The Best Pro Gaming Gear – Summer 2026 Edition

Introduction

We’re halfway through 2026 already, which means it’s time once again to take a look at what the best players in the world are running on their desks. Over the past six months, we’ve seen some fresh gear climb the charts, but we’ve also seen old favorites slide down the ranks. In addition to that, a couple of brand races got a whole lot more exciting. As always, we’ve gone through all of our analyzed games to see what’s trending up, what’s trending down, and what notable changes we’ve observed.

For this article, we’re comparing the current numbers against our two previous articles, one in the summer of 2025 (our mid-year report) and one at the end of 2025 (our year-in-review). The data in this post is a snapshot taken at the end of June 2026.

For real-time gear stats, feel free to check out our gear section.

Mice

2264 players, using 229 different types of equipment.

The Razer Viper V3 Pro has dropped all the way down to 14%. That’s a huge fall for a mouse that has been the undisputed king of the pro scene for over a year. But that obviously has something to do with the release of its successor.

The newly released Razer Viper V4 Pro has come in hot at 7%, landing in fifth place. Add the two Vipers together and you get 21%, which is basically identical to where the line sat a year ago. So the Viper absolutely isn’t going anywhere. The line itself didn’t manage to gain a noticeable amount of users, but it’ll be reassuring for the folks at Razer that the new release did not scare any loyal users away either.

But the highlight story here (if you ask us) is that of the Logitech G Pro X2 SUPERSTRIKE. In February when it launched, we called it ‘the next evolution in gaming mice‘, and it seems that it’s very much catching on in the pro scene. It’s one of the fastest-climbing products we’ve analyzed on this platform, and despite many heated debates online about how useful (or not) the HITS system is, it does look like it’s something that a lot of pro players were waiting for.

With around 30% of pros using a Superlight/SUPERSTRIKE-based shape, Logitech’s flagship line is still by far the most popular one in the pro scene, too. So it seems like Logitech has secured the continuity of their flagship line.

One last thing worth a mention: the top 5 now only offers two shapes. There’s the Viper shape, and the Superlight/SUPERSTRIKE shape. The closest other shapes are the DeathAdder (Razer) and the EC2 (ZOWIE).

Brand Trends

This is a very tight brand race, and it has been for well over a year now. Razer now sits at 36% and Logitech G at 35%, which is only a single percentage point apart. At the end of 2025, the gap was around two points (36% to 34%), so Logitech has made up some ground, largely thanks to the SUPERSTRIKE. With these two behemoth brands going at it, it’ll be very interesting to see if one brand can develop a significant gap in the second half of the year.

Meanwhile, ZOWIE remains a distant but stable third, having neither lost nor gained any market share over the past six months.

Keyboards

2196 players, using 172 different types of equipment.

Wooting and Razer have been very closely matched in the keyboard department, but we’re seeing some shifts.

For one, the Wooting 80HE has managed to take the top spot for the first time. Secondly, we also see that the 60HE V2 has gained a very respectable amount of users. If we were to count both 60HE versions as one board, it’d be the second most-used keyboard right now.

So it does seem like Wooting is winning the keyboard race after a year of trading blow-for-blow with Razer, which is something that’ll become more apparent in the next section.

Razer is still doing very well, though. The Huntsman V3 Pro TKL maintains its userbase, and the same can be said for the Huntsman Mini, making Razer’s flagship gaming keyboard line the second most-used one in pro gaming by quite some distance.

If we look at the grander scheme of things, we also see that the entire top 5 now consists of analog keyboards. Mechanical boards are still in use, but they are becoming a small minority. And that perfectly lines up with what we’ve been saying for a long time now: analog keyboards are objectively better for gaming, and they’re here to stay. They’re not longer ‘the future,’ they’re the current standard.

Brand Trends

As we said, Wooting and Razer were in a very tight race for the entirety of 2025, but the Dutch brand has pulled ahead now. Thanks to an ever-growing amount of Wooting users, the brand’s market share now sits at 30%, which represents a big gap to Razer. Razer even lost a small amount of users in the first half of 2026, making the gap even more substantial.

Logitech still sits third, but they’ve also lost some users, which might be a signal to the brand that their keyboard offerings are still not up to par with what pros have come to expect in 2026.

We say it time and time again, but Wooting’s run is extremely impressive. A brand that basically came out of nowhere managed to convince pros and casuals alike to come on board with them instead of the traditional behemoth brands. They did it with a mix of exciting and actually useful tech, carefully designed products, and fun community outreach, where they listen to feedback. We do hope Wooting’s success sets the standards for other brands.

Monitors

2125 players, using 101 different types of equipment.

To the untrained eye, nothing has changed in the world of monitors. ZOWIE owns the entire top five, just like always. But there’s something interesting happening. The older models (the ‘K’ models and older) have all been falling out of favor over the past twelve months.

The XL2566K (25% to 21%), the XL2546K (24% to 18%), and the XL2546 (12% to 8%) have all been losing a bunch of users.

All of those users aren’t jumping ship, though. They’re simply going to ZOWIE’s newer X+ models. The XL2566X+ has more than doubled in a year, climbing from 4% to 10%. The higher-refresh XL2586X+ has done something similar, going from around 1% to 6%. This is interesting, as it means that the refresh-rate ceiling keeps creeping upward. Not that long ago, a 240Hz setup was considered top-tier. Now, a 360Hz monitor is the norm in the pro scene.

Interestingly, we don’t see the same shift in resolutions yet: 1080p is still very much the standard. We are seeing some 1440p OLED monitors creeping up on the top 10, however, so we might see some slow moves on this front over the next couple of months or years.

Brand Trends

There’s not much to say here. ZOWIE is still being used by well over half of all analyzed players. Alienware still comes in second, and ASUS ROG comes in third. With all monitor movements being made laterally (from one ZOWIE monitor to another), it’s no surprise that there haven’t been any big changes in the brand landscape.

One thing that might challenge ZOWIE’s dominance in the (very) long term is their lack of higher-resolution options. These are not commonplace at all right now, but monitor technology is ever-evolving, and 1440p monitors with technology such as fast OLED displays are becoming better and better, so who knows what will happen in the future. We’ve noted it in our reviews as well, but we feel like ZOWIE has ‘finished’ the 1080 TN monitor game. We’re very curious to see what they could potentially do with other technologies.

Mousepads

2165 players, using 202 different types of equipment.

The Artisan Zero just keeps pulling away. Twelve months ago, it was tied with Razer’s Gigantus V2, and now it sits clearly at the top, with a gap of 5% between the Zero and the Gigantus V2.

We should note that Razer has also released a whole line of more premium pads (the Gigantus V2 Pro line) which might have caused some lateral swaps (from the old Gigantus to a Pro version) though. That hypothesis is supported by the fact that Razer as a brand hasn’t really been going down.

With that said, we feel like the trend of pro gamers going for more premium options is growing stronger. The Artisan Zero becoming the most-used pad by quite a big margin is supporting evidence of that. We also see two more Artisan pads (the Hayate Otsu V2 and the Type-99) in the top ten to further support this claim.

With both Razer as well as SteelSeries releasing their own, more premium lines of mousepads, it’s clear to us that big brands have also gotten wind of this trend. Whether that’ll be enough to turn the tides against Artisan remains to be seen, though. The Japanese brand has cemented itself as the go-to brand for top-tier mousepads, so it’ll be a difficult hill to climb. Artisan can still be somewhat difficult to get in certain parts of the world, so that might be one advantage that the bigger brands have in this battle.

Brand Trends

Artisan remains the clear leader. They gained some users compared to last year, which makes the gap one percentage point bigger.

ZOWIE and Razer are still battling it out for second place, and both brands still cannot be separated in a meaningful way.

Interestingly, the chasers are quite close as well. SteelSeries falls just outside the top 3 (with 12%) and Logitech (9%) and VAXEE (7%) aren’t that far off.

Artisan is the brand to beat, but everything else is wide open.

Headsets

2133 players, using 138 different types of equipment.

The Razer BlackShark V2 Pro is still the most used headset in pro gaming, but its lead is melting fast. It has gone from 27% in summer 2025, to 23% at year-end, to 17% now. The reason isn’t hard to find: the BlackShark V3 Pro doubled its share since launch, jumping from 7% to 14% and moving into second place. Users are simply upgrading from one BlackShark to the next, and if you add the two together you get an enormous 31% of the headset market wearing a BlackShark of some kind. That’s very, very dominant.

Meanwhile, the HyperX Cloud II continues its farewell tour. It’s down to 13% and third place now, which is a loss of 5% compared to a year ago. It was a remarkable run of dominance for the better part of a decade and it will always be a legendary headset, but its reign is well and truly over now.

With the headset market being this ‘settled’ (the BlackShark line is the clear successor to the once-super-dominant Cloud II), we’re not seeing much movement elsewhere. Various Logitech and HyperX products account for quite a big market share combined, but no single product has the legs to challenge the BlackShark at this point.

Time can only tell if we’re on track for another Cloud II-like dominance in the headset space, but the signs are definitely there.

Brand Trends

Back in December of 2025, Razer officially overtook HyperX as the most-used headset brand in the pro gaming space. That’s seriously impressive, seeing as HyperX was still in the lead six months before that (with 30% to Razer’s 24%). Back then, we predicted that it might’ve been the last report we saw with HyperX in the lead, and that prediction has come true.

With Razer’s ever-expanding lead, we don’t see a way back to the top for HyperX in the (near) future.

Meanwhile, Logitech is holding strong with a market share of 17%.

Chairs

561 players, using 34 different types of equipment.

Our newest category is shaping up to be a two-horse race. The Secretlab Titan EVO (32%) and the Razer Iskur V2 (30%) have both grown since the end of 2025, and together they now account for roughly 63% of market share in the world of gaming chairs. That’s two products eating up nearly two thirds of the market, which is pretty wild.

We should add a disclaimer that our data on chairs is pretty limited compared to our data on other products, though. It’s a relatively new category, so a lot can change here as we analyze more and more players. Still, a lead this dominant is usually an indication of a broader trend, even if the sample size isn’t huge.

Brand Trends

Secretlab and Razer are in a long, tense fight for the top spot. We’ve seen them trade places over the past couple of months, but as of right now, Secretlab is ahead. Blacklyte is the impressive third; their market share is a lot smaller, but a relatively unknown brand coming in third is quite a feat in and of itself.

Conclusion

In the middle of 2026, a couple of things stand out. Logitech proved that its SUPERSTRIKE with its HITS tech was no gimmick, and it has one of the fastest climbs of any product in this report to show for it. Wooting kept on rising, crossing 30% brand share and taking the number one keyboard spot with a defined lead. Razer completed its takeover of the headset category, finishing the job it started last year. And underneath ZOWIE’s monitor dominance, the pros are trading their old panels in for the brand’s latest models, thus raising the refresh rate bar.

With new flagship releases finding their footing and undoubtedly plenty of hot releases still planned, the last six months of 2026 will host some pretty interesting battles.

See you for our report at the end of the year! Until then, enjoy your summer.