Best Gaming Gear of 2025 (So Far)

Introduction

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We’re at the halfway point of the year, and many pro scenes are now having a break. With the competitive gaming world slowing down a bit over the summer, it’s an ideal time to reflect on current trends. Which brands have risen to the top of their respective categories? Did any new products make a dent in the market? Find out as we discuss the best gaming gear of 2025 so far.

For this article, we use data from all of our analyzed games. This article is a ‘snapshot’ of the stats when the article was written, which was on July 1st. For real-time gear stats, feel free to check out our gear section.

Mice

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1933 players, using 199 different types of mice.

Over the first half of 2025, the Razer Viper V3 Pro has continued to impress. It even managed to add another 3% to its total usage, thus clearly cementing it as by far the most used mouse in professional gaming right now.

Of course, the above does come with a caveat. Both Superlight mice from Logitech still quite comfortably beat the Viper V3 Pro if they would be counted as one mouse. However, in December of last year, both Logitech mice combined for a total of 31%. Today, this is ‘only’ 29%. This means that the usage numbers of the Superlight line are still falling overall.

Underneath the ‘battle of the giants’, the Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro and the ZOWIE EC2-CW hold their spots quite comfortably, though it’ll be interesting to see how many pros swap to the newer EC2-DW in the final six months of the year.

Cool mice are coming out seemingly every week, but it remains incredibly difficult to get a foot in the door in the professional mouse market. Special shoutout to the Lamzu Maya X (coming in at #11 overall) and the VAXEE E1 Wireless (#13 overall) for being mice from non-mainstream brands that are seeing quite impressive usage numbers.

See our detailed mouse list, complete with specs, users, and links to reviews.

Brand Trends

In the brand department, we see a very interesting development. For the first time in years, Logitech has conceded their lead as the #1 mouse manufacturer for the pro scene. With Razer’s market share growing by 4% and Logitech’s dropping by 3% over the past two quarters, team green is now in the lead.

ZOWIE, in the meantime, has also lost 2% compared to the start of the year. Their recently released ECx-DW line might help them stabilize somewhat, however, as they were heavily requested models. But even if the ECx-DW doesn’t slow things down, the brand doesn’t have a ton to fear yet. The next closest competitor is VAXEE, who currently have a market share of 5%.

Interesting here is that Pulsar and Lamzu (two more niche companies) come in at #6 and #7, respectively. That’s ahead of industry behemoths like SteelSeries, and quite an impressive feat for relative newcomers.

Keyboards

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1874 players, using 155 different types of keyboards.

Analog keyboards are a must. It really is that simple. Pretty much all non-analog keyboards are losing market share, and the only new products that make any sort of splash in the professional keyboard scene have analog switches.

Wooting’s 60HE has managed to overtake Razer’s Huntsman V3 Pro TKL as the most popular board in the scene, but it’s a pretty close call. With the V2 version of Wooting’s legendary board announced for later this year, it’ll be exciting to see how this section shapes up in our end-of-year roundup.

Elsewhere, Wooting’s 80HE is on an extremely impressive climb, gaining 6% market share compared to the start of the year. Meanwhile, the Razer Huntsman V3 Pro Mini and the Logitech G Pro X Keyboard maintain their presence in the top 5, but the Logitech board did lose 1%. Given how it’s a non-analog board, we expect to see it fall out of the top 5 by the time we write the next report.

See our detailed keyboards list with specs, users, and links to reviews.

Brand Trends

Razer maintains its lead and can still boast the impressive stat that over a quarter of pros are using their keyboards, but Wooting is getting there too.

Compared to the start of the year, Razer lost 1% of market share (a negligible amount, all things considered) but the Dutch brand gained a staggering 6%, making them the second most popular brand by a large margin. That’s something we predicted in our last gear trends writeup, and we’re not expecting Wooting to slow down in the second half of the year, either, as their 80HE is an extremely popular product.

Logitech, in the meantime, has dropped a further 3%. They are not in any danger of falling out of the top three (the closest competitor is SteelSeries at 8%) but it might be time to rethink their keyboard lineup if they want to prevent further losses.

Monitors

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1818 players, using 94 different types of monitor.

As we predicted in our 2024 article, the ZOWIE XL2566K is now the #1 monitor in pro gaming. This is a small milestone in the world of pro gaming, as it’s the first time a 360Hz monitor is the #1. Monitors with a 240Hz panel are still the most popular overall, so it can be argued that 240Hz is still the industry standard, but we don’t expect that to be the case for much longer.

Aside from this, nothing much has changed in the monitor space. Many non-pro gamers are wondering when we’re going to see a switch to OLED, but there aren’t any indications of that happening just yet.

Yes, there are some really good OLED monitors on the market, but time and time again the pros seem to go back to their old and trusty TN panels. Perhaps we’ll see an OLED monitor enter the top 5 by the start of next year though, as OLED tech is definitely getting better, but we wouldn’t place a large sum of money on it.

Pro gamers care about framerates and motion clarity over anything else, and the engineers over at ZOWIE seem to have perfected that, so other brands will have to come out swinging if they want to convince pros to switch.

Feel free to browse our detailed monitor list, where we have specs, users, and other interesting details.

Brand Trends

ZOWIE has lost 4% of their market share in the past 6 months. That’s definitely not an insignificant number, but it does absolutely nothing to their awe-inspiring lead in the monitor department. Especially if you consider the fact that their closest competitors have dropped compared to last year as well.

This does mean that we’re seeing other brands stepping into the scene and getting some users here and there, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we’ll see a new monitor model or brand pop up in these lists in the (near) future.

Mousepads

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1848 players, using 165 different types of mousepads.

As we said back at the end of 2024: premium mousepads are on the rise. And the Artisan Zero is a perfect example of that. The brand’s most popular pad is now the #1 mousepad in the pro scene, a feat that seemed unthinkable just a year or three ago.

With that said: the margins are extremely small in the mousepad space. There are tons of quality options out there, and brands have been putting out banger after banger over the past year or two. The Razer Gigantus V2 currently has to be happy with second place, but the differences are so small that we’ve seen the Gigantus and Zero swap places multiple times a week.

In third place, we see the SteelSeries QcK Heavy. This pad has made a resurgence in the past 18 months, as it was used by a bunch of extremely popular and influential pros. The ZOWIE G–SR-SE and the Logitech G640 complete the top 5.

Interesting to see is the fact that glass pads have been rising in popularity in the enthusiast scene, but the pro scene is yet to follow suit. The first glass pad that we encounter is the WALLHACK SP-004, which is being used by 0.81% of players. Not enough to speak of a trend at all yet.

Browse our full mousepad list for specs, users, and test results from our test bench so you can compare glide speeds and characteristics.

Brand Trends

Artisan expand their lead over their closest competitors, but it’s a close race once again. Behind ZOWIE, we see SteelSeries (12%) and VAXEE (9%), so the battle for the crown in the mousepad scene is one that is still raging fiercely.

Headsets

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Last year, the Razer BlackShark V2 Pro overtook the HyperX Cloud II as the #1 gaming headset, and that lead has only strengthened. Razer’s flagship headset has grown by a further 4%, whereas the Cloud II has dropped by 2%. This means that the gap between the two is now ~10%, making Razer’s claim to the throne more convincing than ever before. The fact that the Razer BlackShark V2 Pro is the most popular product on our entire website at the time of writing (with 488 players using it) obviously also helps with that. Impressive stuff.

Aside from the two top dogs, we don’t see much movement in the world of gaming headsets. That might have to do with the fact that there haven’t been very many headset releases from the big brands, but it could also be that we’re seeing the early days of a new Cloud II-style dynasty in the headset space with Razer’s BlackShark line.

See our full headset list for specs, user details, and links to reviews.

Brand Trends

This might be the last article where we see HyperX in the lead with gaming headsets, as their lead has shrunk by a further 1% over the year. Not a big deal, one might think, but in the meantime Razer has managed to get a 3% increase in this very space. As of writing, just a couple dozen players are all that stand between HyperX and Razer.

Further down, we see that Logitech has (for now) dropped out of the race completely after having lost a further 2% over the past two quarters.

Conclusion

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A few clear takeaways stand out. Razer has not only strengthened its grip on multiple categories, but is also establishing some dynasties for itself. The Razer Viper V3 Pro has held the lead as the most used mouse for quite some time now, and the BlackShark V2 Pro is pulling further and further away from the Cloud II in the headset category.

Wooting is also having a great 2025. With massive gains in market share and the 60HE now being the most used keyboard across pro gaming, the Dutch brand is being rewarded for their focus on quality and for bringing analog keyboard tech to the mainstream. We’re very excited to see what the 60HE V2 will bring to the table in Q4 of 2025.

Elsewhere, ZOWIE are still the kings and queens of the monitor world, but they did lose 4% market share in general. Still, the XL2566K’s #1 spot marks the first time that a 360Hz monitor is the most used one. It’ll be interesting to see where the world of monitors goes next, though, as we can’t help but feel like ultra-high refresh rate TN panels are pretty much at their peak capabilities at this point in time.

Lastly, the people at Artisan also have reason to celebrate. Their Zero is now the most popular pad in pro gaming, and the brand is the most used brand in the mousepad space. That’s an incredible achievement for such a small and (up until a year or two ago) niche brand.

Looking forward, we’re excited to see what the second half of 2025 will bring. We know that brands have some really exciting releases coming up, so it’s going to be very interesting to see where things stand by December.