Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX: Specifications
compatibility: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
driver: 40mm
frequency response: 20Hz to 20kHz
wireless: yes
weight: 10.9 oz
The Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX ($149) is a wireless gaming headset designed to pair with your Xbox console or PC. Nacon markets the Rig 800 Pro as a premium gaming headset. It’s lightweight enough to wear all day, and you can game through the night without worrying about the battery.
After months of testing, I can say that Nacon headsets offer excellent battery life and, like many of the best wireless gaming headsets on the market, I can comfortably wear them for hours without complaint.
But what really matters is performance. After reading this Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX review, you’ll understand why we think it’s a great headset for Call of Duty players who like to chat with their teammates. -Those heavy actions.
If you want a model that works with the PlayStation console instead, Nacon also sells the Nacon Rig 800 Pro HS headset. It’s practically identical to his HX model reviewed here, except it runs on PC and PlayStation 4/5 instead of Xbox consoles.
Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX Review: Design
The Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX looks like a simple, no-nonsense gaming headset. It comes in any color you like as long as it’s almost entirely plastic with the exception of the headband and ear cup padding. We’re confident it’s both comfortable and tough enough to withstand heavy wear and tear.
Attached to the left earcup is a boom mic that automatically turns off when you swing it all the way up, making it easy to know when the mic is on and muted. The mic itself isn’t removable, but it’s bendable so you can move it all the way down to the best position for your voice.
All controls are behind the left earcup. There aren’t many, but there are so many that it takes time to understand all the features. From the bottom of the left earcup, there’s a micro-USB port for charging cables, a mic button for adjusting gain, a volume knob, a power/pairing button, and finally a dial to control which mix is controlled. Chat audio and in-game audio you hear. They all work well once you understand where everything is and what it does.
In terms of durability, the headset’s plastic body feels sturdy enough to last at least a year or two without a particularly hard drop or tumble. Hopefully, the pop-out nature of the earcup sizing mechanism (more on that in a second) makes it easy enough to put the errant earcup back in place if you drop this headset. But after months of testing this headset, it didn’t break or show any noticeable wear and tear.
Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX review: comfort
The Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX is a little more comfortable than its edgy black plastic exterior might suggest. Even in its default configuration, the headset is big enough to fit my overly large head, albeit a little too tight for my liking.
Luckily, I found it easy to resize the headset for a more comfortable fit. Each earcup can be adjusted up or down by one size, but the mechanics of doing so are a bit tricky to understand.
The trick is to pop the small piece of rectangular plastic sticking out of the earcup through one of the three rectangular cutouts on the headset. This frees the earcups to pop themselves out, and you can then reattach them to any of his three rectangular cutouts on either side of the headset, giving you more headroom than the default center setting. You can make the set bigger or smaller.
The earcups themselves feature thick rings of foam and are large enough for normal-sized ears to feel snug and comfortable on the Rig 800 Pro HX. I had no problem wearing them for up to 4 hours straight, but they tended to give me mild headaches longer.
Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX Review: Performance
I’ve tested this headset for hours with games like Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 and Battlefield 2042 and I had no issues with the mic, it definitely said what I said and turned off when I took it off my face . As for the sound quality on the other side, my teammate claimed I sounded better, but apparently the headset he was using the mic on.
As far as sound quality goes, the Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX’s 40mm drivers are excellent for making explosions and gunshots sound loud and impactful in games like Battlefield and Call of Duty. That’s what makes the headset great, and with Dolby Atmos enabled, it’s the perfect pair of cans for a game of shooting things up with your teammates.
However, in my experience, the Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX is not well suited for games with more subtle and diverse soundscapes. I spent hours testing the device on both Xbox Series X and gaming PCs with games like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Forza Horizon 5, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns. We found the Rig 800 Pro to be the perfect headset for any game, giving us all the sound we needed when we needed it. But really, it only shines in games with guns and other loud, percussive bass notes.
For example, Elden Ring sounded worse on the Rig 800 Pro than the TV’s built-in speakers. The high-pitched sounds (such as steel hitting steel and magic spells firing) were clear enough in the headset, but the gentle background of his music and the protagonist’s footsteps seemed strangely muffled. It sounded like In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, the voice acting sounded good, but the music and sound effects sounded strangely muted, as if you were listening through a thin layer of wood. It sounded a bit better than Elden Ring overall, but again, where the headset really shines is when you’re shooting guns or hearing heavy-bass combat music kicking up. Only when
I had a similar experience listening to artists like Johnny Cash, John Coltrane, The Coup and The Mountain Goats. The Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX is a decent headset for listening to music, letting you hear everything, but rarely does a track sound as good as it does through a decent pair of speakers. Low-end bass and tones sounded best to my ears. Vocals and highs, on the other hand, weren’t always as clear on the Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX as they were on my ~$40 Jlab earbuds. I was able to compensate for this by increasing the volume, but that feels like an inelegant and potentially ear-injury solution.
The Rig Pro 800 headset does a good job of boosting the bass and treble, but tends to sound a little muffled in the midrange. This isn’t a big deal, but it does mean that I can only recommend this headset to a very specific group of people.
Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX Review: Features
The Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX doesn’t have the in-depth software offered by competitors like the SteelSeries Arctis 7, so it doesn’t have many options for customizing the sound. ), and the headset is ready to go. But what the device lacks in software features, it probably makes up for in terms of useful hardware features.
Best of all, the base of the Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX has a slot for a USB-A dongle that you can slide into another device for wireless use with your headset. Personally, I set it up so that my headset charging cradle sits on my desk connected to my PC, and my USB-A dongle is plugged into my Xbox Series X. This way the headset works interchangeably with either device. Note that the headset only wirelessly connects to the USB dongle, not the charging base station. So if you want to use the headset with your PC, you have to pull the dongle out of your Xbox and plug it into his USB port on your PC.
Nacon claims the wireless connection to the headset is lag-free and extends up to 33 feet. In my personal experience, no lag, but about 33 feet of distance I don’t know. I was lucky enough to be about 30 feet away before my headset disconnected and I lost connection. The real problem is with the doors and walls. You could probably easily extend the Rig 800 Pro HX 33 feet or more away from your Xbox without issue, but be prepared for potential audio issues as soon as you turn a corner or walk into another room.
Another very useful feature is the Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX’s long battery life. The manufacturer claims to offer up to 24 hours of battery life, and I can’t say for sure if the total usage time is his 14, 16, or 20 hours, but long enough every time I pick it up I know it lasted. Headset, it was ready to go.
This is all the more impressive considering I’ve reviewed this headset for months, never charged it, and left it on my coffee table for weeks at a time. As soon as you pick it up and turn it on, you’re ready to go. Long battery life isn’t a must-have feature when charging the headset is as easy as leaving it in the cradle, but it’s still an impressive feat.
However, when the device was plugged into the base station to charge, it took over two hours to fill the juice. It’s hard to imagine why you’d want to do that if you still have it on hand.
As functional and reliable as the Rig 800 Pro, I hope this $150 headset offers some of the features found in similarly priced competitors. I like the simplicity of the dongle (just plug it in, turn on the headset) and don’t miss the hassle of pairing via Bluetooth. Bluetooth functionality makes the Rig 800 a much more convenient headset pro. Personally, I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts and music while gaming, and having the option to pair the headset to my phone would have gone a long way to justifying the price.
Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX Review: The Verdict
I love the Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX so much that I am happy to pick it up whenever my friends and I are ready to dive into an Xbox game. It’s comfortable and durable, even after hours of wearing it, and I’d happily recommend it to anyone looking for a practical, no-frills headset for Xbox and PC.
But looking at the competition makes the Rig 800 Pro hard to recommend. It costs about the same as the Razer Kaira Pro, for example, but it doesn’t match the feature set of Razer’s headset. The 7X is the same price as the Rig 800 Pro, but works on more platforms and offers more features than Nacon’s headsets.
If you want a great wireless gaming headset for playing action games with your buddies on Xbox or PC, the Nacon Rig 800 Pro HX is for you. But you can do better for the price.
