Turtle Beach Battle Buds Review – Built for Battle Royale

A Closer Look and Performance

The earbuds are in-ear but use much larger drivers in an enlarged body that sits outside the ear. This means they can deliver a much bigger and bass-heavy sound vs your standard in-ear buds. I love the triangular design too, it’s a little bit different to most and fits with the design of their logo too.

The housing is plastic but has a light texture to it. It’s nothing too over the top, and despite the silver logo on the back, there fairly understated for gaming headphones. The plastic design does make them nice and lightweight too, which is important since they don’t use a headband for support.

Connections

Down the side of the left earphone, there’s a small jack where you can connect the boom microphone. Nice and simple to use.

The drivers look quite large, but they’re really quite compact overall. As I said before, they’re very lightweight too but feel plenty durable overall. The earbuds can be replaced to suit your fitment too. The stock ones worked great for me. Those little hooks on the end sit inside your ear, helping hold them tightly in place. Again, try the other earbuds if they don’t fit right, with five sets, you should find the perfect ones with ease.

Drivers

Small they may be, but they still pack in some impressive 10mm Neodymium Magnet drivers. That’s a damn big driver for in-ear headphones. The end result is a frequency response of 20 Hz up to 20kHz. Not Hi-Res territory, but more than enough for typical movie, music and gaming needs.

Powerful Sound

The angled drivers meet they sit pointing slightly down into your ears too. This gives them a much more direct sound. It also helps create a tight seal that provides decent passive noise isolation, while also locking in the sound from the drivers. Why does that matter? Well, it creates a positive pressure in your ear, which means the bass sounds deeper and tighter. The end result is impressive though. Listening to bass heavy frantic music, eg, all my death metal fills my ears with joy. There’s no fudging to the sound, and it’s a really powerful yet controlled sound overall.

Audio

What’s more, the treble rings loud and clear too. However, there’s a slightly noticeable roll on the midranges. That’s not a mistake though, it’s certainly by design. Bass and treble are more prominent and the mid-range cut helps keep the booms and vocals nice and clear; it’s standard fare for single-driver in ears. Studio accurate they’re not, but they have a pleasing sound that puts the “WOW” into any movie, music or gaming experience. This is most notable for FPS games, where the guns, expositions, and team chat ring out very clear. So while they are “built for battle royale” as they said, they’re no slouch anywhere else either. They get a big thumbs up from me.

Taking Command

When it comes to being practical, they’re well equipped too. There’s a phone control on one side of the in-line controller. You can use it to play/pause music from your phone, answer calls, etc.

Plus, with a volume slider, you don’t have to pause just to get the volume right. There’s even a microphone mute button when you need some privacy. There’s a pin-hole microphone on there too, so you don’t have to use the boom mic. Of course, it’s pretty decent, but mostly suitable for telephone calls on the go. If you’re gaming, you’ll want to use the boom microphone.

Microphone

The dedicated microphone has a long and flexible boom;. It features a uni-directional microphone, and puts the microphone right next to your mouth for improved pickup.

It’s just the right size too, at least for me. What’s more, the clarity is properly impressive. We’ve been playing Apex legends and it sounds as good as the Microphone on my Atlas headset. It picks up a little more wind noise though, but since it can be moved and adjusted, just have it more off to the side of your mouth anyway.