If there’s one thing this past year has taught me about gaming hardware, it’s that headsets are going premium. Sony has its Inzone H9 II, which goes big on hi-fi sound and ANC but also has an MSRP of $350 to match. Then there are entrants from SteelSeries, like the Arctis Nova Elite, which costs an eye-watering $600 and justifies that price (or attempts to) with great sound and a special dock that lets you mix audio streams together and pair with multiple devices at once. In January, Asus ROG also decided to hop on board the super-premium headset train with the Asus ROG Kithara, a wired gaming headset done in collaboration with hi-fi audio brand HiFiman. I finally got around to trying Asus ROG’s premium headset out, and the good news is that the Kithara is one of the best-sounding headsets I’ve used in the past year. The not-so-good news (or part of it) is what I’m about to tell you next. 3.5 Asus ROG Kithara The Asus ROG Kithara gaming headset has excellent sound and mic quality, but wires and heft make things complicated. Pros Excellent sound and sense of space Great mic quality Comfortable open-back design Premium build quality Cons Wires and dongles make things complicated This gaming headset is huge USB-C dongle makes things annoying with some consoles Very expensive Better start saving up now The Kithara is $299, and there’s no getting around it: that’s a lot of money to spend on a gaming headset. Sure, it’s still less than the two aforementioned gaming headsets from Sony and SteelSeries, but that’s still the price of an Xbox Series S—or it used to be before RAMageddon.