A Turtle Beach headset is a top place to start your search for one of the best gaming audio experiences on the market in 2023. Now a long-established household name across all the platforms, Turtle Beach has years of experience that have produced a modern, comprehensive range of products.
Turtle Beach's Stealth, Elite, Recon, and Atlas lines run the gamut of prices and features, with compatibility options for PC, consoles (yes, including Nintendo Switch), and mobile devices to boot. What's the difference between picking up one of the best Turtle Beach headsets versus any other headset? The biggest difference is simple: they're built from the ground up for playing games, and what comes out are some of the best gaming headsets going.
That design mindset manifests in everything from the mic, to the way the speakers are tuned, to the level of comfort you can expect. After all, if you're going to have something on your head for hours on end as you play games and chat with friends about playing games, it had better feel good. Thankfully, Turtle Beach's product line is pretty cozy on your cranium across the board. If you don't mind dropping big bucks you can get a pretty spectacular sound experience, but even the entry-level headsets will feel and sound great.
The best Turtle Beach headsets 2023
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The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro marks the brand's return to the high-end space, packing luxurious comfort, excellent sound quality, a wealth of additional features - and the price tag to match. This $329.99 / £279.99 device is at the top end of the price scale, but it's working particularly hard to still offer good value.
There's everything you could ask for here. Besides the luxurious sound and crystal clear microphone, we were impressed by the power of the active noise cancellation in particular. Capable of blocking sounds of up to 25dB out of your gaming experience, without causing too much of an interference with the audio quality, this is some of the best noise cancellation we've experienced in a gaming headset. It's helped by the sound-sealing cups on each side of your noggin, even if that higher clamp force does take a little getting used to.
That's not all, though, the Turtle Beach Stealth Pro has plenty of other tricks up its sleeve. Like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless (our top pick for the best gaming headset overall), the Stealth Pro packs two hot-swappable batteries. That means you can keep one charge pack juiced up and quickly swap over when running low - no more emergency cables in the middle of a session.
Throw in simultaneous 2.4GHz and Bluetooth connections and long-lasting comfort and you've got everything you would expect from a high-end device in 2023.
Read more: Turtle Beach Stealth Pro review
You make certain tradeoffs when you impose a budget on yourself. And when you’re shopping for a gaming headset, first to walk the plank are extraneous features and luxurious construction materials. You won’t find these in the Recon 500’s box, then, since Turtle Beach’s latest in the long-running line costs less than $100/£100. What you do find, crucially, is sound so good it takes you aback.
Wood composite injection technology. 60mm drivers. Dedicated woofers and tweeters per earcup. It doesn’t sound like the recipe for crisp, precise sound, and yet it all comes together in a powerful surge of ultra-responsive bass, detailed high end, and a pleasingly flat EQ curve with just a bit of audible kick further down the spectrum.
So that’s yours. Take it to the bank. But what isn’t coming along for the ride is much in the way of added features - this is a simple wired model with just a mic mute, detachable mic arm, and volume scroll wheel in the way of physical controls. Not one for perennial tweakers then, but those who enjoy simplicity and fundamentally great audio should scout out this new Recon as one of the latest best Turtle Beach headsets to appear.
Read more: Turtle Beach Recon 500 review
Those looking for a Turtle Beach headset primed for Nintendo Switch - and that's wallet-friendly - should look no further than the Recon 70. Despite its low price, it's the complete package: good sound with well-balanced bass; a decent microphone; and it's fairly comfortable too. That's a strong start for a headset at the budget end of the spectrum.
Though it does have some drawbacks: it doesn't score as highly with movies or TV, for example. But that's only because it just sticks to its guns and does what its meant to do well: games.
Oh, and don't worry about the many variants that are kicking around out there. Even though there's a Recon 70P, X, and beyond, they're all the same headset with slightly different colors. Whatever one you choose, you'll get excellent value for money.
Read more: Turtle Beach Recon 70 review (opens in new tab)
If you're looking for solid performance without delivering a heartbreaking blow to your bank balance, the Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX from Turtle Beach is an affordable point of entry into the world of top gaming headsets. Coming in a rather ostentatious midnight red color configuration, this supercharged revision of the Turtle Beach Stealth Gen 2 boasts a 48-hour battery life (a huge improvement over the 24-hour offering of its predecessor), a latency-free 2.4GHz Wireless connection, and fantastic compatibility across all major platforms.
And that's despite being an Officially Licensed product by Microsoft for Xbox. A handy USB transmitter ensures Wireless compatibility with PlayStation consoles, PC, and Nintendo Switch. That versatility is also reflected in the quality of sound that the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX can deliver, with its 50mm drivers delivering solid amplified surround sound and a considerable amount of clarity – this will be particularly noticeable for those of you with a penchant for playing first-person shooters online, and RPGs where you want to feel enveloped in the world around you.
The integrated flip-to-mute microphone is effective, if unspectacular, and the compact design is relatively comfortable throughout lengthy play sessions. Some may long for headier bass, and a more dynamic mid-range, but the truth is for the price it's difficult to find all that much to complain about. The Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX is a solid alternative to other mid-range headsets out there, with its long battery life and console compatibility helping to push it over the edge.
Read more: Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX review
The second generation of Turtle Beach Stealth 600's are a great low-budget wireless headphone that works with Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5, and PC. With a 15-hour battery life, a comfortable fit for glasses wearers, and finely tuned 50mm speakers, you'll be getting plenty of bang for your buck with these. Set up is a breeze - for the Xbox version it was as simple as turning on the headset straight out of the box and pressing the sync button on it and my Xbox One simultaneously. It immediately synced up and started picking up my voice and in-game volume.
This is certainly a great choice for gaming on a budget, as the sound quality is top-tier and the microphone sensitivity is ideal for those who want to communicate without shouting. However, because of the reasonable price, the headset plastic does feel a bit cheap, especially across the headband and on the ear cups, and unfortunately, the ear cups do get rather uncomfortable after an extended play session (whether that's my funny-shaped ears or not is unclear). Mic monitoring is not a feature I'm a fan of, as it echoes back any noise I make on my end, but luckily it can be turned off via the Turtle Beach audio hub.
In short, the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2's are a good sequel to an affordable wireless headset. It looks pretty good, feels pretty good, and sounds great - a no-brainer if you're looking to get a pair of headphones ahead of the next-gen release that won't bankrupt you.
For anyone who plays on the go, a traditional headset isn't always the answer. That's why the Turtle Beach Battle Buds are such a great solution. They're small, convenient, and eminently portable.
They actually work better than you'd think their 10mm drivers would allow; because the frequency response is limited, you'll get a fair balance of sound regardless of what you're listening to. That's quite an achievement. The Battle Buds won't match other headsets on this list in terms of quality, yet they're still able to impress.
Their size doesn't hurt, of course. These earbuds sit very firmly in place no matter how much you shake your head and the tiny microphone is reliable, too.
Read more: Turtle Beach Battle Buds review (opens in new tab)
If you're looking for rundowns of some other top brands' headsets, then check out our guides to Razer headsets, and Sennheiser gaming headsets.
