Turtle Beach Stealth Pro
MSRP $330.00
“The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro Gaming Headset is packed with useful features that justify the high price.”
Avg
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Discreet design
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Comfortable fit
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Excellent sound quality
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Innovative battery solution
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Full of features
Against
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expensive
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Microphone quality is so-so
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Some complicated features
The more headphones become “professional”, the more obstacles the manufacturer has to overcome. Each additional feature will require additional ingenuity to avoid a headset covered in buttons. Each new tuning will surely raise the price a little more each time. There is a difficult balance between ease of use, affordability, quality and features. You can see those tensions in Turtle Beach’s excellent but somewhat complicated Stealth Pro headphones.
There’s so much going on in Stealth Pro that it’s hard to go through it all in a concise way. For a hefty $330, you get excellent sound quality via its 50mm drivers, powerful active noise cancellation (ANC), two microphone options, a removable battery, a wireless transmitter that charges the included second battery while you use the other, compatibility with almost all gaming devices, and a hefty customization package via the Turtle Beach app. While there’s nothing wrong with it all, there are some design flaws that allow Turtle Beach to pack it all in.
If you can adjust to some complicated features and have more than $300 to spend, the Turtle Beach Stealth Pro is a high-end gaming headset worth investing in. It’s quickly becoming my go-to audio device thanks to its comfortable design and innovative battery solution that solves one of my biggest gripes with wireless headphones. I just have to learn to stop messing with it in public.
Design and comfort
The biggest compliment I can give the Stealth Pro is that it doesn’t look like a gaming headset. There’s a trend happening in the space right now where manufacturers are ditching loud, colorful designs for discreet ones that make them more sustainable as cans you can use in public. Turtle Beach follows that trend here with a simple black and silver design with just a few unobtrusive logos and no RGB accents.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
They’re also pretty sturdy headphones, with a metal-reinforced headband that looks like it’ll hold up well over the long haul. This can make it feel a little stiff, as there’s quite a bit of resistance when trying to adjust it, but it’s a big upgrade over the overly plasticky feel of the base Stealth models. I usually feel a little self-conscious when testing gaming headsets while riding the train in New York, but the premium look and feel here dispels that concern.
I am particularly satisfied with the comfort factor so far. At first it felt a little tight and I thought it would squeeze my head a little too much. That discomfort didn’t occur during my testing thanks to the incredibly soft ear cushions and memory foam headband. I held it for hours without thinking about it. I’m not entirely sure how it will fit larger heads, but it seems flexible enough that it should adjust easily while maintaining a tight fit.
Sound quality
Not surprisingly, the Stealth Pro wins in sound quality. Turtle Beach knows how to make a headset that is properly balanced for gaming at this point in its storied career. The 50mm Nanoclear drivers produce incredibly clear sound where no frequency range seems lost. Bass, mids, and treble appear almost where I expect them to, and the Turtle Beach offers a fair amount of customization to tweak the mix to my liking. Of course, there’s also the company’s signature Superhuman Hearing feature, which helps amplify sounds like footsteps. There’s also an audio hub app that also allows me to easily adjust EQ presets on the fly.
I was particularly impressed by the noise cancellation, which reduces the tone of the sound. The tone of the room is almost removed when I’m in the game, allowing me to fully focus my attention on something like Octopath Traveler 2great result. There’s a microphone monitor available if you want to bring in some external noise, but I’d suggest playing around with it through the audio hub app first. By default, the monitor is incredibly noisy. When I used it on the train, I was left with a sharp, harsh sound.
The Stealth Pro is an overall fantastic gaming headset that solves a few issues I have with devices like this.
The mic quality isn’t too bad either, although I’m rarely completely satisfied with that aspect of a gaming headset – and at $330, this doesn’t raise the bar as much as I expected. What I do appreciate, though, is that the Stealth Pro includes both a built-in microphone and a detachable boom. The former isn’t desirable, with a hollow, echo-filled tone that picks up a lot of room tones, but it’s nice to have a built-in mic that I can use as a last resort if I don’t feel like breaking through the attachment.
The boom produces a much clearer sound that I would feel much more comfortable subjecting my teammates to. It’s a little quiet, but my voice comes through clearly, with a relatively light layer of room tone. It can be turned off by flipping the microphone up, which can create a slightly unpleasant sound when handling the microphone. I’ve also encountered situations where the mic would randomly turn off for a few seconds without me touching it. Despite this, the feature works well as I can easily turn it all the way away from my face and get a beep to confirm it’s off.
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The mic situation is where I start to run into some of the “premium” quirks of headphones. In an effort to keep the design as quiet as possible, the microphone jack is covered by a small plastic plug on the left earcup. Whenever I want to use the microphone, I’m left praying that the tiny cover doesn’t get lost and leave an unsightly hole in the side. That’s one area where the Stealth Pro feels a bit over-engineered, as the uncovered port to the edge seems unobtrusive enough. It’s just one of a handful of weird choices you’ll have to deal with to get the Pro feel.
Battery
This again comes to the fore with its innovative approach to the battery. Turtle Beach says the headset lasts about 12 hours on a charge, which seems about right (though 10 might be a closer estimate). It is a bit low considering the price, but what is convenient is that the battery can be easily removed and replaced with another one that comes in the package with the headphones. Replacement is as simple as removing the plastic cover on the left earcup, installing a new one and putting the cover back in place.
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Okay, I’m being a little cheeky when I say “simple” here. It’s a great idea, but it gave me problems as a chronic fiddler. I had one nasty accident where I managed to dislodge the blanket while on the train, leaving me struggling to get it back in place, something that’s hard to do if you’re feeling alone. I won’t criticize Turtle Beach for my own inability to sit still, but it’s certainly a headset you’ll want to keep your hands off as much as possible.
There is another neat component to the battery solution. The Stealth Pro comes bundled with a wireless transmitter that can be easily connected to a computer via USB. The round puck certainly takes up more space than a flash drive-sized key, but there’s a good reason for that: it doubles as a battery charger. While wirelessly connected to the device, I charge my second battery. When my first one runs out, I simply replace it in the transmitter and put it fully charged. It’s a genius solution that solves those scenarios where your headphones are dying and you just need to stop using them to charge them. The trade-off is a large transmitter hanging around, but it seems cost-effective for the utility company.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
The only disappointment I have here is that there is no way to use the Stealth Pro with a wire. I always prefer to have that option in wireless headphones, allowing me to plug in whenever I need to. A replaceable battery does reduce the need for that scenario, but it’s still something I’d expect from a headset I’m paying that much for.
Features and controls
The real “Pro” aspect comes when you dig into its features – although that’s also where its flaws are most noticeable. On the plus side, it is somehow compatible with almost all gaming systems. Bluetooth allows me to easily connect to my phone, while the transmitter can be plugged into a docked Switch or Xbox Series X. It can always be a little tricky to pair these headphones with multiple devices, but I found that I could switch between the transmitter on my computer, my Switch via Bluetooth and my phone without too much trouble.
Part of me wishes that certain parts of the Stealth Pro were kept a little closer to the basics.
The impressive feature set can get a little complicated from there. For example, the volume is not controlled via a standard wheel. Instead, the entire right earcup is a rotary dial that controls the volume. It feels a bit silly to perform considering how many rotations it takes to get the most volume, but I’m getting used to it.
What’s a little harder to figure out are the several modes of operation of the wheel. Using the audio hub app, I can map the secondary function to a wheel that is activated by pressing the button in the middle. This allows me to adjust the microphone monitor volume, ANC level, bass boost and more. It’s a neat addition, but only one can be assigned at a time. I can’t adjust the Bluetooth volume or the game/chat mix at the same time. It’s a trade-off that may be necessary to get more functionality without 100 buttons, but it creates limitations.
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I feel this tension between wanting to pack the Stealth Pro with features while keeping the design simple. There are only three buttons on the device besides the mode switch: the power button, the Bluetooth switch, and the Superhuman Hearing switch. Some of these buttons have multiple functions though, which can be difficult to keep track of. To mute the built-in microphone, for example, I have to hold down the Superhuman Hearing button for a few seconds. Those three buttons are a bit hard to press and when wearing headphones, I usually have to take them off to even find them (although a bit of texture on the Superhuman Hearing button helps).
Part of me wishes that certain parts of the Stealth Pro were kept a little closer to the basics. A traditional mute button and volume wheel would do, as would an uncovered microphone jack. Even so, I feel like I’m screwing up a bit when looking at the bigger picture. The Stealth Pro is an overall fantastic gaming headset that solves a few issues I have with devices like this. Discreet design, excellent sound quality, replaceable batteries — all these features give me wireless headphones that quickly replace the wired headphones I normally prefer on my devices. The only drawback is that $330 price tag, but it’s hard to argue that you’re not getting a truly “Pro” experience for that money.
Editor’s recommendations
Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn