Turtle Beach Elite 800 Wireless Headset Review

Introduction

If you asked someone to name a great headset for PlayStation, there is a good chance that they’ll mention Turtle Beach. Their headsets have proven time and time again to be some of the best in the business and they’ve proven a big hit with gamers around the world. This is partly due to the vast range of headsets that Turtle Beach produce, offering something for virtually every major gaming platform, as well as every budget.

Today I’ll be taking a look at their Elite 800, one of their latest flagship headsets for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and mobile devices. It comes with a range of premium grade features such as DTS Headphone X, wireless technology, Bluetooth, noise-cancelling, surround sound and a whole lot more; such as a premium price tag. The price of the Elite 800 isn’t for the faint of heart, or the light of wallet and it’ll set you back around £249.99.

For your hard-earned money, you’ll get the headset (obviously), the transmitter box and a nice collection of cables; all of which come nicely bundled into their own respective boxes.

The headset is really nicely designed, with a mixture of mostly soft matte black plastics and some glossy back plates.

The back plates of each ear cup feature controls for all of the major buttons; this is a wireless headset after all, so there’s no in-line controller.

On one side, you’ve got the volume, power and Bluetooth controls, on the other you’ll find the microphone mute, voice chat volume, and the preset buttons. They’re all nicely spaced out, making it easy to control the settings without taking the headset off of your ears.

Along the base of the headset, you’ll find a microUSB port and a small jack socket; these are used for charging and mobile use respectively. More interestingly, there are two contact points next to the MicroUSB port, which are used to charge the headset when it is docked on the transmitter box.

The Elite 800 has a slightly offset headband, which allows it to rest slightly further back on your head for extra comfort.

The headband has a length adjustment and each ear cup can also rotate to provide a closer fit.

Each ear cup can be rotated all the way inwards, providing you with a comfortable resting position when wearing the headset around your neck.

All the cables you should ever need are included in the box. There is a TosLink optical cable, USB cables and the 5-pole 3.5mm cable for mobile devices.

The transmitter is a multi-purpose unit. It will act as the transmitter, a stand and a magnetic charging dock for your headset.

There are two pins in the base of the unit and the headset simply drops onto the top for charging; nice and easy.

There’s also four thick rubber grips on the base to prevent your expensive new headset and stand from sliding around your desk.

Overall, an absolutely stunning looking headset. It’s not as loud a design as most other gaming headset, but it feels great, the padding is soft and thick, plus it looks fantastic mounted in the transmitter unit.