Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 2 Review – Next-Gen Ready!

A Closer Look & Performance

The headset has a super clean and stylish design, and it’s certainly a lot cleaner and more refined than their first generation model. It looks a lot less “gamer” than before, it’s a less aggressive design.

The ear cups are noticeably deeper this time around, much like their Atlas headset actually. That’s a deeper driver chamber, but also a lot more padding than we saw on their previous Stealth 700 headset.

Here’s the old one for comparison, and for the record, I loved it. However, it’s clear that the new design is a big departure and it’s also lost the console colour coding here, but I quite like the new monotone look.

This is a headset we all know is for gaming. However, if I wore this while on a work Zoom call, I don’t think I’d look out of place, so a big thumbs up for the overall design, it hits a lot of markets well there.

It scores big for ergonomics too, with fully rotating ear cups. They’ve got a little friction and resistance too, so they tend to stay at the angle you moved them to, but are still easy to turn by hand. I’ve had some headsets where the ear cups spin like a child’s toy, but that’s not the case here.

The headset comes with a really robust headband too, featuring a durable plastic outer section on the top, a thick layer of padding on the bottom, and a durable metal inner. It’s surprisingly flexible, but overall, it feels really strong.

The headband padding is a very soft memory foam. It has a soft PU leather style material on there too, giving it a little grip so it doesn’t slip around on your head.

Each ear cup is also mounted in a small pivot, allowing for a much cleaner fit over your ear.

Plus, the ergonomics mean that the headband fits flush into the back of the ear cups, it’s a very sleek design overall.

I’m happy to report that while the headset will fit younger gamers on the smallest setting, it’ll even fit my big head at its maximum size (few headsets do).

The headset does have a firm fit over my ears, however, that’s by design and the absolutely massive amount of ear cup padding distributes the force very comfortably.

Tucked in those ear cups, you’ll find the iconic Turtle Beach drivers. They’re 50nm Nanoclear neodymium drivers, and they’re pretty much the main driver used in all the current crop of high-end Turtle Beach headsets. That’s a good thing though, they’re fantastic, and the new closed-back driver design and thick sidewalls on the soft memory foam really helps lock in the sound.

The around the ear design means the drive can sit quite close to your ear, but the sound is locked in, helping to really tighten up the low-end frequencies. The drivers sound powerful and impactful when you need them to, or more precisely, when they’re supposed to. Turtle Beach says their ear cups use “aerofit cooling gel-infused comfort” and whatever the tech is, it’s extremely comfortable and forgiving for those long gaming sessions.

You get a lot of control with this headset too, so you’ll spend less time in the settings menus and more time gaming. You get built-in chat and source volume levels, allowing for on-the-fly adjustments. The same is true for sidetone monitoring of your microphone.

There’s a simple mode button, which allows you to cycle the built-in EQ modes. However, all the modes can be configured directly in their app. You can actually pair the mobile app and adjust everything while still being paired to your Xbox or PC, which is awesome.

There’s a Bluetooth button here too, allowing you to quickly turn that on and off. Handy if you can’t reach your phone and need to ignore a call. There’s pairing switch below that too, it’s quite small but it’s just next to the charge port. This can be used to pair Bluetooth or held to pair with the Xbox or a compatible dongle on Windows PC.

The headset comes with a built-in microphone, and unlike the older model, it integrates into the ear cup rather than hanging on the side. I love this design, you wouldn’t know it was there when it’s folded away.

It’s a shorter design, so it’ll sit off to the side of your mouth, so less chance of you sounding like Darth Vader while gaming. It’s actually their Gen 2 microphone, which is larger and more sensitive than before, but overall it’s just much clearer than the old one.

The microphone also mutes when folded up, so if you need to be particularly impolite about your own gaming performance, you can do so without bothering your superior team members and enemies.

Overall, this headset doesn’t really remind me of the old Stealth 700 at all, it actually reminds me more of the Turtle Beach Atlas series, which is awesome as that’s still one of my all-time favourites. Bigger, bolder, and just straight-up better in every measurable way.