume controller for $30 more seems like a solid value.

Image: Bose

While the Bose QC35 II gaming headset offers Bluetooth support, you won’t be able to pair them to a device wirelessly while the headset is plugged into your PC. Other headsets, like SteelSeries’ Arctis 9, offer that feature. Bose’s headset will disable Bluetooth mode when the microphone is plugged in. That’s a bit of a bummer.

Bose claims that the gaming headset can last up to 40 hours while it’s connected to your PC via its 3.5mm wired microphone, and up to 20 hours when used wirelessly. It has a Micro USB port for charging, and Bose says 15 minutes of charging can deliver up to five hours of wired gaming performance.

I wish this model was all-wireless, but this way, Bose has ensured that it’s compatible with practically every platform. The DualSense PS5 controller, Microsoft’s new Xbox controller for the Series X / S, and the Nintendo Switch all have a 3.5mm jack in common.