The Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 2 Max is the first Turtle Beach headset that I have ever tested and while on the whole I am very impressed, there are however a few areas in which I think they could improve. But, there is one really clever way that I think they do a very specific thing better than anyone else on the market.
Let's start by talking about the design of the Stealth 700 Gen 2 Max, which is undeniably a very gamery looking headset, it's chonky and just has that very gamery feel to it. I was sent the cobalt blue version that comes finished with bronze accents on both the earcups and the headband. Personally, I am a fan of the look of this one as it's both very different to anything else I've used and blue is my colour of preference so I was always going to like it. The earcups are made of leatherette but the inside part that makes contact with your head is a breathable fabric infused with cooling gel to keep your ears and your head cool and sweat free. The headband has a lot of padding that does an excellent job of making the headband feel like it's not actually touching your head despite the fact that it is.
The left earcup houses all the buttons and the flip to mute mic which when flipped sits very neatly inside the ear cup unlike a lot of flip to mute headsets. As I mentioned the left ear cup houses buttons for bluetooth, power and mode select as well as 2 scrolling dials, one for overall volume and the other is programmable and can control things like chat volume, mic monitoring amongst other things. There is also a status light and a USB-C charging port.
The build quality overall is pretty good, the headset itself has a real chonky and solid feeling, however there is very little flex in the materials compared to a lot of headsets and the button clicks feel hollow and a little flimsy. My biggest gripe with the build quality though comes in the form of the USB dongle, which after only 2 or 3 plugs and unplugs is already starting to show signs of wear and in fact the metal part of the plug has now come slightly loose to the plastic housing meaning i have to be extremely careful when plugging it in and pulling it out.
Compatibility on the Turtle Beach is second to none. I was sent the Xbox version for review and while it's designed for the Xbox, the USB dongle has a switch on it that allows you to use it on either Xbox or PS5 making this one of only a few headsets capable of being used wirelessly on both. Aswell as this feature, the Stealth 700 Gen 2 Max also has Bluetooth 5.1 for connection to platforms like the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices.
The sound Quality of the Stealth 700 Gen 2 Max is excellent, it has really solid consistency across all the highs, mids and lows with a really full and rich sounding bass. They really are one of the best sounding headsets I’ve tested. Playing games like COD I could hear everything, footsteps were clear, explosions were full and gunshots sounded real punchy and sharp. They sounded really nice for music and general media consumption on my mobile phone. One feature that I really like and that I feel gives you a bit of an advantage when playing games like Call of Duty etc, is the Superhuman Hearing feature. Essentially, what this does is it hives a massive boost to the highs which makes footsteps really stand out. There is literally no missing them if you have this feature dialled all the way up to 100. It does however make the rest of the audio take a little hit, so I definitely wouldn't use this for general media.
The microphone sounds really good. It manages to block out most background noise while making your voice sound really clear and rich. Overall this mic is up there with the best mics I've tried including the GSP670.
I did run into a few little software issues with this headset too over my time of testing, the biggest and most annoying had to be a bit of a glitch in the matrix where despite having my volume set to max, the headset would sound super quiet and I'd struggle to hear anything whatsoever. This has happened quite a few times over the past month or so and it can be rather annoying. Thankfully though, this is something that can be fixed with a simple software update. NOTE: Along the same lines as this, I noticed that even though my headset was set to 100% when I opened the app it would often tell me that I was only at 70% volume so I'm really not sure what the issue is with the volume settings. The only way to temporarily fix this is a reboot of the headset and hope it doesn't happen again.
Now let's talk about the feature that I was absolutely blown away by, and that is the Turtlebeach Prospects design, see most gaming headsets are really not very glasses friendly, however the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 2 Max are designed with glasses in mind. If you remove the earcups from the headset which is super easy to do, there's a little rubber tab on the back that you can unclip and pull, if you do this it created a little groove in the side of the earcups where your glasses would sit allowing your glasses to pass through the cushion relatively untouched. As mentioned earlier in my review, this is my first Turtle Beach headset so it's my first experience with this feature and it's an absolute game changer for anyone wearing glasses.
The battery life of the Stealth 700 Gent 2 Max is advertised at around 40 hours, but honestly after fully charging, I've now used these for around 25-30 hours and the battery level is still telling me it's ‘high’ so I am expecting to get way more than 40 hours out of it.
Overall, these are a fantastic headset. I don't know what I expected going into this review, however it was not this. They sound really good, they look good and they are compatible with just about any platform you can imagine. If you're looking for a robust and great sounding headset with an excellent mic and good battery life or If you’re a gamer with glasses then these should absolutely be your next gaming headset. However if you want features like ANC then there are headsets like the JBL Quantum 810 that I still think are probably better value overall.
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