Turtle Seaside Stealth Professional headset evaluate: The sound of success

• Design
• Sound high quality and microphone
• Battery life and options
• Verdict

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 Responsibility 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 quite a bit to the desk. We have used it for our common gaming periods to deliver you our verdict.

Design

• Weighs 422g
• Out there in black solely

Turtle Seaside’s headset designs, whether or not you have been getting into for its most price range choices or heading for the upper finish of its providing, have had one materials in widespread over current 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 an instantaneous and telling premium outlier within the hand.

There’s loads of steel right here, making for a way more robust-feeling headset, that is 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 utterly absent, after all – in any other case, this could be a half-ton headset. However the place it is used the end is sweet and easy for a convincingly premium really feel total.

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

Nonetheless, it is nonetheless very snug – 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 best way, too.

There’s a slight design distinction for the Xbox-branded model over the usual Stealth Professional, although, with a inexperienced mild 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 is usually a good bonus and a welcome contact while you’re spending over $300 on a headset, the factor that really issues most for a lot of gamers is the sound that it may well provide.

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

Enjoying an motion recreation like Useless 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 Responsibility battle royale’s full-scale solo mode is a brutal take a look at of response instances and cautious motion, and we had excellent outcomes turning on the Stealth Professional’s Advance Superhuman Listening to mode, an extended title for a customized EQ that flattens out sound and highlights distant gunfire and quiet footsteps to make sure you hear what it’s worthwhile to.

It really works actually impressively and having the ability to toggle it on and off with a button press on the best earcup is sensible. Even higher, the button in query is textured in an effort to 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 like, 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 also be very important in on-line worlds, and the Stealth Professional’s mic is a extremely nice one, coming throughout clearer on PlayStation celebration chats than something we have examined just lately.

You may swing it up and away when not in use, and it’s totally versatile to allow you to get it positioned proper for the very best 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 suitable with all consoles
• EQ and earcup management customisable

The arms race on the planet of headsets implies that a strong 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 an amazing trick by copying SteelSeries’ homework right here.

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

This implies you may merely swap them while 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 may be pried off, however can nonetheless simply be completed in a matter of 20 seconds or so.

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

Energetic 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 can even cancel out background noise as a bonus.

A remaining, however fairly vital observe comes the place compatibility is worried – not for the primary time, it is value 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 in addition with each different sort 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 an identical 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 all the things, bear it in thoughts.

Verdict

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

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

After all, it comes with a reasonably frightful price ticket that might properly scare individuals again into the mid-range, however for many who need fine quality, that is actually a compelling possibility.