Seems like a fashionable gimmick at best. (It sounds awful.) But I haven’t noticed my skills improving or anything as a result. It certainly works as advertised, and woe be on the person who leaves that mode enabled and then listens to music. In practice? Well, I haven’t noticed a huge difference. That’s just not good enough at this level.Regarding the “Superhuman Hearing” mode I mentioned above? As I said, it’s supposed to highlight enemy footstep sounds by boosting that narrow EQ band a bit. Stick to games and listen without a comparison and you may initially think that there’s not much to complain about with the Stealth 700 Gen 2, short of an occasional bit of fuzz to an effect.Ĭompared to the significantly less expensive PlayStation Pulse headset, though, there’s a clear lack of spaciousness, punch, definition and dynamics, and that makes for a less immersive and less exciting gaming experience. The Pulse headset is even the better of the two at the bottom end: the Turtle Beach goes deeper, but its bass is also soft and ill-defined, and the Pulse’s significantly punchier and cleaner delivery is altogether more satisfying. It’s also rather lacking in terms of punch and dynamics, and that means everything sounds a bit flat and unexciting.Ĭombined, all of this means the Turtle Beach headset struggles to really transport you into the games you’re playing, both in terms of general atmosphere and full-on action. You know where a sound is coming from, but it’s hard to tell how far away it is. Whether playing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in proper 3D Audio, or Destiny 2, which somewhat simulates the effect without having official 3D Audio support, there’s a clear sense of where voices and effects are coming from.īut the Stealth 700 Gen 2 sounds less spacious and open than the Pulse, and it struggles to convey distance effectively. There’s also good directionality to the sound. There are good things about the sound here, too, such as a weight and depth that the Pulse headset lacks, and that gives voices a nice baritone and explosions a bassier bedrock. You’re probably not considering the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 2 primarily for music playback, though, and for gaming it’s certainly possible to ignore the occasional fuzz. Interestingly, this fuzz is more or less gone when listening to the same music via Bluetooth, suggesting that the quality of the wireless transmission between the dongle and headset could be the main culprit. At this point, the delivery is rather reminiscent of the early days of digital music files – it’s almost as if we’re listening to a 64kbps MP3 rather than a CD-quality Tidal stream. It’s also significantly worse when listening to music via the PS5, creating a sibilant hiss that makes for a genuinely unpleasant listening experience. That said, the fuzz hasn’t completely disappeared – it’s inaudible most of the time, but there are occasions that it intrudes once more, such as when your ship dives towards a planet in Destiny 2. Thankfully, a software update (applied via computer) has made a huge difference, and it is now possible to get a better sense of the headset’s overall merits. The amount of fuzz and distortion to the sound was truly awful, making it almost impossible to assess any other factors. Straight out of the box, the Stealth 700 Gen 2 sounded like a one-star headset. This will be a big deal for those who tend to game while others are in the room. The stalk mic is a big advantage for the Stealth 700 Gen 2 over the Pulse, though, not in terms of how clearly it picks up and transmits your voice (squadmates report that there’s little difference in vocal clarity between the two), but because it picks up far less background noise than the essentially invisible microphones of the Pulse headset. Voice feedback lets you know how much juice is in the tank when you switch the headset on, and keeps you informed of the status of your connections, but you don’t get the pop-up info on the PS5’s screen that you do when using the Pulse headset. The headset battery lasts for around 20 hours, and charging via USB-C is quick and easy. The so-called Superhuman Hearing mode sounds horrible, too, although some try-hards might be willing to put up with that for the apparent slight advantage it can confer in multiplayer shooters. Sticking with the default Signature Sound is your best bet. Truth be told, once you’ve set the Mic Monitor to a level you’re happy with there’s little reason to use the app again, and the different sound profiles aren’t really worth your time as they amount purely to artificial boosts to different parts of the frequency range. Surround sound Yes (PlayStation 3D Audio) Compatibility PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Bluetooth
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