Turtle Beach Stealth 700 (Gen 3) wireless headset review — Pumping up the numbers

Yet another Turtle Beach headset this year, amirite? This will be the third one I’ve reviewed, with the gear maker going with a full lineup refresh. It’s usually a good thing, working out kinks and adjusting for feedback. I thought the new 600 series was just alright, but after using the Stealth 700 for a while, it might have snuck its way onto my best of the year list.

Let’s dive into the box. Inside you’ll find the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 wireless headset, TWO USB dongles for the Xbox version, a short USB-C charging cable, and the usual paperwork. The two USB dongles are because of Xbox needing a proprietary chip for their connection, along with new CrossPlay tech being implemented in the Stealth 700. Something that could be improved: the USB-C cable. It feels like a throwaway cable, just there until you upgrade it. I’d love to see a five or six foot braided cable included that matches the quality of the headset.

The Stealth 700 itself is a beefy boy, sporting 60mm Eclipse dual drivers and a steel-reinforced frame for durability. On the outside of the ear cups you’ll find a lot of controls, with several buttons and scroll wheels alongside the USB-C charge port. Compared to the other models, the implementation of these controls is much better, being easier to locate when reaching your hand to your ears. I especially like that the Bluetooth has its own volume wheel, allowing you to adjust that as you will separately from the 2.4hz audio.

Something unexpected has been the comfort level of the headset. Despite being physically large, it doesn’t feel heavy. I was concerned that the lack of a ski-band – like the ones on the Stealth 500 and Atlas Air – might cause me to encounter some of the discomfort that comes with the headband resting on your head. Somehow, even after hours of play, it doesn’t exist. Beyond that, the hybrid leatherette and athletic-weave fabric wrapped memory foam cushions have been extremely comfortable during these sessions as well. Oh and, if you wear glasses? No trouble with the headset at all, easy to wear over mine.

These sessions can happen just about anywhere now as well due to the impressive versatility of the Stealth 700. Sporting the two USB dongles allows you to plug it into a PlayStation or PC and your Xbox simultaneously, with a button on the right ear cup allowing you to use the Crossplay tech to switch between them. My only issue here is losing one of them; usually replacing an adapter is a pain or impossible. Still, the usability here makes for a nice feature set.

Bluetooth is also available to stretch your list of devices to… almost anything. While I bemoaned the lack of simultaneous Bluetooth on the lower models, it’s available here. Given the aforementioned volume wheel just for that connection, you can be like me and listen to the college football game on low while gunning down opponents in Call of Duty: Warzone without missing a beat. It’s not a necessary feature for a headset, but I do love it when it’s implemented, especially when it’s done right like this.

If I had to choose a star of the show for the Stealth 700s, it’d have to be the 60mm Eclipse dual drivers. These have an amazing breadth of sound, with the highs, lows, and mids all properly represented. Something many headsets don’t do well is bass, and the Stealth 700s exceed gaming headset expectations, with resplendent tones that have enhanced my music listening. As a self-proclaimed audiophile, if it makes jamming to a song more enjoyable, it’s great, and the Stealth 700s have that down.

For gaming, they have a similar effect. Playing a game like Returnal (which I used when testing its big brother in the Stealth Pro), audio quality is everything. The immersion I have been able to maintain via the Stealth 700 has been fantastic, with epic spatial sound crafting my environment aurally. In a competitive shooter like Call of Duty, hearing each gunshot or footstep and being able to place them in relation to my position gives me an advantage not every headset offers. It may not help your aim, but it might allow you to pop off the first bullet; which could be the difference in a win or loss.

I’ve been a bit of a downer on the Turtle Beach Swarm II software for their products, and while I think there’s more here than you’ll get in other places, it’s still lacking. Through computer (when it works) or phone it’s available to you, measuring battery life, providing additional presets, and more. That said, the four presets are extremely basic. Even though you can create up to five of your own ten-band EQ presets, I’d really like to see Turtle Beach make some game-specific ones to add more to a device that deserves it, especially after using a competitor’s EQ on my computer with it. The only thing here that’s a bit different is the Superhuman Hearing for gunshot or footstep audio, which in my opinion needs to be retired. It’s not the advantage it used to be.

While the microphone usually blows me away, I think this time around it’s a bit more in line with other headsets, though still close to the top. My Discord friends often said I was a bit low in volume when speaking. Listening back to my voice, it also had that “video game mic” tone to it, a little buzzy but still quite clear. Perhaps an update might clear some of that up. The Stealth 700 still has Turtle Beach’s fantastic mic monitoring, and my favorite mic feature: flip to mute. Allowing it to nestle right up into the ear cup is an extra bonus, allowing me to enjoy the headset without a mic in my face.

Now for the most boring part of this review: battery life. I’ve been using these as my main headset while playing Call of Duty for multiple hours at a time, and I still have seventy percent of the battery left. While I don’t recall an exact number in terms of how long I’ve used this headset, Turtle Beach’s eighty hour battery life claim seems easy to back up given my time with it. You won’t need to recharge much with the Stealth 700, even if you play a lot.

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