Turtle Beach Stealth Pro II review: Do upgraded looks deliver upgraded gaming?

In the gaming headset stakes, Turtle Beach is an established name. It's one of the longest-standing brands in the market, and particularly in the US there was a time when it felt like basically anyone with a third-party headset had a Turtle Beach one.

That's changed a lot, though, and the best gaming headsets now come from a more diverse pool of brands. Still, Turtle Beach is clearly trying to move with the times, and the Stealth Pro II demonstrates that with a spiffy new design and premium price.

I've been using one for a couple of weeks to see if Turtle Beach's flagship can live up to the billing. Here's what I make of it – the good and the bad.

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Price and Availability

The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro II is available now in most regions and comes with an undeniably punchy price tag attached. In the UK, it's £299.99, in the USA that's $349.99, while in Australia it's AU$549.95. No matter how you spin it, that's pricey.

For only a little more money you could have my top recommendation in this device category, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni, which boasts very similar features – so Turtle Beach is undercutting that slightly, while clearly trying to fight for the same ground.

One important note – like many others, there are two versions of the Stealth Pro II on sale. One is seemingly standard and works on PC, Switch consoles and PlayStation. The other has Xbox in the name and adds compatibility with Microsoft's consoles at no extra cost. So, if you're going to buy one, make sure it's the Xbox one for maximum compatibility and no downsides.

Design and Features

I've tested Turtle Beach headsets for well over half a decade at this point, and I've consistently marked them down for mediocre designs and ergonomics. They've often been very sensibly priced, but generally felt plasticky and cheap, which is something the Stealth Pro II completely fixes.

It has a sleek new design that's way more futuristic than past generations, and has a really lovely look, whether you pick it up in the white version or black. Each earcup is really big and spacious, and on the outside it has a metallic plate with the Turtle Beach logo.

One of these earcups can be pried off to reveal the replaceable battery pack, but the other is fixed. On the left earcup, you'll find a button to swap between audio modes, a dial for master volume, another for game/chat balance, a USB-C charging port as a backup, and a power button.

The microphone comes out of the same left earcup and is removable if you don't want to use it. It can flip up out of your way when not in use, too. The right earcup, meanwhile, holds a microphone gain dial, a device-switching button, and a Bluetooth pairing button.

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Each earcup is secured to a slim metal arm that joins up to the headband, and each can telescope for adjustment. The headband itself is sturdy plastic, with a section of woven stretchy mesh at the top. This is clearly intended to soften how the headset sits on your head, but I didn't find that it worked too well.

Wearing the headset for a few hours, I found that the top of my head did ache a little, which isn't a great sign, especially since its weight of 393g isn't all that substantial. My gold standard comfort-wise remains SteelSeries' suspended headband system, and this falls quite a way short of that, even if it looks really slick.

The Stealth Pro II comes with a base station that holds a battery on standby to swap out when your headset runs low. Swapping them is fairly easy, and you get around 40 hours from each. It's a great system, cribbed shamelessly from SteelSeries, and means you never really need to think about charging.

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That base station connects to your console or PC by a USB cable, but curiously, this is where Turtle Beach takes a new approach. Rather than having multiple wired inputs that you can swap between to manage more than one device, you instead get another, traditional and small USB dongle in the box. This adds a second device to the headset's connection options, and you can swap between devices on the headset itself.

I'll be honest, this system is a mixed bag. In some ways, it can look really flexible since you can have devices that aren't next to each other paired to the same headset. In practice, though, most of my gaming happens at my desk, and this just became a more inconvenient way to swap devices, and with more dongles coming in at £30 / $25, I'm not convinced this is great for most people.

If it would suit your setup, though, it could be a boon instead of a detriment – that's going to be a personal situation. What's more universally solid is the audio suite on offer here. The headset uses 60mm drivers to provide its sound, and comes with active noise-cancelling (ANC) to help cocoon you too.

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Finally, the headset comes with a hard case for storage and packing, although it's worth knowing that this case is massive. It's flat and has slots for the transmitter, headset, microphone and cables, and that makes it a beast, albeit one that I'm still glad comes at no extra cost.

Sound and Performance

The blend of features that Turtle Beach has stuffed into the Stealth Pro II is quite an interesting one, then, and its redesign is better visually than in comfort terms, but how does the headset perform from a sound and connectivity standpoint?

Well, in terms of gaming immersion and clarity it does very well. I've used the Stealth Pro II in a range of games, from Forza Horizon 6 to Battlefield 6, and have found it an adaptable and reliable performer in all of them. In shooters I've been able to locate footsteps and gunshots easily, while single-player games have been immersive and three-dimensional.

The headset is a little quieter than I'd expected, so you might find yourself dialling it up a bit, but that's not something that matters given its loudness ceiling goes really high. I've also been extremely impressed by its microphone, which is really clear and doesn't suffer from much muffling or fuzziness – an otherwise typical bugbear in the headset world.

Its ANC is also very solid, with a clear difference made if there's background noise (whether it's a washing machine, a roommate, or traffic noise). Similarly, connectivity has been rock-solid, and when I've been connected to the main transmitter it's been exemplary, with a range that can easily stretch to a few rooms' distance if you need.

That said, the nature of the connection system that Turtle Beach has designed does mean that it's less immediately flexible than something like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Omni, but it's similarly easy to customise the Stealth Pro II. On PC the Swarm 2 software is slick and simple, while console gamers can use a mobile app when connected to their phone by Bluetooth.

Verdict

The Stealth Pro 2 is a great step forward for Turtle Beach, showing that the brand can compete in design terms and make sleeker, more modern headsets.

That makes it all the more painful that its design also brings a flaw that holds it back – a headband that I found uncomfortable to wear for more than a couple of hours.

That'll be partly down to my head shape, and I can't know whether others will find it more comfortable, but it makes me feel people should try the headset on if they can before buying it.

Aside from that, though, the sound quality on offer is excellent, the ANC is better than before, and connectivity could be perfect for some disparate gaming setups. That makes the Turtle Beach flagship feel like a winner in many areas.

Also consider

My favourite gaming headset has already got a couple of mentions in this review, and it's the clear upgrade on the Stealth Pro II at the moment – the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni. It has all the same features, but I prefer how it handles multi-device swapping, and it's incomparably more comfortable.

Another more comfortable alternative with fewer features but equally excellent sound is the Sony Inzone H9 II. It's almost unbelievably light and has great precision, while stripping things back for a simpler experience.