I'm not convinced open earbuds work for gaming, despite Asus' best efforts

Open earbuds are all the rage – in fact, if you asked me to identify some consumer tech trends from the last 18 months and put a ban on AI featuring in that list, I'd put open earbuds right near the top. Everyone and their nan has been trying to get in on a market that seems to be growing.

People want earbuds so they can continue their nonstop content consumption, but they don't always want to be cocooned in the perfect noise-cancelling bubble that many in-ear models offer. Open options make it easier to stay aware of your surroundings, making them safer for outdoor runs and cycling, and less antisocial in offices.

That pitch is a pretty familiar one by now, but I've never really heard it applied to gaming – a medium where the common wisdom would be that you'd always rather be enveloped in immersive sound and able to block out background noise. That hasn't stopped Asus from making the ROG Cetra Open earbuds, though, and I've been using them for a fair few hours now.

I have to say, for all that they're solidly-made earbuds, I'm yet to be won over by the idea at their core. Like a fair few open earbuds of their type, the ROG Cetra Open come in a far bigger charging case than in-ears do. This houses the two curled-up earbuds, along with a USB-C connector for your console, PC, or other device.

This marks them out from mainstream open earbuds, since it allows for 2.4GHz connectivity with extremely low latency, ideal for gaming, but Bluetooth is on hand too for more standard wireless use.

These aren't small earbuds, thanks to chunky tubes that rest behind your ear while you wear them, but they are indeed nice and comfortable thanks to that out-of-ear design, which makes them nice to wear for long sessions.

However, that doesn't mean I'm having a great time using them to game. First impressions matter hugely, I'd argue, and it wasn't all that great to connect the Cetra Open earbuds to my PS5 Pro and be greeted by confusingly low audio that I couldn't straightforwardly get up to the level I wanted. I've never had that issue with any other audio device on the console.

Using them with my PC and Switch 2, meanwhile, I haven't had that problem, but I still haven't really been sold on their core concept. It's very rare that I game in a passive way, where distractions are welcome or ambient noise is happily absorbed.

Sure, I played plenty of games on mute as a kid, back in the Game Boy Advance days, but as an adult, I'm lucky enough to use the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite, and its noise-cancelling doesn't bear comparison to the Cetra Open experience. Portability is a factor, sure, but the case here is huge, and I'd generally rather use my AirPods Pro 3 over Bluetooth with my Switch 2 on the go.

This leaves me feeling like the ROG Cetra Open are a slightly weird pair of 'buds, mainly leaving me with one big question: who are these earbuds for? I know the answer isn't me, now, but I'm curious to find out if there is indeed a market for gaming open earbuds in the first place.