Why specialize in one strength when you can try to have them all at once? This appears to be Nacon’s mantra with its RIG R5 Spear Pro HS, which boldly aims to deliver a high-tech, studio-grade, lightweight, customizable, and impressively affordable PS5 headset that meets the demands of both casual and professional players.

Unveiled today (October 8), the R5 Pro HS is “a love letter to competitive gamers everywhere,” according to Michael Jessup, director of audio product for Nacon. It’s explicitly designed for first-person shooters, utilizing 40mm graphene driver diaphragms for distortion-free audio, allowing players to appreciate their favorite FPS as audio directors intended.

If the R5 Pro HS is to headsets what the Revolution 5 Pro and Revolution X Unlimited were to third-party controllers, we could be in for a real treat when it lands on general sale over the coming month, and for an RRP of $69.99.

“Gaming is incredibly dynamic,” says Jessup. “You’re going from scenes where you have, you know, incredibly quiet scenes with footsteps, wind blowing... and then two seconds later, grenades are going off. Gaming is mixed this way on purpose, because it’s a sound designer’s job to help elicit feelings from a player, you know?”

With this belief in mind, Jessup, who spoke to the press last month, said his team decided the only way to deliver on its desires was to build the R5 Spear Pro HS from the ground up. It adopts a wired-first approach for high performance in any circumstance, including major esports tournaments, using graphene — a lightweight yet rigid material — to deliver top-notch audio quality without compromising comfort.

“Graphene is a breakthrough technology for game audio reproduction,” he said. “The drivers afford us a frequency response that goes from 20 hertz to 40 kilohertz, which is well beyond the human range of hearing.

“If you really want to unlock the true power of a graphene driver and make a statement, a wired headset delivering the full kind of unrestricted performance is the way to go, and that’s kind of the route that we’ve chosen.”

The R5 Spear Pro HS also features a high-sensitivity, cardioid unidirectional microphone with a broad frequency response, as well as a convenient flip-to-mute function. Its in-line volume slider also has a max lock, maintaining audio at the highest volume for when your controller has separate volume controls.

“We have a high-sensitivity microphone of -44 dB for incredibly crystal clear comms, and a six millimeter mic diaphragm,” Jessup says. “We feel this is a good size-to-frequency response ratio without having a big, you know, overt microphone just kind of sticking out in the middle of nowhere.”

While it might not boast the same high-tech elements of the audio components — the supplied plates are simple, branded plastic caps — the R5 Spear Pro HS’s proprietary SNAP+LOCK magnetic mod system aims to deliver endless customization.

“I think where a lot of other companies would go proprietary with their systems, we’re quite the opposite,” says Jessup. We’d like to work with many partners, so the more the merrier [who] want to help make different mod plates and ear cushions for the R5 series. We’re definitely open to discussions.”

Alongside branding partnerships, Nacon also plans to explore additional functionality through these plates. On the call, Jessup described the potential for an esports-specific mod plate that’s larger, thicker, and features acoustic foam to provide more passive noise isolation for those competing on stage in loud environments.

The community support doesn’t end there. When asked if the team would be open to people creating their own mod plates, Jessup said: “I’ve already gotten permission from Jack [Reynolds], our president — I’ve talked to Jack and I’ve said, you know, we should release 3D files of the mod plate to the public to let people design and print their own plates. And he has replied multiple times, ‘absolutely, we should do it.’”

The R5 Spear Pro HS for PS4 and PS5 will be available exclusively at Best Buy in the US from November 1, and via NACON in Europe from October 10, at an RRP of $69.99 (€79.99/£69.99). New models, including a dedicated PC version of the Pro HS, will arrive in the next few months.