Turtle Beach Stealth Pro review

Our Verdict

82%

A wealth of features, such as hot-swappable batteries, active noise canceling and simultaneous Bluetooth/wireless audio, combined with decent sound quality and comfort make this hugely versatile wireless gaming headset worth considering. It's not quite perfect and certainly not cheap but it's still a top tier choice.

The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro wireless gaming headset packs in an impressive list of features, as you’d hope given its high price. Highlights include both 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth audio connections, with the ability to listen to both at the same time, plus the headset has hot-swappable batteries that can be charged via the included wireless dongle/hub, and it has active noise cancellation.

All these features make Turtle Beach‘s new contender for the best gaming headset or best wireless gaming headset an astonishingly accomplished option, though it certainly isn’t perfect, which is a shame considering its price.

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro features

If there’s one area the Stealth Pro absolutely delivers it’s its list of features. As highlighted above, this headset is absolutely stuffed with just about every extra you could possibly think of for a candidate for the best gaming headset.

So many features does this headset have that the first one we’re going to highlight is actually not even on the headset itself. That’s because this headset comes with a large, weighty, desktop wireless dongle that not only provides the connection for your headset but doubles as a battery charger for the headset’s swappable batteries.

You get two batteries included with the headset and, by popping off a panel covering the left earcup, you can quickly swap them out for nearly continuous gaming/listening. The charging puck also provides a USB-A port for charging other devices, has a switch for flipping between Xbox and PC modes, and uses a USB-C input for easy connection to your PC with whatever cable you choose.

Back to the headset, then, and the feature fun continues. Also on the left earcup is the fold-down, bendable, auto-muting mic that can also be pulled free of the headset, to make the headset more compact and travel-friendly. Also, like the EPOS H3Pro Hybrid, this headset has internal microphones for providing voice comm options without the boom mic.

What’s more, both the internal mics and boom mic can be used to provide active noise canceling. So, whether you’re traveling and want to drown out the train/plane noise or just have a noisy household you want to quieten down for gaming sessions, this headset has you covered.

Even more impressive is that the headset can connect via Bluetooth as well as via 2.4GHz wireless and feed both audio sources to you at the same time. That means you can take a call or listen to music on your phone all while still gaming. Several headsets, such as the Razer BlackShark V2 Pro (2023) and Corsair HS80 Max, offer the ability to connect to two devices at once but not listen simultaneously.

Back to physical features, the Stealth Pro has a single USB-C port on the right earcup for charging. This doesn’t provide a direct audio connection to your computer – the headset is wireless only.

On the underside edge of the right earcup are three buttons, the front-most one of which is for Bluetooth (switching, answering calls, etc), the middle one is for power, and the rear one is for turning on the Superhuman gaming EQ.

Unfortunately, while a simple enough set of buttons, they’re one of this headset’s least successful features. They’re all too low profile, indistinguishable, and difficult to press. You end up having to run your thumb forward and back over them multiple times to work out which is which, then vaguely push in what you think is the center of the rubber pad that serves as a button. They’re among the worst headset buttons I’ve used.

Sadly, it’s a similar story when it comes to the last of this headset’s main physical features: its programmable volume disc. This is integrated into the outer face of the right earcup and allows you to either press your finger on the surface of the wheel to try and rotate it or you can grab the very thin outer edge to do so. The former basically just doesn’t work – its too stiff and your fingers slip on its surface too easily – while the latter is rather awkward. I found I had to use my thumb and three fingers to get a grip on it properly.

On the plus side, the button that sits at the center of the volume disc is much more useful. By default, it can switch on noise canceling but is fully programmable via Turtle Beach’s software.

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro design and comfort

The Stealth Pro is a reasonably smart-looking headset, with its simple black and metallic color scheme. It’s a touch on the bulky side but once the boom mic is removed it can just about make do as a travel headset option, in terms of style.

In terms of comfort, this headset is middling. Its earcup padding is nice and deep so your ears don’t get squashed, plus the headband’s cushioning is deep and soft too.

However, the clamping force of the headset is a strange combination of tight enough to feel very noticeable yet still somehow make the headset feel a touch insecure. Tilt your head forward or back and it shifts around. Also, for those with smaller heads, this headset doesn’t tuck in under the ears as securely as some. So, it somehow manages to be both a touch tight for larger heads and too loose for smaller heads – perhaps there’s a Goldilocks head size for which it’s perfect.

A key factor for this comfort conundrum is the heft of this headset. The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro weight is 420g, which is very heavy. Anything over 350g is fairly heavy for a gaming headset. For instance, the EPOS H3Pro Hybrid offers a similar feature set while weighing only 308g. It might not sound like a huge difference but it is noticeable.

Another consideration is the earcups of this headset feel particularly unventilated. That’s somewhat of a natural state for closed-back headphones but the pleather/leatherette covers for the earcup pads seems to restrict airflow even more, resulting in sweaty ears after an hour or so use. That seal is useful for noise canceling but can create issues for comfort.

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro sound quality

The TurtleBeach Stealth Pro headphone sound quality is generally excellent. While being rated to a wider than usual frequency range of 10Hz – 25KHz is no absolute guarantee of sonic performance, here the numbers match the experience. There’s bass depth, top-end clarity, and plenty of warmth in between. Across a wide range of musical genres, movies, and games this headset delivered detailed, powerful and enjoyable sound.

Inevitably, bass and treble are boosted a touch, making for a slightly scooped sound that is more immediately impressive than a flatter sound but it’s not pushed to such extremes that the headset sounds bad in any obvious areas.

Jump into Turtle Beach’s Audio Hub software and you can adjust the EQ, tailoring the sound to your needs. Thanks to the headset having a wide and accurate sound range to start with, the EQ genuinely helps just subtly adjust things, rather than try to polish the proverbial deposit.

Turtle Beach’s Super Human Hearing is also on hand via a press of the headset’s button. This cuts most of the lower frequencies enhancing the subtler trebly noises such as footsteps, making it easier to track what’s going on around you in-game. It’s not a revolution – you can manually EQ such modes from most headsets – but it’s an easy one-click way of getting a meaningful advantage in audio. Just note that it makes everything sound kind of terrible – it’s a competitive gaming tool, not a general sound enhancement.

Also making things sound terrible is the active noise canceling on this headset. Ok, that’s a slight exaggeration but enabling the noise canceling does noticeably harm sound quality, sucking out some of the low end and introducing a slightly thin robotic quality to the sound. It’s a small price to pay for reducing train and plane clatter to a whisper – especially when listening to anything other than music – but it’s not something we’d leave on all the time.

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro microphone sound quality

The Stealth Pro’s microphones are a touch underwhelming considering the price of this headset. The internal mics you’d expect to sound a little boxy – as they always do on these headsets – and sure enough that’s the case here. However, boom mics on the likes of the BlackShark V2 Pro (2023) and Epos H3Pro Hybrid sound superb so the slightly thin sound here is a bit disappointing. It’s fine for voice comms but won’t stretch to home podcasting or the like.

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro battery life

The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro battery life is nothing too special, with the headset lasting two to three days of regular use. However, the saving grace here is the ability to swap the batteries. This does still result in a potentially catastrophic mid-game drop in audio when the battery dies but you’re given ample audio warnings that the battery’s running low.

A key annoyance with the battery swap system, though, is that the headset takes quite a long time to power up. As such, the full process of removing the headset, removing the battery cover, swapping the battery and waiting for it to power on is far from a Formula 1 pit stop-rivalling process.

Still, you can also just plug in a cable to top up the headset while gaming, to hold off that crucial battery swap to a less crucial moment, and the way the desktop charger holds the battery makes clipping batteries in and out really easy.

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro software

Turtle Beach’s software for the Stealth Pro is called Audio Hub and, quite frankly, I had a bit of a terrible time with it. For a start, it just refused to install at first, suggesting that some other software might be getting in its way. To its credit, it mentioned it didn’t play well with Alienware’s command center software and, sure enough, uninstalling that software let Audio Hub install. But, nonetheless, it’s not a problem I’ve ever encountered before.

What’s more, once installed the software still didn’t work very well, throwing up more errors when trying to firmware update the headset and insisting on a Bluetooth connection to the headset as well as a PC connection. All that and once we’d gone through several firmware updates, the software then just decided to crash all the time.

When it works, the software offers comprehensive control of features such as overall EQ, game/chat mix, active noise cancelling level, microphone noise gate and monitoring level, and the type and level of effect from the Superhuman hearing feature.

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro pros and cons

Pros

• Loads of features
• Decent comfort
• Great sound quality
• Useful simultaneous audio sources
• Useful active noise cancelling

Cons

• Not great for ear ventilation
• Awkward power button
• Active noise cancelling harms sound quality

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro specs

The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro specs are:

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro price

The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro price is $329.99, making it a very expensive gaming headset. However, it largely justifies its premium price with excellent sound quality and loads of useful features.

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro review conclusion

The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro is an almost perfect premium, multipurpose gaming headset. Its massive feature list is genuinely useful, with its swappable batteries, simultaneous Bluetooth and wireless connection, and programmable buttons all being useful for pure PC gaming and its active noise canceling, internal mics, and detachable boom mic ideal for use elsewhere. It also sounds superb.

However, it’s quite heavy, making comfort only middling and the active noise canceling negatively affects sound quality. Considering its very high price, those shortcomings are not at all easy to dismiss. Still, there’s enough here that’s impressive to make this a headset that’s worth of a place on our best gaming headset list.

For more gaming headset recommendations, check out our best gaming headset guide and in particular look out for the Epos H3Pro Hybrid, Corsair HS80 Max, and Razer BlackShark V2 Pro (2023).