Turtle Seaside Stealth Professional headset overview: The sound of success

Turtle Seaside has lengthy been one of many go-to names for video game headsets, and has been related to on-line console gaming because the days of Name of Obligation 2 and Halo.

Whereas it is continued to dominate a slice of the mid-range market ever since, the Stealth Professional marks the model’s return to the top-end, with a premium and solidly constructed headset that brings rather a lot to the desk. We have used it for our common gaming classes to carry you our verdict.

Design

• Weighs 422g
• Accessible in black solely

Turtle Seaside’s headset designs, whether or not you’ve got been getting into for its most finances choices or heading for the upper finish of its providing, have had one materials in widespread over latest years – plastic.

That’s to say, they’ve virtually all been constructed fully out of plastic, to differing ranges of sturdiness and weight – so the Stealth Professional is a direct and telling premium outlier within the hand.

There’s loads of metallic right here, making for a way more robust-feeling headset, that is a superb chunk heavier for it, too. A touch of braided cable provides to that hardy impression, whereas the earcups and cushioning in use are as plump and sizeable as any Turtle Seaside has ever made.

Plastic is not fully absent, in fact – in any other case, this could be a half-ton headset. However the place it is used the end is sweet and clean for a convincingly premium really feel total.

Slip the headset on, and the Stealth Professional is fairly comfy (and that is about as harsh a criticism as we have now for this spectacular little bit of equipment). The weightiness of the construct and the design of the earcups does imply that the headset sits just a little tight in comparison with the cloud-like lightness of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless that we have liked utilizing, although.

Nonetheless, it is nonetheless very comfy – simply arguably not fairly as spectacular because the competitors at its value level. With no different color choices proper now, it is black and silver all the way in which, too.

There’s a slight design distinction for the Xbox-branded model over the usual Stealth Professional, although, with a inexperienced gentle ring on the headset’s charging base and transmitter, as an alternative of a blue one. We’ll contact on that mannequin in additional element shortly, although.

Sound high quality and microphone

• 50mm Nanoclear drivers
• 10Hz – 22kHz frequency response

Whereas construct high quality generally is a good bonus and a welcome contact whenever you’re spending over $300 on a headset, the factor that truly issues most for a lot of gamers is the sound that it could possibly provide.

Turtle Seaside may properly have its origins in headsets aimed squarely at on-line play in chaotic shooters, however the Stealth Professional has been an in a position companion in a spread of different genres for us.

Taking part in an motion sport like Lifeless Island 2 had us listening to zombies spherical corners and recoiling from the goriness of our weapon’s impacts on the undead, whereas utilizing it with Persona 5 Royal’s glowing jazz-infused soundtrack made for a lighter however equally detailed response.

Nonetheless, it is on-line {that a} headset’s capabilities can truly provide one thing approaching a bonus, and unsurprisingly the Stealth Professional has proved an outstanding pair with Warzone 2.0.

The Name of Obligation battle royale’s full-scale solo mode is a brutal check of response occasions and cautious motion, and we had excellent outcomes turning on the Stealth Professional’s Advance Superhuman Listening to mode, an extended identify for a customized EQ that flattens out sound and highlights distant gunfire and quiet footsteps to make sure you hear what you’ll want to.

It really works actually impressively and having the ability to toggle it on and off with a button press on the appropriate earcup is wise. Even higher, the button in query is textured so that you could inform it aside from the adjoining energy button, one other very intelligent design resolution.

With full EQ help to allow you to tweak your settings as you want, there’s loads of scope to set the headset up as you favor, which is all the time welcome, however proper out of the field (as most individuals will use it) the Stealth Professional could be very spectacular.

Microphone response, in the meantime, can be very important in on-line worlds, and the Stealth Professional’s mic is a very nice one, coming throughout clearer on PlayStation occasion chats than something we have examined just lately.

You may swing it up and away when not in use, and it is very versatile to allow you to get it positioned proper for the perfect voice seize, making it a flexible a part of the headset’s providing.

Battery life and options

• 12-hour battery, spare pack included for swapping
• Xbox model appropriate with all consoles
• EQ and earcup management customisable

The arms race on the planet of headsets signifies that a stable design and nice sound is not sufficient to make a headset compete – you want some further little tidbits.

Foremost amongst these is nice battery life, one thing that has been approaching leaps and strides lately. Turtle Seaside has cadged a terrific trick by copying SteelSeries’ homework right here.

Just like the Arctis Nova Professional Wi-fi, the Stealth Professional has batteries which you can simply take away and swap out – with one housed charging in its base station always.

This implies you possibly can merely swap them whenever you’re operating low (they final over 12 hours every) to have practically limitless battery life when managed as such. It is a tiny bit fiddly to do that swap, requiring the microphone to be eliminated so {that a} magnetised cowl could be pried off, however can nonetheless simply be accomplished in a matter of 20 seconds or so.

It may not be unique, however we nonetheless love this characteristic and it signifies that charging cables and low-battery crises are a factor of the previous.

Lively noise-cancelling additionally ensures that you just’re extra cocooned than ever in your headset whereas gaming, and whereas it will not rival the mainstream likes of Sony’s WH-1000XM5, it is nonetheless a vastly welcome presence. That spectacular microphone will even cancel out background noise as a bonus.

A closing, however fairly necessary notice comes the place compatibility is worried – not for the primary time, it is price mentioning that the Xbox-branded model of the Stealth Professional is by far the model to select up, for one easy purpose.

It really works with Xbox consoles, but additionally with each different kind together with PlayStation and Change in addition to PC, whereas the usual model of the headset is excluded from Microsoft’s consoles regardless of having an similar price ticket.

This presumably comes right down to how Microsoft handles its licensing or branding however is essentially a bit crazy. Nonetheless, if you would like a headset that works with every little thing, bear it in thoughts.

Verdict

Turtle Seaside has arrived again within the high-end market with a splash – the Stealth Professional is a direct contender for anybody seeking to decide up a brand new premium gaming headset.

With high-quality supplies and game-winning sound, the one factor we would tweak can be to make it barely lighter if attainable, which is way from an enormous deal.

In fact, it comes with a reasonably frightful price ticket that would properly scare folks again into the mid-range, however for individuals who need high-quality, that is actually a compelling choice.