Turtle Beach’s latest and greatest in headset technology, the Call of Duty Black Ops II inspired Ear Force Tangos, have been abusing my ear drums for the past couple of weeks. My experience has been a good one but I’m not so sure if the experience is worth the fairly hefty price tag that accompanies them. Read on thru and judge for yourself.
Pulling the headset out of the box the first thing I noticed is the design. These babies are easy on the eyes with a Call of Duty logo on the ear cup and orange stitching highlights. Overall the feel of the headset screams quality. They feel sturdy and you don’t feel as if you have to treat them with kid gloves. They are also very comfortable to wear with memory foam ear cups while the fully wireless feature is absolutely fantastic. Set up, for the most part, was a breeze although it did take a few tries to pair the headset up with the transmitter unit. As people have come to expect from Turtle Beach this headset is loaded with features like Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, 2.4/5GHz dual band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and wireless chat. If you’re a Call of Duty fan you are specially served with some customizable presets as well as some Black Ops II voice prompts.
Once everything was connected I powered the headsets on and was greeted with one of the previously mentioned Black Ops II voice prompts, “Ear Force Tango, Powering On”. There are other prompts for shutting the headset down and low battery, but aside from being a fun gimmick for the hardcore Call of Duty fan it’s not much of a mentionable feature. In fact, once I hit the low battery point the constant barrage of “low battery” reminders from the Sarge nearly drove me nuts. This is easily solved of course by plugging the unit in with the accompanying USB charge cord. At a lengthy 25ft or so you can play and charge without a worry. Since I’m already on the topic I can say that the battery life is a very respectable 10hrs at least so you won’t feel as if you constantly have to plug the headset in.
Obviously the most important feature of a headset is the sound. I ran the Tangos through a few different game experiences ranging from Borderlands 2, Crysis 2 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Yes, I know they are Call of Duty inspired, but hey, most gamers have a diverse selection of games so I thought I would try a few different ones. Not surprisingly the sound was fantastic with really crisp highs and eardrum shaking lows. Directionality was great whether it was bullets zipping past my head, footsteps from behind, or engines revving as a car caught up and whipped by me on the track. I made sure to cycle through the preinstalled sound settings and I didn’t have a hard time finding one to settle on for each game. One of the more interesting features of course is the ability to connect the headset to your PC and install the Advanced Sound Editor, which allows you to create and share your very own customized equalizer settings. A real audiophile would certainly get use out of this, but for me, as an average consumer, it seems like the existing settings are more than enough to keep me happy.
The surround feature works well giving a real depth to the sound. Things that should sound far away do, footsteps that are just behind you sound like they are right there. The feature to adjust surround angles which is meant to simulate different speaker positions in a surround sound setup was really lost on me unfortunately. Switching from one sound setup to the next I couldn’t for the life of me hear a difference at all in this area. Again, this seems like an extra feature that would be lost on the average consumer but a real plus for a serious audiophile.
Testing the wireless range I found that I could wander around 30ft away from the transmitter without a problem. When I was in range I didn’t have a single blip of interference at all which was a welcome discovery, something I cannot say the same for regarding my Ear Force PX5s that would constantly glitch in and out in the same circumstances. Turtle Beach has really improved things on the wireless front in my eyes. The only negative to the range is that if a wall gets in the way of the headset and transmitter things can get spotty. It’s not really a problem if you only use the headsets to game but seeing as you can stream music through your favourite console these days the ability to wear them while wandering around the house just won’t happen unless you have a clear and unobstructed path to your console.
One of the bigger features of the Ear Force Tango headset is the wireless chat. Jumping into some multiplayer action I had no problem communicating with other gamers and experienced no interference whatsoever. I played on my Xbox 360 and not having that little cord from your controller to your headset is remarkably freeing and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The ability to morph your voice into a robot or make it sound really high pitched is kind of cool as well but it can be utterly annoying if left in the hands of the wrong person; as I’m sure any online player can attest to this sort of ability left to an unsupervised 10 year old with a potty mouth would grate on the nerves in very short order.
All said and done the Turtle Beach Ear Force Tangos are a great pair of headphones which sadly brings me to my only real gripe, and that is the price tag. I can’t help but feel that if I were to spend the MSRP of $299.95 that the bulk of my money would be paying for the limited edition Call of Duty branding. There are other options out there that would offer a similar experience for far less minus the fun logos and barking Major Sergeant General voice prompts of course. I’d wager a guess that the nearly $300 price tag is a lot of cheddar for the average gamer to pay for a few gimmicks so for that reason alone I have a hard time recommending that someone purchase these. If money isn’t an issue I can’t deny that you’re getting a fairly good set of headphones that will serve your gaming well, but I can also say that with a $100 price drop Ear Force Tangos would be an amazing set of headphones for your dollar. With news that the new Ear Force Seven series headsets are on the horizon you just may see that price drop soon in which case I’d advise you snap a pair of these up at the lower price.
