Sunday 27 December 2015

Turtle Beach Elite 800s quick review.

Well hello there interweb, I trust you had a good Christmas and are awaiting the New Year celebrations with a certain level of excitement and trepidation.
I have been the very lucky recipient of a set of Turtle Beach Elite 800 Headphones in the last couple of weeks and after giving them a good test thought I would share my views on them here.
Firstly these are not a cheap set of cans weighing in at nearly the £250.00 mark but I managed to get a set brand new in box for a hundred quid cheaper off ebay.

After un-boxing them the first thing I noticed was the general feel of quality, They are a little heavy but you don't notice that when you have them on your bonce. They feel like a quality item unlike some of the cheaper TB offerings.
They also come with a 2 year warranty which is very reassuring as my stealth 500s broke after 6 months and feel like the replacements TB sent me are about to break again.
There is plenty of adjustment for those with big heads and the ear cups feel soft and comfy even for a specky four eyes like me, after long gaming sessions they don't make the arms of the glasses dent your head.
The ear cups also fit well around the ears and cancel out ambient noise very well, I have lost count of the times Mr's Bagsta has scared the living shit out of me by walking into the games room and tapping me on the shoulder as I didn't hear her which never happened on the Stealth 500s.







Out of the box set up is pretty straight forward and the charging dock is a nice touch.
Looking through the literature you can register them (which I advise) and you will get to choose a free t-shirt and a couple of extra pairs of ear cup covers from TB but these may take a while to arrive. I ain't got mine yet.
I think since the release Turtle Beach may have made a few changes to the headset as some of the issues I have read in some reviews no longer seem to be present.
The background hiss is hardly noticeable unlike on the PX5s that I also have. Some people have complained that it is way to easy to accidentally press the buttons on the ear cups, with mine there is a definite press that has to be made and I have not once accidentally pressed them. The lack of flashing lights that illuminate the darkened gaming room are a welcome omission and the noise cancellation works a treat.
There are a fair selection of built in pre sets for the sound and the FPS when playing Black Ops 3 works a treat, the surround sound is very good but the mic feedback to prevent you from shouting is a little lack lustre but this is really my only gripe.
Whilst on the subject of the mic it does take a little more adjustment with the PS4 to get it right as they are hidden away in the ear cups.
I find by going to the mic set up on the PS4 and cranking it up to nearly full works well.
The best compliment the mic can have is a when I first partied up with a friend he said "WOW, you sound different" I asked what he meant and he replied "it sounds like you're in the room with me" Enough said on that then.
Theses cans also allow you to bluetooth 2 devices to them so I have my ipad and iphone connected. This works well for me as I can watch movies on my ipad without disturbing my little viper or listen to music in the office without disturbing the rest of the household.
This also enables you to take calls whilst in game or listen to some tunes whilst playing not something I tend to do as they do allow you to be a total sound whore on fps games (AW not included).
Battery life is not as good as the stealth 500s but if you leave your PS4 in standby mode and drop these suckers on the stand when you have finished gaming they will always have enough charge in them for a gaming session. You can also charge them via an included cable so no real need to stop playing if the battery low warning comes up.
If not leaving the PS in standby remember to switch them off. I have in my inebriated state left them on a few times only to have to plug them in whilst playing for a while to put some charge back into them.
I have had one problem on Christmas day where I thought they were fucked as I had left them on and not on the charging dock. There was a small red light flashing on the head set and the base station was flashing saying that the 2 were not paired.
I tried to pair them without success and so did the reset thing where you hold down the buttons for 15 seconds etc. Still no joy.
The solution was to download the Turtle Beach software and plug the two devices into different usb ports on the PC with the software open.
Press the button to update the software and even thought the latest software was on it reinstalled it and all was good to go again.

So in conclusion, Are these headphones worth the hefty price tag?
 In my view yes, they are a big step up from the stealth 500s and do not suffer from the popping and sound drop outs that happened a lot on the PX5s.
 The battery life is not as epic as the stealth 500s but it is good at around 10 hours so you are not going to have to leave the PS in standby all the time.
Now that Christmas is over I think that there may well be a few sets of these coming onto ebay and if like me you can grab a bargain I would but not at the expense of starving the rest of the family........ Nah scratch that they ain't gonna waste away get them anyway.

Peace out yall, THE BAGSTA XXX