Cleer ARC 3 Gaming

Written by John Yan on 2/24/2025 for MOB   PC   SWI  

Cleer was one company I didn’t know much about until I met them at CES 2025. They specialize in personal audio devices and they’re dabbling into the gaming space more. At CES, they showed off the Cleer ARC 3 Gaming, an open ear style earbuds complete with a dongle for low latency gaming audio. Cleer was kind enough to provide a sample for review, so let’s see if this has what it takes for gaming.

Most of us are familiar with ear buds that go inside the ear and use friction to keep them in. With Cleer’s ARC 3 Gaming, these earbuds hang on to the top of your ear via hooks and sit over your ears rather than inside. For those who don’t like anything inside their ear, these are the ones for you. This style offers up comfortability and the ability to keep track of your surroundings as it won’t block sound around you.

Let’s start off with the case. It’s a unique case with a touchscreen display on the outside that you can use to cycle through various settings as well as control your media player. We’ve seen cases that allow you to do that from other vendors. I do like the ability to change some settings without having to go into an app as sometimes it is more convenient to just turn on the touchscreen and set some features to the way I wanted. You can customize the background image of the screen from the app on your phone if you so desire, making it a little more personalized for you.

Opening up the case, the ARC 3 Gaming ear buds sit flat inside, speaker side down. One little different thing is the left ear bud sits on the right side and the right ear bud sits on the left side. It takes a little getting used to, but once you’re used to it, it's muscle memory to pull them out of the case and stick them on the opposite side of your head.

When you put them back in to charge, there’s a nice little UV light that’s used to kill any germs on the ear buds. Whether this is effective or not, that’s up for debate, but I do feel the feature is a nice little added touch to the setup.

These are long lasting as the ARC 3 Gaming will last around 10 hours on a charge. In my testing, I got about 9 and a half hours and the case provides an additional 40 hours before it needs to be charged. If you’re in a hurry and the ARC 3 Gaming ear buds are dead, you can put them in the case for five minutes and get about an hour and a half of usage. That’s really good and ensures you won’t be caught with a dead set of ear buds for long. The case will let you know how much power is left in the ear buds as well as the app.

There’s a mirror on the inside of the top case so if you need something to see yourself, you can utilize the case to do so. Again, it’s not something that’s necessary, but a good use of space inside where most cases would have a blank covering. Here, it’s functional and may only be used by a small group of people, but it’s still a nice to have and nothing that hinders the operation of the case should you ignore it.

The size of the case puts it a little more on the bigger side since the ear buds lay flat to charge and there’s a screen on it. I find it to still be pocketable, but I can understand if some people would not see it that way. I’d like to see an accessory like I have with my other earbuds where it would be a protective cover for the case and include a carabiner to latch it on to your belt loop or a backpack. I feel since the case is larger than most, this would be a good thing to have to allow you to carry it around without having to place it in a pocket and be easily accessible.

Charging the case is done via a USB-C connection on the back or Qi wireless charging. This gives you some options on how you want to charge the case back up and I do like there's two options available here to you.

With the Cleer ARC 3 Gaming, there’s an included USB-C dongle that’s used to plug into a computer, console, or portable device. One thing I wish Cleer did was include a space inside the case to store this dongle in. For now, I have it just sitting inside freely when not in use as I want to keep it close to the ear buds. But, a slot or a space to keep the dongle would’ve been greatly appreciated so as to not have the dongle move around in the case when in transport. I could have plugged it into the USB-C slot on the outside, but I felt you could still easily lose it if it's knocked out or any tension on the port could damage the port or the dongle itself in this scenario.

Moving onto the ARC 3 Gaming ear buds themselves, the open ear design is made to sit on top of your ear. Each ear bud has a hook that extends from the front and over. There’s some slight adjustment you can do as where the hook attaches to the ear buds can extend a little bit. So if it doesn’t sit exactly over your ear when you put them on, you can adjust them a smidge to try and have them sit in a more optimal position. I wear glasses and I find it’s much easier to just take off my glasses, put on the ARC 3 Gaming, and then put my glasses back on. If I keep my glasses on, it takes a little more time to get them in the right position without having them interfere with my eyeglass arms getting in the way.

Each ear bud houses a 16.2mm Graphene driver that sounds really good on the mids and highs. The bass is a little light, but then again that could be the nature of this design. Gaming does rely on bass to really emphasize things such as gun shots and foot steps. The ARC 3 Gaming does a pretty good job here. Game sounds were distinct and clear and not muddy at all. Voices came in clear and I was pleasantly surprised at how loud these can get. Even at the higher volume levels, the sound wasn't distorted at all.

Whether it was an action heavy first person shooter to a slower paced strategic game, the drivers on the ARC 3 Gaming provided really good sound. I tested the ARC 3 Gaming with a wide variety of games and I think Cleer has really knocked it out of the park with the sound when it’s stable. More on this in a little bit, but as far as ear buds go, I think they top the EPOS gaming ear buds, which was my go to ear buds when gaming with the Steam Deck.

Sound leakage seems pretty low even when I have it at a loud volume. You’ll have to sit pretty close to someone using it to hear what they are hearing so using them in public should be fine.

To tailor the sound to your liking, there are various EQ settings available that can be activated either on the case or through the app. I do like it comes with a variety and lets you create your own custom EQ setting. All of which is easily accessible from the two options I mentioned.

Dolby Atmos is supported so you’ll get some nice simulated surround sound. There’s also head tracking, which I wasn’t that into but some of you might like. It actually does a really good job of keeping music coming from your initial head position and when you move your head around, the music will then be played in such a way that it seems like it’s coming from one area. It’s a neat effect that I’ll need to find a good use case for.

These are my first pair of open ear style ear buds and during CES, I used them extensively when traveling around the show for a day. Since the show, I’ve been using them on various trips and there are times where I don’t even feel them hanging on my ear. It’s really one of the more comfortable ear buds out there and I’ve used them for many hours of the day without any ear fatigue.

The hooks themselves have a nice silicone covering that makes it really comfortable when they’re sitting on your ear. They are very flexible and can rotate a little bit so there’s room for improving the fit on various ear shapes. Doing a head shaking test, the ARC 3 Gaming stayed solidly in place without any movement due to the hook design. Even moving my head parallel to the floor from one side to another, I never felt them in danger of falling out of my ear, something regular ear buds can more easily do with their reliance on just being inside the ear canal.

As mentioned above, the included USB-C dongle facilitates the low latency audio needed for gaming. Cleer states there’s a 29ms latency when using the dongle, which is more than enough for gaming. For comparison, that’s lower than the Steel Series Nova Pro that I primarily use and it's a ton better than the EPOS GTW 270 gaming ear buds that I reviewed a while ago. There’s a small LED on the dongle to let you know when it’s connected to the ear buds and a small button to help pair it to them as well.

It’s a pretty small dongle, but can stick out a little far from devices such as the Steam Deck when plugged in. I would’ve liked to have seen a more flush design with a smaller USB-C connector, but I can also see that it might have been done this way to accommodate a wide range of USB-C connections on various devices. My phone, Steam Deck, and PC did have it sticking a little farther out though so be aware if you are going to plug it into a mobile device that it could snag on something.

The dongle also allows for voice communication with the ARC 3 Gaming on the PC or mobile gaming device. It took a few updates for the EPOS GTW 270 to incorporate this, but the ARC 3 Gaming does it out of the box. And I have to say, the mic is really solid here. I used the ARC 3 Gaming in both gaming and meetings and everyone said my voice was clear and had good volume. I was afraid because of where it sat that my voice wasn’t going to be picked up well. But, after hearing myself on a session I recorded with OBS, I can definitely say you’ll have no problems talking to your teammates with the ARC 3 Gaming. Now, it does work a lot better indoors and windy conditions can make the voice a little harder to hear.

One really cool feature is that the Cleer ARC 3 supports voice control like the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro. You can do things like adjust the volume just by speaking the key words. Go ahead and skip songs or pause your media with just your voice. You don’t have to activate the voice activation as it’s constantly listening to you to do so. If your hands are busy and you don’t want to stop what you’re doing to adjust the sound or control your media, your voice will do and it works extremely well. I didn’t have to repeat myself too much in my testing in order for this to work.

There are also old style touch controls on the Cleer ARC 3 Gaming as well. Both ear buds have capacitive sides that let you do things like swipe or touch to do an action. And you can adjust what they do via the app. The touch controls can be rather sensitive though and there were a few times I accidentally paused my video as I was just trying to adjust the fit of the ear buds. But for the most part, the touch controls worked well.

You can pair the ARC 3 Gaming via Bluetooth to say your phone and use the dongle with another device at the same time. But, I did run into an issue where any notifications coming on the phone will drop the dongle connection for a short period of time. You’ll hear the notification in your ear buds, but if you’re currently using the dongle with say a PC, it will stop for a few seconds before it reconnects. This came up a few times playing with friends as I would be talking with them and trying to call out what I see only for my phone to get a notification and my ear buds disconnecting from the dongle for around 10 seconds. It does get annoying and to alleviate this, I made sure my phone’s Bluetooth connection to the ARC 3 Gaming was disabled. It negates the feature of having multiple connections, but if you’re gaming and want a troublefree experience, not having it connect to your phone will allow you to use these interruptions free when gaming.

Another thing I ran into was when I took a phone call with the ARC 3 Gaming while it was connected to both my phone and PC via the dongle, the ear buds stopped working after my call was finished. It wouldn’t work with either my phone or my computer even when I reconnected or unplugged and replugged the dongle back into the PC. I had to completely take my ear buds out, put them in the case, and wait a few minutes before I was able to get them to work again on my computer and phone.

I’ve also run into an issue where audio would only come out of one ear bud. It would start out normally and then after a certain time, one of the ear buds would just stop outputting sound. Before an update my left ear bud would stop producing sound. After an update, the right one would randomly stop working. When I removed the dongle and connected it back to my phone via Bluetooth, only one ear bud would work. Again, I had to put them back into the case, wait a few minutes, then both would start working again.

Crackling sound could also happen with the dongle after a certain amount of time. There were a few times where I was playing a game only to start to hear all the audio begin to crackle. The only one to fix this was to remove the dongle and plug it back in. Sometimes this would alleviate the problem for the rest of my gaming session. Other times it would come back and I’d have to do the unplug and replug dance.

I guess it all boils down to when used with the dongle to connect to the device, the ARC 3 Gaming does have some stability issues. There were random problems that propped up and it did become a frustrating experience.

When things worked, the sound was solid. All the instability stemmed from using the dongle with another device. When I was out and about and just using Bluetooth with my phone, the ARC 3 Gaming performed flawlessly and was great to listen to. From watching YouTube videos to enjoying music from my phone, the ARC 3 Gaming as a Bluetooth ear bud was one of the best ear buds I’ve used in both comfortability and sound quality in an open ear style

Hopefully, all these issues I ran into can be fixed with some firmware updates. The dongle is an extra piece that seems like it needs some more fine tuning, but having met Cleer at CES, I think they’ll stabilize it eventually to a point where it works as well as their Bluetooth mode.

There’s no find function for the ARC 3 Gaming, which I think would help those that might lose the case or one of the ear buds. Unlike say the Samsung Buds, I don’t have an option on the find to initiate a beep on my ear buds to find them in case I misplaced them. I don’t know if this is something they can add in an update, but I feel this is something that can benefit customers as these aren’t an inexpensive pair of ear buds and losing them would be really disheartening.

Edit - There is a find ear buds function on the case itself. You can play a sound for each individual ear bud with a beep that gets progressively louder if you lost one. It does a good job at producing an easy to hear sound in order to find a missing ear bud.

If you plan on wearing this out and about and run into some rainy weather, you’ll be happy to know that the Cleer ARC 3 Gaming has an IPX7 rating. That means you can submerge these in one meter of water for 30 minutes. That’s more than enough to handle sweat if you’re using these to work out with or being caught in a rain shower and not have them be damaged. That’s one of the things I do look for in ear buds and I’m happy to see Cleer engineered these to be water resistant.

You can purchase these right now for $235, which is on the more expensive side. When using it just as a Bluetooth ear buds, they were really solid. Again, incredibly comfortable to use and great sound, the ARC 3 Gaming excels in that functionality. It’s when using the dongle and doing gaming where problems crop up. Hopefully, Cleer can fix the issues I’ve experienced as I really love the design and it would pair up incredibly well with something like a Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch. The Cleer ARC 3 Gaming is a feature rich set of ear buds that has the potential to be a great set of gaming and traditional ear buds if Cleer can clear up the issues.