With the arrival of our first baby I wanted to get myself a good set of headphones for gaming in order to keep some silence in the house when doing some console gaming. After some research I found that I was drawn to the Turtle Beach PX5 headphones. As a gaming media site, we are normally sent product for review, but after eight weeks of gaming with these things I was so impressed with them that I had to share what I thought.
Build Quality and Design
The PX5’s are a combination of plastic and what appears to be faux leather with some red trim highlights that give these headphones a good quality look. The PX5 headphones are over-the-ear style versus an on-the-ear style like I’ve been wearing in the past with another brand. I wear contacts/glasses and one of the first things I noticed when putting the PX5’s on is that the over-the-ear design is far more comfortable for me. I found an on-ear design pushes my earlobe up against the arms of my glasses and into my head. It doesn’t hurt, but after a while it does get uncomfortable. I haven’t found this occurring at all with the PX5’s.
The foam and material that makes up the ear piece is very soft and comfortable. Since it is an over-the-ear design there is some muffling of ambient sounds, but it isn’t noise cancelling by any means though. The ear cups smartly twist 90 degrees for extra comfort if you need to wear them around your neck, to say answer the phone, or in my case tend to a three month old.
My only real criticism about the design is the battery cover. It is basically on one of the outside caps. While it slides on and off easily enough, there is no real indication of which one it is and how it really comes off. The manual doesn’t help. This frustrated me considerably when first setting them up.
All of the controls are located on the bottom of each ear piece. There’s a mic (and cable) to connect to your 360 controller when gaming on Microsoft’s console. There are Bluetooth controls for when you’re doing your thing on PS3 and you can even pair the headphones with your cellular phone’s Bluetooth connection and answer the phone if a call comes in while you are gaming. The microphone is also detachable for when you aren’t playing online and don’t want it dangling in front of you.
Performance
While these headphones may appear pricey at $269.99 (Cdn), I am getting full value out of them. First off, the sound is absolutely terrific. My consoles normally run through a pretty decent 7.1 channel surround sound receiver and an average 5.1 speaker setup. When using the PX5’s I am hearing subtleties that I wasn’t aware of when playing games through my regular set up, and you don’t have to crank up the volume either. The headphones do an excellent job of reproducing sound at all volume levels, and that is a testament to the quality.
Being that they are wireless headphones there is a transmitter unit that plugs in to the console. This unit uses the USB ports on the front of the PS3 or Xbox for power and I’ve chosen to use the digital optical cable for the sound. Normally I run straight HDMI cabling, so using the digital optical cable has brought up two challenges. The first is that I have to plug it into the back of either console. If you’re like me and have your consoles in an entertainment unit and space can be tight and it is difficult to reach the PS3 or Xbox 360 digital output. More so for the PS3 as the 360’s digital optical cable has a dongle attachment.
The other minor issue is at setup. With my gaming setup, I did have to go into the audio settings on each console and toy around with the settings to swap it from HDMI over to digital optical audio. There were times I simply couldn’t make it work, more so with the PS3 for some reason. Other times I would only be able to get sound through both the headphones and my regular speakers at the same time, not one or the other. In those cases, I simply mute my main receiver and it’s a non-issue from there. That being said, in my opinion these are minor issues, and frankly it could even be user error. The quality of the sound is what counts here and these headphones deliver in spades.
There are several pre-set settings so that you can tailor your listening experience to what you like best. These can be used to enhance more subtle game sounds, or chat from other players when playing online games. You know those heavy breathers when you play online? There’s a setting that eliminates that sort of thing so you only hear their voice. Same goes for the microphone which has a similar setting just in case you’re that heavy breather. Not content there, Turtle Beach offers the option to download sound editing software from their website that you can use to fine tune the settings you prefer on your headset and you can also download other available pre-sets. All in all, pretty neat stuff.
Conclusion
Sure there are cheaper headphones options on the market, but if you have the cash you’re going to get full value for it with the PX5’s. With good build and sound quality these headphones give off some pretty impressive surround sound that’s just subtle enough to not be intrusive, but yet remarkably detailed to hear everything. Add to this that there is a crazy amount of programming options for those looking to fine tune the audio to their exact liking. The PX5’s are a recommended buy, especially for those looking for a premium audio experience in a set of gaming headphones.
