I’ve used a lot of Turtle Beach gaming headsets in my time, and one of their defining features is how comfortable they are to wear. The brand’s more expensive offerings, especially, come with ever so soft ear cups that hug both sides of your head so you can wear them for extended sessions.
The Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 is no different, but considering it retails for £179.99, you would not only expect it to be comfortable, but boast superior build quality, great audio, along with several other features found in other high-end headsets. It does just that, and has become my main set of headphones for several weeks because it feels like a warm cuddle on my noggin.
The Stealth 700 Gen 3 Is Another Winner From Turtle Beach
One of the first things you’ll notice when taking the Stealth 700 Gen 3 out of the box is that it has not one, but two USB bluetooth dongles, both of which you’ll need to plug in to make the most of your purchase. The idea is that you can plug one of these wireless receivers into the console of your choice – PS5 or Xbox Series X – and the other into your PC.
You can then push a button located on the right earcup to switch between them at will, allowing you to make use of a single gaming headset for both platforms. In my testing, it worked a treat, even if my PC was downstairs in my office and the PS5 was upstairs in my bedroom. It works well, but it’s worth noting that the actual distance you can achieve from each receiver is pretty small.
The Stealth 700 Gen 3 can also connect wirelessly to your phone while balancing both of the aforementioned connections if you fancy using your console and Discord, or your PC and another native mobile app. There is a lot of flexibility here I didn’t quite expect, and having a single headset in my rotation instead of swapping between multiple devices is a boon that I’ll have trouble going without. It’s a dream for multiplatform gamers like myself, especially if I’m working in my office typing away for an entire day and then want to crash onto my sofa with a game moments later.
It also helps that the battery life is fantastic, with the Stealth 700 Gen 3 lasting for an entire week before I was even notified it was in need of a charge. Turtle Beach claims it lasts for upwards of 80 hours, and in my testing, that seems accurate. Your mileage will vary depending on the nature of your usage, but this is impressive no matter how you slice it. Putting battery life and connectivity aside though, how does this thing sound? Pretty good, even if it’s not going to blow anyone away.
It Sounds, Looks, And Feels Great – With A Few Caveats
Sporting 60mm eclipse dual drivers with a deep and satisfying sound. Turtle Beach wants to stress the depth and bass of its sound profile with this headset, and combined with the snug fit it’s able to make the audioscape feel incredibly immersive. The absence of noise cancellation is disappointing though, as it would have been the icing on the cake for me.
The Stealth 700 Gen 3 comes with four default audio presets you can flip between – Bass Boost, Signature Sound, Treble Boost, and Vocal Boost – although you can install the Swarm companion app to customise things with more granular detail.
Like most of its recent headsets, the microphone is a flip to activate component which you can slip down from the left ear cup whenever you want to use it. You’ll be notified it’s ready and working with a satisfying duo of beeps, although its overly plastic feel brings me to an overall issue I have with the Stealth 700 Gen 3: it feels kinda cheap. Aside from the steel headband, which itself is covered in a layer of grey material, every part of this headset is made up of hard, rough plastic.
For £179.99, I would have loved some more prominent metal features on the headset itself, or at the very least a more stylised or embossed plastic that didn’t make it feel so dated. The buttons themselves, weirdly enough, feel incredibly premium and nice to use.
A trio of wheels controls volume and mic output, while you have your usual suspects of bluetooth and power alongside mode and platform switching. All are immaculately placed and pleasantly tactile, a far cry from the comfortable yet weirdly clinical nature of the chassis itself.
The Stealth 700 Gen 3 Is A Winner For Versatile Gamers
Putting its inconsistent build quality aside, over the last few weeks I’ve had very few issues with the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3. Not only does it work a treat right out of the box, it also features a number of innovative features that quickly become second nature alongside good audio quality, a comfortable design, and the sort of durability that is likely going to see it last several years. Or at least until the next generation comes along.