Less Annoying Than a Headset

I’m a big fan of open wireless earbuds, and I’m a big fan of gaming, so when I saw that Asus ROG was mashing the two together at CES 2026, I had my controller ready, waiting to get my ears on the Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds.

As the saying goes, good things come to those who wait, and based on my experience, that applies to open-style wireless gaming earbuds, too.

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I never want to go back to regular gaming buds

Open-style wireless earbuds are great for a few reasons, and one of the biggest reasons is comfort. They don’t plug your ears up, and that’s just more tolerable during longer periods of use. Not plugging your ears with silicone tips also has another benefit—it makes talking more natural. When your ears are all stuffed up, you hear the reverberation of your own voice in your head, and it just sounds… bad. With open earbuds, though, your ears can breathe, so to speak, and conversations sound a lot more natural.

Arguably, the biggest perk, though, is that—without silicone tips or earcups over your ears—you can hear your surroundings when wearing open earbuds, making them ideal for running or biking; pretty much any activity where you need to hear your surroundings to stay safe.

While wireless earbuds for running and general audio playback, like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds or Soundpeats Clip1, have taken advantage of the open form factor to much success, gaming earbuds in an open style haven’t been easy to come by, which is a shame, because after using the Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds, I never want to go back to gaming earbuds with tips on them.

As I suspected, the $230 Cetra are very comfortable. Similar to the excellent Shokz OpenFit Pro that I recently reviewed, the Cetra wrap around your ear, with a speaker that rests on the outside, leaving space between your ear canal and the part that actually projects audio. Without silicone crammed in your ear, it’s easy to forget that you have the Cetra earbuds on, which is ideal since you’re probably going to want to game for at least an hour—that is, if you have self-restraint, unlike me. If you find the wireless earbuds unstable in any way, though, they also come with a strap that connects them that you can toss on the back. I suspect most people won’t use the head strap, but it’s nice to have.

They also allow you to hear your surroundings and still get all the crucial game audio. While sitting at my desk playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a Lenovo Legion Go S handheld, I was still able to hear my colleagues address me as gunfire exploded in the background. As is the case with any open-style wireless earbuds, it’s not the most immersive experience since there’s no active noise cancellation (ANC) or passive noise cancellation that comes from over-ear wireless headsets, but I didn’t find the mix of ambient and game audio distracting.

Even with simulated noise on my laptop—someone scrubbing dishes in a sink to mimic the racket you might encounter at home—I was able to hear a game of Fortnite just fine at about 50% volume. If you were to use these wireless earbuds on the subway in New York, for example, you might struggle, but in most settings where you’re gaming, these provide a great mix of ambient and in-game sound.

The other good part is that talking to teammates feels natural since you don’t have anything blocking your ears. You can hear your own voice clearly, and there’s no weird pressure in your ears. Just like non-gaming open wireless earbuds are great for taking calls, Asus ROG’s Cetra are great for in-game comms. From a comfort and usability standpoint, everything that makes regular open wireless earbuds awesome for listening to music and podcasts or calling, also makes the Cetra solid for gaming.

For gamers only

As the name implies, the Cetra are definitely geared towards gamers. One hallmark of any pair of gaming wireless earbuds is that they often come with a USB dongle that transmits audio at 2.4GHz, and the Cetra are no different. With the included USB-C dongle, you get super-low-latency audio, which is crucial when you’re playing fast-paced games. I tested the Cetra by playing about an hour of Fortnite on an Asus gaming laptop and was pleased with how responsive they were. I don’t feel like I missed a step, even if they’re still technically higher latency than wired audio.

One cool perk about the Cetra’s USB-C dongle is that it has its own USB-C port on the outside, which allows for charging passthrough. That means if you plug it into your phone, for example, you can just plug in the charging cable to the outside and continue topping up your device. I tried it on my iPhone 17 and my MacBook Air, and it worked just fine—dongle makers should take note.

As for the sound, I also have no complaints here. I find that the Cetra hold their own across different types of games—I tested them on Fortnite, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Cyberpunk 2077, Gears of War: Reloaded, and Minecraft. While these wireless earbuds don’t supplant my favorite gaming audio headset in the sound department, Sony’s Inzone H9 II, they’re more than suitable for lots of games. And as solid as they are in the sound department, they’re also great for capturing your voice.

I played about an hour of Fortnite with my partner, with the dongle hooked into an Asus Zephyrus laptop, and she said my audio was coming in loud and clear. She gave the audio quality a 10/10, which is a strong endorsement, though I typically use a cheap over-ear headset when I play online, so maybe the bar is low.

I even tried to simulate noise while we played (again, dishes being scrubbed and clanging around in the sink, playing at full volume on my phone), and the Cetra remained steadfast on my voice instead of the ambient noise. That’s thanks to the four-mic array with AI noise cancellation, which is a critical inclusion for not annoying the sh*t out of your teammates with disruptive background noise.

Another welcome surprise is that the Cetra are as easy to use as they are versatile. I tested these gaming open wireless earbuds on a MacBook, an iPhone 17, a Nintendo Switch, a Lenovo Legion Go S, and a PlayStation 5 using the dongle and had almost zero issues. I say “almost” because when I connected the Cetra to the PlayStation 5, the audio became fairly quiet despite the fact that the console audio was turned up all the way, though I suspect there’s some kind of setting, unknown to me, that I need to tweak on the console to fix that. One thing you cannot do is use the Cetra with an Xbox, though that’s not Asus ROG’s fault. Microsoft has specific codecs that make USB-C dongles unsupported on its Xbox consoles, which is why competitors like Razer, for example, have to sell specific gaming earbuds for Xbox consoles.

Generally speaking, the Cetra felt very plug and play, which is ideal for when you want to just pop in your buds and start gaming. You can also use the Cetra as regular Bluetooth wireless earbuds, though you won’t get the same low latency, and the sound quality definitely diminishes somewhat. I tested the Bluetooth connection on my phone, laptop, and Switch, and I see no reason not to just use the dongle.

You could theoretically use the Cetra for things other than gaming, like listening to music, but these aren’t the open wireless earbuds I’d recommend for that. I tested the Cetra out by listening to a few songs off Neil Young’s album “On the Beach,” and they were serviceable, but not great. You won’t get nearly the same nuance and dimension as you would on the Soundpeats Clip1 or Shokz OpenFit Pro.

That’s okay, though, since these are ultimately gaming wireless earbuds for, well, playing games, and on that front, they’re an appealing mix of convenience, functionality, and good-quality sound.

RGB is the way to be

The Cetra scream gamer in the looks department, with obligatory RGB lights on the side and all. If wearing the buds outside your house is on your agenda, and you don’t want to look all gamer-y in public (or if you want to conserve battery), you can also turn the lights off with Asus ROG’s free Gear Link app. (A note here: to use the Gear Link app, you need to connect to your device via Bluetooth, and not the USB-C dongle since that’s not currently supported, though Asus says that will be added in the future update).

Alternatively, if you want to lean into the gamer of it all, you can customize the lighting on the outside, choosing between different effects (static, breathing, strobing, and color cycle) as well as different colors and brightness settings. It’s a nice touch! Probably not something you’re going to be playing around with all the time, but hey, maybe you want the perfect effect for your next Twitch stream—who am I to rain on your RGB parade? Speaking of obnoxious, the case is also huge, like many open-style wireless earbuds cases often are, so just be prepared for that if you plan on keeping these in your pocket.

A few power-ups

Inside the app, you can also do other useful stuff, like choose between different preset EQs. There aren’t a ton, to be honest—seven in total, including one for music, RPGs, FPS, and a general “gaming” setting. I tested a few out while playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and didn’t notice a huge difference, so while the thought is nice, I can’t see myself going into the app and messing around with EQ a lot.

One of the more intriguing features is “Immersion Mode,” which is a competitor to the noise cancellation of similar wireless earbuds like Shokz’s OpenFit Pro, and according to Asus ROG, can block out low-frequency noise like fans. Unlike actual ANC, which requires a tight seal around or in your ear to work, open earbuds suppress noise, making it less intrusive, theoretically. While I was pretty impressed with Shokz’s noise cancellation abilities, I’m less enthused with the Cetra’s version.

To test the feature, I played simulated fan noise on a MacBook Air at about 50% volume while also listening to music, and I can’t say I noticed much of a difference. I even turned the volume down to a little less than halfway, and I can’t say I felt any more immersed. If you’re looking for Shokz-level noise-cancellation here, you may be disappointed.

While Immersion Mode felt underwhelming, Asus ROG’s “Phantom Bass” feature definitely has the opposite effect. Phantom Bass is basically just a bass boost that you can turn on in the Gear Link app, which is designed to amplify the low end. It definitely does its job. When listening to audio with Phantom Bass on, I would argue that the whole soundstage feels a lot bigger. In fact, it may be my preferred way to use the Cetra earbuds, especially when gaming. While playing Fortnite, I could hear footfalls and other in-game cues with much greater ease when Phantom Bass was turned on.

Like other companion apps, you can also adjust settings, like what the buttons on the earbuds do. By default, those buttons (there’s one on both earbuds) control play/pause, tracking skipping, and pairing mode. It’s also probably worth noting here that they work just fine—in this case, I prefer the physical buttons over something touch-sensitive, just because it’s easier to tell if you correctly pressed one or not.

Pretty solid battery life

The Cetra also get good battery life or even great, depending on how you use them. After a little over an hour, the Cetra dropped from 98% battery to 86% while listening to audio at about 50% volume via the USB-C dongle on my phone. Asus ROG says these wireless earbuds are rated for about 16 hours of battery life with an additional 48 hours in the case, for a total of 64 hours, though that’ll depend on how you’re using them. The 16-hour figure is with Immersion Mode, Phantom Bass, and RGB lighting turned off. If you’re using a mix of those features like I did (namely Phantom Bass and RGB lighting), you may get closer to 12-14 hours based on my testing.

Either way, that’s a good battery life and maybe even better than some of my favorite open-ear buds like the Shokz OpenFit Pro, which get up to 12 hours with noise-cancelling turned off and just 6 hours with the feature turned on.

Time to open up to open-ear gaming?

Whether these Asus ROG Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds are the gaming earbuds for you will depend on how much you value ANC. If you want something to block out non-gaming noise while you play, you can forget about the Cetra for now. If you value comfort and the ability to hear your surroundings, however, these are among the most comfortable you can buy, and you don’t have to worry about blocking out people around you.

And with great mic quality, the ability to cancel environmental noise, and solid audio for gaming, I personally would find myself reaching for the Cetra before competitors with silicone ear tips. It took a while for gaming buds to adopt an open-ear style, but to me, that trend is better late than never.