Turtle Beach has been a mainstay for console peripherals for years. Now, Turtle Beach is going all out with the release of their newest multi-platform headset, the Stealth Pro Wireless. The new flagship headset is poised to take on the competition across all facets, including style, sound, features, and versatility. With a $329.99 price tag, the Stealth Pro must attain high scores across the entire scorecard if it wants to be taken seriously. The second I opened the box, I knew I was looking at a contender. But does the Stealth Pro have what it takes to be a champion, or is it doomed to lurk in the shadows? We answer that in our Turtle Beach Stealth Pro Wireless review.
Specifications
- Current Price: $329.99
- Headphones
- Style: Over-Ear, Closed
- Drivers: 50mm Neodymium
- Frequency Response: 10Hz - 22kHz
- Microphone: Detachable Boom mic and 2 built-in microphones
- Unidirectional Noise Cancelling >30dB Noise Reduction @ 3kHz
- Frequency Response: 100Hz - 8kHz
- Wireless Connectivity
- 2.4GHz lag-free Transmitter: PlayStation 5, Pc, Mac, Nintendo Switch
- Bluetooth: PC, Mac, iOS, Android, and other Bluetooth-equipped devices
- Simultaneous 2.4GHz and Bluetooth
- Range: Up to 15m / 50’
The Design - Plastic Chic
When it comes to design, Turtle Beach often goes for a, how can I say this nicely, a gamer aesthetic. You know. Big, curvy, brightly colored plastic ear cups and an equally gamer-centric microphone hanging off the bottom of the left ear. Well, The Stealth Pro definitely changes all that.
The Stealth Pro is the polar opposite of the gamer look. Turtle Beach has gone with a more sleek and subdued design that could easily allow the Stealth Pro to blend in on a table full of high-end kit. Dropping the chunky pilot earmuff style of its cheaper options, the Stealth Pro deploys stylish cups on a swivel base that allows the headset to lay flat on your desk. The earcups are still slightly oversized, but no more so than any other headset packing the hardware required for active noise cancellation. Gone are the bright blue and green highlights found on console-focused hardware. Some gray accents on the ear cups are the only offset to the predominately black visage of the headset. Even the primary boom mic is detachable; two built-in mics serve as a backup so you can go out into the world in style without losing comms.
Getting gaming out of your blood is tough, and Turtle Beach still couldn’t resist adding some branding on the Stealth Pro. You’ll find the Turtle Beach name etched onto the top of the black plastic headband and the iconic Turtle Beach palm tree logo getting a similar treatment on the right earcup. The Turtle Beach name is also stenciled in gray on the left earcup, but it’s less prominent than something you’d find on a pair of Bose or other high-quality headsets.
Keeping with the stealthy look, Turtle Beach has done everything possible to conceal the onboard controls. A USB-C port protrudes slightly from the back of the cup, and three buttons sit flush along the bottom of the right cup. Flanking the power button, the other two buttons are used for Bluetooth pairing and turning on/off Superhuman Hearing. No, Superhuman Hearing isn’t an actual superpower, but it will help you identify gunshots and enemy footsteps in your favorite first-person shooter.
The outer surface of the right earcup also holds two other stealthy control surfaces. A multi-function button at the center of the cover serves as an ANC on/off switch by default, and the rest of the cup’s outer shell is actually a well-hidden volume wheel. Although this setup removes unsightly controls from the earcup, the volume wheel is cumbersome. The surface doesn’t have a contoured area to facilitate spinning with a single finger. Instead, you must use extra force to create enough friction to spin the wheel with a single finger. Alternatively, you can grasp the wheel's outer edge with multiple fingers, requiring several spins to go from minimum to maximum volume. I love the idea of all of the buttons being stealthy, but a regular volume wheel is much more practical.
The left earcup is void of buttons. The boom mic is positioned at the bottom of the outer surface. Besides the small area reserved for the boom mic, the rest of the outer cover is held on by three magnets and can easily be removed to reveal the rechargeable battery.
For comfort, the cups use a soft memory foam cushion with a leatherette covering, and the headband's underside has a matching cushion. The cushioning is put to the test on all but the smallest of heads. Weighing in at 413g, the Stealth Pros feel extremely heavy and tight. The lack of any relief cut into the cups for a pair of glasses only compounds the clamping force of the headband, and it was almost a relief to take the headset off after a couple of hours of use. I have become more accustomed to the tight fit over the last few weeks, but I still feel a significant difference between the Stealth Pro and my regular headset.
Features And Convenience
Turtle Beach hasn’t skimped on the features of the Stealth Pro. The Stealth Pro has hand-matched 50mm Nanoclear™ Neodymium magnets for a strong, balanced audio experience. To maintain the highest level of immersion, the Stealth Pro uses Active Noise Cancellation to keep the outside world from seeping into your virtual landscape.
On the flip side, the Stealth Pro wields a unidirectional noise-canceling boom mic equipped with TruSpeak™ technology to ensure you come across clearly in comms and chat.
Moving on from the PR technical jargon meant to amaze you, let’s review the Stealth Pro’s wireless advantages. Let’s face it, many hardcore gamers are weary of wireless technology, but the Stealth Pro provides the same audio quality as a corded headset through the use of a 2.4GHz transmitter to provide a lag-free connection. The transmitter also doubles as a charging device for an included second battery, so there’s no need to fear the Stealth Pro dying in the heat of battle. It may not be as fast as a John Wick reload, but the battery can quickly be removed and replaced with a single hand without taking the headset off. The headset also has an auto-reconnect feature, so your audio will be back up just a few seconds after the new battery is in place. Regardless, a fully charged battery will last about 12 hours, so you will never have to worry about scrambling for a USB cable to stay in the action.
The Stealth Pro also provides Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity for when you aren’t at home base. Nothing is worse than taking off your headset and pausing your game to take a phone call, so the Stealth Pro also touts simultaneous 2.4GHz and Bluetooth connectivity. This allows you to connect to your main rig or console through the wireless transmitter while maintaining a Bluetooth connection to a second device. Or you can just block all your calls and use your phone for Discord chat or background music.
Turtle Beach eschews a physical DAC, instead relying on the Turtle Beach Audio Hub App to customize your audio experience. The app, available on PC and mobile, has a ten-band equalizer to tune your audio to your liking. As an added touch, the EQ is broken down into three tabs to adjust the auditor for the wireless transmitter, Bluetooth, and microphone separately.
The app dashboard also has some additional functionality. There is a microphone section to adjust the noise gate intensity, mic sensitivity, and mic monitoring volume. You can also tweak the ANC level, from full ambient passthrough to maximum noise cancellation.
Sound Impressions
When it comes time to pump out some sound, the Stealth Pro’s 50 mm drivers are more than capable. Coming configured with a neutral sound profile that Turtle Beach coins as Signature Sound, I found the out-of-the-box experience a little light on bass. Along with that natural profile, the Turtle Beach software also has a few other presets, including a bass boost, treble boost, and vocal boost. Each of these does exactly what you would expect, and I found that switching to the bass boost preset got the headset pretty close to the sound profile that I prefer. The software also has a full equalizer for you to tinker with if one of the presets doesn't work for you. Regardless of the settings, the Stealth Pro creates crisp and clear audio across its full range of 10 - 22kHtz. Even at maximum volume - which is loud enough your doctor would probably tell you not to crank it up that high - the drivers push out a strong bass line without losing clarity in the high range.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve tested the Stealth Pro Wireless on multiple platforms. When connecting to my PC and PS5 through the wireless puck, I always felt I was in the action. Whether I was switching through gears in F1 2022 or battling the spectral enemies in Ghostwire: Tokyo, the Stealth Pro handled it all. And as advertised, turning on Superhuman Hearing does wonders in Warzone and other shooters.
Switching to Bluetooth and connecting to my TV, I also ran the Stealth Pro through its paces in a series of movies. I always use the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan to get an idea of how a headset will handle intense battle scenes, and I wasn’t disappointed by the Stealth Pro’s performance. The headset also held up quite nicely during the opening minutes of 6 Underground, an extended scene of driving, gunplay, and vocals, all backed by a thumping soundtrack; the Stealth Pro didn’t even break a sweat.
Finally, I went mobile and used the Stealth Pro with my phone. Thankfully, the Turtle Beach app translates nicely to the small screen, and the headset continued to push out the same quality sound regardless of what song was up on my playlist.
Active Noise Cancellation
Turtle Beach claims that Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) will make the Stealth Pro the “new king of wireless.” I would say that the Stealth Pro’s ANC implementation is decent at its best and grating at its worst.
All headsets have some amount of passive noise isolation. When you put a set of headphones on, the material surrounding your ear (or plugging your ear canal with earbuds) naturally dampens the amount of external noise that will leak in and mingle with the sound created by the headset. Active noise cancellation augments the passive reduction through a mix of hardware and software to further reduce the amount of ambient sound. To do this, the Stealth Pro uses four microphones to capture incoming soundwaves and then creates an offsetting soundwave to cancel the noise out (you can read more about how this works here).
ANC isn’t perfect, though. Turtle Beach says the Stealth Pro reduces external noise levels by up to 25dB. In practice, when I started messing with the ANC option on the Stealth Pro, I noticed a decent reduction in external sound. However, once the music stopped, I noticed a significant amount of white noise created by the headset. High frequencies are more challenging to cancel out than lower ones, so it is common for manufacturers to use white noise as a blanket defense to reduce any tones the hardware/software combination can’t actively counteract.
I have a couple of ANC devices hanging around, so I grabbed them to see how they compared to the Stealth Pro; maybe I was misremembering how my other devices worked. Both devices, one headset and one pair of earbuds, could be considered budget offerings (under $100), and after testing them out, they both did as good a job or better reducing ambient sound, with barely audible white noise to boot.
There is hope for the Stealth Pro’s ANC capabilities. After spending a couple of minutes tinkering around in the Turtle Beach Audio Hub, I found I could drastically reduce the white noise generated by the headset. There is an active noise cancellation slider on the dashboard, and by default, it was set to maximum. By adjusting the slider downward, I could nearly eliminate the white noise sound at the sacrifice of less overall sound reduction. This gives me hope that Turtle Beach can solve part or all of this issue by better tuning the ANC software in a future update.
Final Thoughts
With an influencer army led by prominent content creators, Turtle Beach already has a built-in consumer base for the Stealth Pro Wireless. However, fanboi or not, $329.99 is a tough price to swallow for a gaming headset. With its refined looks, robust feature set and software, and, most importantly, superb audio quality, there is a solid argument to pick up a set of the Stealth Pros. Unfortunately, while the ANC implementation on the Stealth Pro Wireless is good for the gaming sector, it falls well short of the music target, making Turtle Beach’s coup de gras more like a shot in the foot.
The product described in this review was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.