Launching September 22 on Kickstarter, CHIMERA reimagines gaming audio without anything worn on your head or over your ears.

NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES, Sept. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — For many gamers, the longer a gaming session lasts, the more noticeable the headset becomes.

Headband pressure, warm earcups, and the feeling of having something clamped around the head can become distracting after hours of play. COLOLIGHT is taking a different approach with CHIMERA, a chair-mounted open-ear gaming headset launching on Kickstarter on September 22.

Instead of placing speakers directly over the ears, CHIMERA mounts onto the player’s gaming chair, positioning its acoustic units around the listener to create a personal open-ear listening zone.

The idea is straightforward: retain the detail and positional information gamers expect from headphones while introducing the more open, spacious character typically associated with speakers — without requiring anything to be worn on the head.

Headset Precision, With a More Open Listening Experience

CHIMERA is built around an open acoustic system featuring a dedicated low-frequency driver and a nine-driver mid/high-frequency array.

The system is designed to deliver impactful bass, detailed mids and highs, and a spacious soundstage across gaming, movies, music, and everyday desktop entertainment.

For competitive gaming, CHIMERA uses a dedicated 2.4 GHz wireless connection with latency as low as 19 ms. Its desktop software also includes game-focused EQ profiles, including FPS presets designed to emphasize important audio cues such as footsteps, reloads, gunfire, and directional movement.

Designed for PC, PS5, Xbox and Different Ways to Play — Plug In and Play with 2.4GHz Wireless

With 2.4GHz wireless connectivity via a plug-and-play USB dongle, CHIMERA is designed for quick and easy use across PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox and other supported gaming devices, making it suitable for players who move between competitive PC gaming, console titles, movies and everyday entertainment.

Its open and spacious presentation is designed to behave differently depending on the type of game being played.

In competitive shooters such as VALORANT, Counter-Strike 2, Call of Duty: Warzone and Apex Legends, positional detail becomes especially important. Footsteps, gunfire and movement cues can help players understand not only what is happening, but where it is happening.

For large-scale games such as Fortnite, the wider presentation can help separate environmental sounds, movement, combat effects and surrounding activity within busy scenes.

In cinematic, story-driven titles such as Cyberpunk 2077, the system is designed to create a more expansive sense of space around dialogue, music, vehicles and environmental effects, bringing the player deeper into the game world.

And in atmospheric action titles such as Elden Ring, CHIMERA’s open presentation can help give environmental ambience, orchestral soundtracks and large-scale combat a greater sense of space and scale.

Rather than tuning the experience around a single genre, CHIMERA is designed to move between competitive precision and cinematic immersion depending on what the player is doing.

Built Around the Player — and the Chair

Because CHIMERA mounts directly to the gaming chair, the acoustic units can be adjusted for different chairs, seating positions and body heights.

Players can change the height, distance and angle of the system to position the sound around their preferred listening position.

Once adjusted, there is no headband to reposition and no earcups or earbuds resting directly on the ears, making CHIMERA particularly suited to longer gaming, streaming and desktop sessions.

Communication Without the Traditional Headset

For multiplayer communication, CHIMERA integrates AI-powered ANC and ENC voice-processing algorithms, helping reduce background noise and improve voice clarity during gaming sessions, online calls and team communication.

The goal is to preserve the communication functionality players expect from a gaming headset while changing the physical experience of how gaming audio is delivered.

A Different Kind of Gaming Audio Setup

Traditional headphones, desktop speakers and soundbars each come with their own compromises.

Headphones provide privacy and positional detail but must be worn. Speakers create a more open listening experience, but are affected more heavily by room placement and listening position, while the left and right channels cannot be fully isolated at the listener’s ears.

CHIMERA explores a space between the two.

For gamers who enjoy immersive audio but are tired of wearing a headset for hours, CHIMERA is designed to offer another option.

A Launch Offer for Early Backers

COLOLIGHT CHIMERA launches on Kickstarter on September 22, with a $219 Super Early Bird price.

Early supporters will be among the first to experience COLOLIGHT’s new approach to chair-mounted open-ear gaming audio.

Those interested in being among the first to experience COLOLIGHT’s new approach to chair-mounted open-ear gaming audio can follow the Kickstarter campaign and sign up to receive a launch notification: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cololight/cololight-chimera-open-ear-gaming-headset 

About COLOLIGHT

COLOLIGHT creates products for gaming rooms and desktop entertainment setups, spanning RGB lighting, gaming audio and desktop accessories designed around immersive gaming environments.

Through products that combine technology, interaction and distinctive industrial design, COLOLIGHT aims to rethink how players experience and personalize the spaces where they game.

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SOURCE COLOLIGHT