Turtle Beach XO Seven Pro Gaming Headset Review

Performance

I’ve been getting stuck into Halo The Master Chief Collection a lot over the last few months, even more so now that they’ve fixed the matchmaking issues, but that’s not the subject at hand. Gaming with my friends is a lot of fun, but the most important aspect of that for me is the team chat function. The XO Seven is very well equipped for competitive and team-based multiplayer gaming and has a lot of features that I think are very beneficial to my gaming experience; the most noticeable has to be the incredible microphone performance.

The microphone on the XO Seven is crystal clear and does a fantastic job of not picking up too much ambient noise, something that will reap its own rewards if you’re having a LAN party, or using it in a crowded area. Having separate control over the game and the chat audio volume levels is perfect for fine tuning your team, if the games more important, you can tune out your noisy team chat, or vice versa. The audio performance on the drivers is great for providing natural-sounding voice tones too, of course, this will be dependent on which EQ setting you choose.

Gaming performance was very good, a lot of punchy bass and plenty of detail to the full range. The headset could do with having a slightly higher maximum volume, but it’s still got enough punch to keep you satisfied and there’s no distortion at higher volumes. The EQ modes are hit and miss, it really is a case of exploring them all for each game type, some work better with FPS, some work better with racing games, etc. What really stands out is the Super Human Hearing, at first, I have to say I think it sounds terrible, the EQ is all out of whack, boosted, compressed and who knows what else. However, despite the lack of quality to the sound, this is about tactical advantage rather than authentic audio reproduction and that’s no bad thing. The mode isn’t the best for running around in an adventure game, but when you’re playing Call of Duty, Halo or whatever takes your fancy, you’ll love being able to pick out the sound of enemy footsteps.

Mobile use isn’t as great as I was hoping. It’s great for calls, but for some reason it just doesn’t have the same great quality I got from the Xbox One audio output. Watching movies and listening to music on the Xbox One sound fine through the headset, not so great via the 3.5mm cable on mobile devices.

Finally, the controller connection is nicely designed and very easy to use without having to look at where the buttons are and the headset is very comfortable and the lightweight design is a big help in that respect.