Headphones make the difference when gaming.
When it comes to Gears of War, I’m all about playing until my eyes and hands hurt. I’ve played 14 hours straight before and let me tell you my family hates to hear that game start up. Because of that, I researched good sets of gaming headphones and found this set from Turtle Beach. After just a few short weeks, I’ve become huge fan of the Stealth 500X Surround Sound Gaming Headset for the XBox One.
The Stealth 500X headphones were made with the gamer in mind. Not only are they easy to set up – less than 5 minutes to game play out of the box – they also come equipped with 7.1 DTS Surround Sound. This is great for in-game play. It really gives you the advantage over your opponent, too. I can spin around and catch someone off guard because I hear them sneaking up on me. Before, I would just hear all the sounds through my TV’s speakers and it was impossible to tell where an opponent was. The surround sound feature is nothing less then amazing. I can hear people all around me – right, left, up and down. That really gives you an edge.
The battery life is nothing short of amazing. The specs state a 15-hour battery life, and I’ve really put that through testing. As I mentioned, I’ve had at least one 14-hour long gaming session since purchasing these headphones and I didn’t have to worry about charging the headphones once. Besides marathon gaming sessions, the battery life comes in handy when you forget to charge the headphones overnight. The headphones will shut down after 10 minutes of non-use.
Another great feature of these headphones is the separate volume controls. The Stealth 500X has a volume control for your microphone and then one for your headphones. This is great because you can have your game sounds at a separate volume from your chatting. You can set your game mix to your personal preference rather than the headset taking care of that for you. In addition to the volume control, the Stealth 500X comes with some DTS Surround Sound modes built-in for specific sound styles. The EQ presets are set-up with genres of games in mind. It just helps to enhance the quality of sound you have.
To really test out the headphones, I started a game with a friend and discovered a world of sound I didn’t know about before. I had a party going with a friend who I’ve played games with for years and I could hear him like he was standing next to me. He was able to hear me perfectly, too. Even after extended play, I didn’t experience any sound loss.
Now, for something that I believe everyone will want to know – how comfortable are these headphones? At first I was in love with the sound, but the feeling of the headphones on my head was sort of hard to take. I saw online where people said they had been uncomfortable and after a few hours of wearing them, I was agreeing with those comments. But, they were brand new out of the box at the time and had to be broken in – just like a pair of shoes. I decided to struggle with the slight headache I was experiencing and continued to use them. This was a great decision because after a day or so of solid use they had broken in and I didn’t really notice any discomfort after that point while gaming – even after 14 hours of straight game play.
As much as I adore these headphones, I have had a few technical issues with them. During the third week of use, I started to get a weird twang sound each time I moved my controller. The best way to describe the sound would be like a tuning fork smacking metal. At this same time, I was not able to hear myself speaking, which caused me to start speaking louder because mic monitoring had ceased to work. When these issues started occurring, I found that both issues were fixed rather quickly by just resetting the receiver for the headset that plugs into the Xbox.
Before these headphones, I never really grasped how important a great set of headphones for gaming really was. I can play my games without disturbing anyone – well, besides the occasional outburst of obscenities when I get killed in the game – and, I can hear opponents approaching and get the upper hand on them. I’ve used these every day since receiving them and I don’t know how I could ever play again without them.
Buy on Amazon: Turtle Beach Ear Force Stealth 500X
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