Turtle Beach Ear Force X3 Gaming Headset and Wireless Chat

Posted by: rasp1 on: 07/07/2009 12:39 PM [ Print | 0 comment(s) ]

Review: Turtle Beach Ear Force X3 Gaming Headset and Wireless Chat
Frustration and Wanting
By: Jason ‘rasp1’ Pike

I have been testing and reviewing the Turtle Beach X3 headset set since mid December of 2007. I saw the press release of the headset and read some reviews of it from around the ‘net and thought to myself it would be perfect… Fast forward through 3 headsets and a lesson for coming into a situation with expectations, and we arrive at this review.

I read the reviews of the headset that Turtle Beach puts on the front of the packaging, just to see what they had to say. I couldn’t find the review on Game Informer, but the reviews were glowing to really good on The Xug, Gamers Reports, and About.com. The biggest compliant that I could get from them was that the voice adjusting functionality could lag a little, and that headset could pinch a little bit.

My first impressions

The boxing looks awesome, but getting it out of the blister pack can frustrate. I liked the sticker reading “All your ears are belong to us.” I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff. I thought it was nice that they included batteries, and they were easy to install. The headset was a little small on me, but I have gotten used that stuff not quite fitting. I’m a big guy. The install went smoothly. The cables included piggy backed just fine to my cabling system, that meant that I could listen without having to do anything but mute the TV and turn on the headset. The controls were nice and easy to find, they were laid out very nice. Everything is very nice so far.

I turned on Halo 3 and gave it a quick work out to see what I could hear. I have to say that I didn’t realize how much audio information Bungie had actually put into the game. The next and I think it was the best benefit from all of this was that I could hear my shields beep now much clearer than normal. Bungie…please fix your audio mix, or add adjustments into the game. It makes a world of difference.

The 2nd thing I liked about the headset system was the fact that the mic was wonderful. It was the best mic that I have had. With the other headsets I would have people tell me all the time that they could just barely hear me, or that I was lagging. Turtle Beach got the mic perfect in my opinion; it doesn’t seem to pick up a lot of background noise. I would have paid the price for the headset just for that feature by itself.

Now on to the not so good stuff

The tale of the musical headsets…I got my first headset off of eBay at about a $12 discounted price from retail. But the speakers in my first headset blew. One day my son playing with daddy’s new toy turned the volume all the way up and activated the bass boost. I didn’t really notice all of this because I was playing with earplugs in. But after 5-10 minutes at this volume setting all the sounds were getting really fuzzy and distorted. I couldn’t understand the other guys in my party, and the music was distorted beyond all recognition. I thought maybe it was my batteries, but changing them made no difference. Then I noticed the volume settings on the headset and thought oh crap.

I was thankful that my local Best Buy carries these. One down, two to go… The second gave me the same grievances. But this one decided to do a suicide jump from about three and one half feet to a thickly carpeted floor. I guess that the headset hit just perfectly on the carpet or that the joints between the ear cups and the top band are weaker than they should be, but it broke right on the swivel where the ear cup connects. It ruined them in the sense that they wouldn’t sit on my head properly, but I kept them anyway to ‘tough’ it out.

As we already know the story did not take a turn for the better after that…nope, after about two more weeks in this condition the speakers blew in this headset. There were no volume issues this time; just about two hours into a four-hour game session I got the distortions. About 20 minutes later I could not understand anything coming form the headset at all. The sound was distorted completely, and did not improve by adjusting the volume, or changing the batteries.

This stuff just makes me want to pull my hair out and scream, why god why. First off there is a loud hiss that is always there. I tried adjusting the settings on the transmitter, then thought maybe it was interference from my remotes and the Wii sensor bar. They all work on IR, but even with everything covered I got the same hiss on the headset. And I noticed subjectively that the IR transmitter for the headset does seem to mess with the Wii controller.

The reason I am making such a big deal about this is to get a good sound level with the game I have to have the volume turned up louder than comfortable levels. And when you play for 3-8 hrs straight with the hiss and the loud volume it wears me out physically. I ended up wearing earplugs of all things to get rid of the hiss and to be able to enjoy the sound better. You look geeky enough with them on to begin with, not to mention having earplugs hanging out of your ears as well.

Minor Issues

My next gripe would have to be the battery life. It seems to be all over the place, but I will chalk it up to be subjective observation. But I have yet to get more than 5 hours of battery life from the headset, and non-rechargeable batteries seem to go much faster than my rechargeable. It would be nice for some kind of battery gauge on it, or audible beep, instead it just seems to be guess what the problem might be and hope a battery change fixes it.

Other minor issues like when I first turn on the headset, the volume seems to be muted, and I will have to adjust the volume up a little bit. It sometimes clears up when I plug my mic jack in. I’m not sure why it does that. And it will do it at seemingly random times during game play, but I usually take it as a symptom of the batteries dying. The included cable for the mic attachment is incompatible with the Microsoft message pad. This is a Microsoft problem, not a problem with the X3. I’m not sure why Microsoft decided to make a message pad that is completely and totally incompatible with the rest of the ecosystems headsets. Or why they had to come up with a proprietary system like they did in the first place. Either way about it, they are both my most used accessories and I can’t use them at the same time.

I really like how Turtle Beach included the piggyback cables with the setup so that it would be easy for you to hook it up. But the problem for me, which didn’t occur until two weeks into ownership, was that we got a nice TV and receiver for Christmas. What this means though was I had to switch my whole setup from component cables to a strictly HDMI connection setup. Unless you buy a Microsoft branded cable that includes RCA jacks, or some equivalent cable then you will have to fork over some extra cash for a headphone cable to hookup to your amp.

I opted for the offer my friend at the electronics store suggested; to hook me up with his discount and get some nice HDMI Monster brand cables. They aren’t compatible with the Turtle Beach X3, at least not directly. $17 plus tax later I had the cable and adapter to make the system work with the head phone jack. This let the good times roll once again, but this is getting expensive.