Review: Turtle Beach Elite Pro Tournament Headset

Serious gamers game for hours on end and Turtle Beach’s Elite pro Tournament Headset is designed to deliver serious comfort during those gaming sessions. When you invest the kind of money we’re talking for a pro-level headset, you also want it to be capable in the many audio environments in your life. Thankfully the Elite Pro keeps things simple with a 3.5mm jack that’ll happily connect into a PC, Xbox One, PS4 and yep, even your mobile phone.

While wearing a big over the ear headset down the street may still be frowned upon by some people, if you need to be comfortable, have great quality audio and tune out the world around you, then this headset should definitely be on your short list.

Design & Comfort

The headset is build from a combination of materials, with the important parts that engage with your body, soft and adaptable to different head sizes and shapes. The Aerofit Ear cushions are made from leather on the sides and fabric on the inside which may seam like a small difference over an all-leather earmuff, but this actually helps keep your head cool for hours. This is achieved by using spandex, Leather, and a gel-infused memory foam.

Turtlebeach also came up with a multi-adjustable headband that they call the ComforTec Fit System. This adjusts the headband tightness using two slideable metal rails that retract and extend along the band. While these are notched from 1-11, I really struggled to tell the difference between each notch, but at the extreme ends of the adjustments, it is noticeable. The second, possibly more important adjustment is the distance the cups are away from the end of the band. Holding the headset sideways and pulling or pushing on the cup yields a rewarding click between the 3 possible positions on each side. As a taller guy with a larger head, this was an important adjustment for the Elite Pro to sit comfortably.

Personally I don’t wear glasses (yet), but for those that do, headphones are usually problematic due to the pressure they place on the glasses, quickly making them uncomfortable or worse, an unviable option. Thankfully the engineers at Turtle Beach has considered this. The Elite Pro Headset features a ProSpecs Glasses Relief System. While that’s a fancy name, what it means for people with glasses is that the rail from the glasses actually has a slot to pass through in the ear cushions, allowing them to sit comfortable on your head. Its these touches that show an practical understanding of the challenges modern gamers face and for that Turtle Beach should be applauded.

Sound

When it comes to sound quality, pro gamers won’t accept any less than fantastic sound quality and that is exactly what’s delivered here. Even if you’re a casual gamer, you should expect a lot from a headset of this price point and when whether your enjoying and competing in a game, hearing all the finite sound effects can give you a competitive edge especially in the often frantic battlefield. Even in racing games, players take cues from the sound of tyre breaking traction or hitting a ripple strip through an apex, sound really is important to the experience of gaming and that’s often forgotten.

The headset offers passive noise cancelling and while that’s not as isolating as active noise cancelling, it really does a great job of letting you focus on your game, movie, podcast or whatever else your using the headset for.

Often when we participate in online gaming our voice is compressed thanks to constrained bandwidth so its difficult to suggest the microphone quality will fundamentally transform your gaming experience. What you do need is noice cancelling technology to ensure that what gets transmitted to your squad is just your voice and not a crying baby or barking dog in the background. The Elite Pro gaming microphone offers this with what Turtle Beach calls TruSpeak Technology. With a good quality headset, you’ll also find yourself using it for more and more daily activities outside game, like Skype calls or even audio narration on videos.

Issues

In-line control is cheap, plastic and while it’ll get the job done of volume control and muting the mic, it’s really not in line with the quality shown in the rest of the headset construction. There is however an additional accessory you can buy that’ll fix all that, the Elite Pro TAC audio controller.

The headset has a cable length that is just 1.5m in length. It doesn’t take long with any headset configuration to exceed that length and when you do, you’ll immediately wish it was longer. There are times where connecting it to an Xbox One controller in your hand will work great, or even to the phone in your pocket, it’ll work great, but if this is the gaming headset of choice at your battlestation, you may want to cable run it tidily or even use the headset with a VR headset and need to rotate in your chair where you’ll find an abrupt end to the cable.

Specifications

Price & Availability

The Turtle Beach Elite Pro headset is available now from JB Hi-Fi and costs $299.

Overview

This headset won’t be everything to everyone, but it certainly comes the closest I’ve seen in a while. If you love your gaming and 5-6 hour gaming sessions are common on your weekends, then you definitely should consider the Turtle Beach Elite Pro Tournament Gaming Headset. Turtle Beach promote comfort as one of the key benefits of this headset and what they have accomplished here is simply brilliant. It’s not light as a feather, you’ll know the headset is on your head, but the point is that hour 4 and 5 are just as comfortable as the first.

Far too often I’ll take off a pair of headphones or a headset and my ears are left red, hot and sore and if that’s the thing that makes you end a great gaming session, you bought the wrong headset.