Turtle Beach Ear Force Recon 60P Amplified PlayStation Headset Review

A Closer Look

The headset itself is fairly typical design for Turtle Beach, with the more than familiar ear cup design, and it comes with a pair of small wires running from each ear cup to the hard-wired in-line controller.

There’s an easily accessible microphone mute switch, handy for when you need some privacy mid-game, as well as a master volume control. Both of these features are compatible with a wide range of devices, as the headset comes with a hard-wired 4-pole connector, so it’ll connect to PlayStation controllers, as well as mobile devices.

The ear cups are nicely finished and have a little bit of ventilation at the back, giving them a semi-open back design, allowing for a little ambient sound to pass through while also giving airflow to the drivers.

The construction is a bit plastic-heavy, but that’s to be expected at this price range. While it does come at a slight cost to the overall durability, the headset still feels fairly sturdy, but benefits from the lighter materials, as the reduced weight makes is comfortable to wear for extended periods. The headband can be reduced to suit smaller head sizes, but has a decent amount of extension, so it should fit a wide range of users quite nicely.

Despite the plastic finish, the surfaces are nicely finished, and the glassy textured blacks provide a nice contrast for the PlayStation electric blue highlights.

There’s a soft leather coated padding on the drivers, which provide a nice snug fit over your ears, but it’s soft enough to remain comfortable after a long gaming session. The padding is quite soft, which is great for comfort, but could wear out a little quicker compared to more durable padding.

It doesn’t take much force to compress, but this is a lightweight headset, so it’s just enough to compensate for the pressure of the headset.

At the base of the headset, there’s a pair of connectors where the hard-wired cable joins, a single side design is often preferred, but there’s nothing wrong with doing it this way. There’s also a small connector for attaching the boom microphone.

The headband is quite thin, but offer a good amount of flexibility while remaining relatively sturdy; there’s also a little bit of Turtle Beach branding here. Setting up the headset is fairly simple, either use the USB connector for the PlayStation or the 3.5mm cable for everything else. Usually, an open back design reduces the bass response, but that’s not the case here, the 60P have a punchy bass in passive mode, and even more so when using the USB amplifier. The sound isn’t particularly refined, but it was never going to be, not at this price range. There’s a lot of power at max volume though, and listening to music is enjoyable to say the least, but some detail is lacking in the mid-ranges.

A bit of rubber padding on the interior keep the headset firmly in place on your head. Again, this is a very thin layer of padding, but the headset is very light and it feels more than sufficient when worn, even if it doesn’t look it. After a few hours of wearing the headset, it remains quite comfortable. Gaming is certainly the strong point of this headset, sure it works great for movies and music, but it’s designed primarily for gaming. The sound quality is pretty good overall, with clear highs, thick and distortion free bass and while there is a bit of cut in the mid-ranges on the EQ, it works well for the often bass heavy soundscapes of games.

The microphone is easily attached and locks firmly into place. It’s got a flexible boom to help find the optimal position and there’s a good foam head on it to help reduce ambient noises, such as your breathing, from being picked up. The microphone is nothing breathtaking, it’s fairly standard, as are most gaming microphones these days. It’s clear, doesn’t pick up too much background noise and when used on PlayStation is offers you microphone monitoring, which means you won’t spend all night shouting over the game audio because you can’t hear yourself. Again, nothing amazing, but nothing wrong with it either and a big leap up in quality from the often lackluster pre-bundled headsets you get with some console packages.