Finding the appropriate headset, keyboard, or mouse for your long gaming sessions is crucial. With wireless headsets especially, the extended sessions are more tolerable as you don't have to wrestle with, or ensure careful, maneuvering around the cable. An unmentioned quirk is how you're able to take a short break away from your battle station and not even need to remove your headset—go ahead, grab that drink whilst keeping a tab on the action.
As wireless peripherals have become highly sought after, shoppers will routinely perform research on which wireless devices are the best. As we know, not all wireless devices are equal. One especially important difference is whether the wireless device utilizes either the 2.4GHz band or Bluetooth. Which is better?
For our situation, latency refers to the delay duration between the wireless device and your PC. The lower the latency, the better. With a high latency, you'll be able to notice a delay from your gameplay or media. An example would be playing FPS games (Valorant, Counter-Strike, etc.)—a mouse with a high-latency will delay your clicks and snappy reaction reflexes, which isn't ideal for those clutch FPS moments. Another example would be with a high-latency headset where you're watching a YouTube video, you may notice that the speech audio isn't properly synchronizing with an individual's speech on video.
2.4 GHz SLIPSTREAM WIRELESS 2.4 GHz Bluetooth 5.2 Bluetooth 5.0 ≤1ms ≥20ms ≥8ms ≥40ms
In regard to headsets specifically, the wireless bandwidth capability is especially important. With a high-speed wireless connection, you're able to enjoy the best audio quality offered. 2.4GHz will generally offer a better experience in regard to audio quality, as there's little to no compression required for the audio. With Bluetooth, the bandwidth is generally limited in comparison to 2.4GHz—requiring more audio compression and resulting in varying degree of audio quality degradation. Of course, there are certain Bluetooth codecs, such as aptX HD that specifically address audio quality, but such codecs are primarily limited to mobile devices and not integrated into computer systems.
Below is a table of wireless range capabilities, based on our wireless headsets. This is an important consideration in case you'll find yourself a certain distance from your gaming PC and want to be able to move around without being bound by a wireless signal limitation.
2.4 GHz SLIPSTREAM WIRELESS 2.4 GHz Bluetooth 5.2 ≤60 ft ≤50 ft ≤30 ft
This post comes from some interesting tweets I saw, and really speaks to how difficult it can be to get the right amount of "correctness" when you seek to find out about how technology works.
Maybe you know the answer posed in the title, maybe you think you know, maybe you were afraid to ask. Lucky for you, @bnb came asking.
Several folks popped in with answers...
We have consensus, right?
Basic Internet research would back this up...
Case closed... Except.
That's a whole different story. But the whole Internet is telling me about "shorter range" at 5GHz.
I don't want to leave anyone here with an absolute conclusion, as I don't want to take anyone here "at face value".
If anyone wants to go deeper in the comments in the comments with some absolute facts on the issue, I very much welcome them.