Receiving a new headset for Christmas is always a great way to enhance your gaming experience. Should you be hoping for Turtle Beach’s Elite Pro gaming headset from Santa this year? Read on to find out exactly what we thought of the headset!
The Elite Pro certainly aims for the traditional gaming headset look. It’s slightly on the chunky side yet for its size it remains relatively lightweight. The standard memory foam band across the top part of the headset combined with the thick, large diameter memory foam earpads go well together to make the Elite Pro extremely comfortable. Seemingly making the headset feel lighter when being worn than held.
The Elite Pro has clearly been built with long gaming sessions in mind. The comfort of the headset is extended by the adjustments available. The headband movement allows you to fine-tune the headset for the size your head and the amount of rotation on the earcups is also very welcome. For readers who wear glasses note this small rotation also helps to reduce the pressure on the glasses from the headset itself: limiting the discomfort caused by them being pushed into your head.
The materials used mostly have a premium, robust feel; with the headset, aside form the earcups, being a mixture of plastic and metal. The volume adjuster and microphone mute switch sit on their own module along the audio cable. Sat away from the earcups, this module feels like it is made of substantially cheaper material, with the orange plastic mic mute switch emphasizing the non-premium feel. Turtle Beach headsets have featured modules, such as this along the audio cable, for a number of generations. Some headset designers, such as Logitech or LucidSound, situate volume and mute buttons on one of the earcups, a more inclusive design that I prefer.
One oversight has been made when designing the Elite Pro’s standard microphone. The microphone included does an acceptable, but not outstanding, job. It is relatively clear in audio quality, both in-game on consoles and across chat services such as Skype or Discord on PC. For a headset of this cost, priced at £169.99/$199.95, I would hope for something slightly less muffled. This being said communications are by no means inaudible, just not crystal clear.
The design choice to include the mic as an accessory instead of being built in is where it suffers. The issue is unfortunately as simple as round hole, round peg. When you move with the headset on the mic can pivot around the audio jack with only some friction stopping it. The idea behind this is clearly so gamers can customize the height of the microphone but instead means it won’t stay in any chosen height for long. Making the audio jack housing a hexagon for instance would still allow for some customization of height but would remove ability for the mic to pivot.
Note: The microphone can be upgraded on the Elite Pro with a Tournament Mic available for purchase for £29.99/$29.95.
Aside for being comfortable to wear a headset has to provide a certain level of audio quality. The Elite Pro delivers in this feature. It offers full and bassy audio for listening to Spotify, or your music service of choice. It handles those squelching sounds in Gears of War 4 with ease, making them sound that bit more epic. The Elite Pro’s audio quality also, as expected, helps gamers know which direction an enemy player is coming from, helping you either stay alive or grab that crucial kill.
One quick point about what is included, or in this case not included, in the box with the Elite Pro headset. By default it does not come with the converter needed for a two jack PC system or an adapter needed for older Xbox One controllers. These can be purchased for an extra cost but I feel should come as standard with a headset that sits in the high price range.
Verdict
Priced at £169.99/$199.95 the Elite Pro certainly isn’t a cheap headset, yet is has the quality, despite the slight non-premium feel, to back up the price. It is an all-rounder when it comes to platforms. Seemingly as long as a device features a 3.5mm jack the Elite Pro can handle it: working on consoles, via controllers, PC and mobile phones. When all’s said and done, the Elite Pro firmly ticks the most important two boxes for a gaming headset; offering great audio quality and being extremely comfortable to wear for long periods of time.