Review: Turtle Beach Ear Force PX22

The Ear Force PX22 is one of the new wired headsets from Turtle Beach that just came out the other day. I’ve had the pleasure of using it the past few weeks and it’s changed my opinion on gaming headsets. I’ve always used a cheap headset with no audio or mic adjustments whatsoever. I was of the opinion that those “fancy” headsets weren’t worth my time or my money. I was dead wrong.

Form Factor:

The headset is extremely comfortable to wear and I did so for 7 hours straight one day with no problems or discomfort. The headset is very light and does not weigh down my head or cause any strain. The top of the headset and the ear pieces are covered with a soft mesh material that is breathable and seems durable. The ear pieces cover my ears without compressing them against the side of my head so there is no discomfort there. There is a non-detachable mic on the left side that swivels about 270 degrees as well as flexible mic arm that will flex in any direction. And all this is packed in an eye pleasing black with blue trim design with a few Turtle Beach and MLG logos on the top of the headset and earpieces.

Headset:

The headset itself is very simple with only a 3ft cable running down the left side ending in a 3.5 mm jack. With this cable you can hook up the headset to a computer, Vita, 3DS, MP3, etc. to listen to music or any audio source. Older models limited you to using the inline amplifier with the 16ft cable the whole time. A nice thing about this is, even though the headset doesn’t have Bluetooth, you can plug the cable into a mobile phone and use it as a headset with both the headphones and mic working to make or receive phone calls.

Inline Amplifier:

The best features of this headset come from the Inline Amplifier which is where all the magic happens. The amplifier allows you to adjust treble, bass, mic volume, audio volume, chat volume, and mic monitor. The mic volume is a slider with 4 settings, high volume, low volume, phone, and mute. When I recorded my video review I was unaware of some of the features the PX22 had over some of their older headsets and the improvements really do make quite the difference. The ability to adjust how much you hear from the mic monitor is extremely nice. You can turn it on slightly, just to eliminate the muted sound you get when using noise canceling headphones, or you can turn it all the way up to hear every noise that happens around you from keyboard clicks to other people in the room.  It’s also nice having the ability to slightly lower the volume of your mic without completely having to turn it off. The ability to quickly lower the game audio and chat audio is very nice, especially if someone is being annoying in a multiplayer game and you don’t have time to mute the individual player. There are two other inputs on the amplifier for Xbox 360 chat and either a phone or any music player. You get a short 3.5mm cable which you can plug into your phone and while gaming if a call comes in you can switch the mic from game to phone and talk on the phone without having to remove your headset. When in this mode the game audio will still come through your headset, but your mic will only go to the phone.

Playing on Systems:

If you want to use the headset on a console and your TV doesn’t have any audio out ports (most don’t anymore) you can use the included RCA adapter. I was slightly worried about this before I got the headset because I use an HDMI cable for my gaming, but you can use the component cables that come standard with your system in conjunction with the HDMI cable to get the best video and audio through your headset. Turtle Beach recommends buying a 3rd party adapter for the Xbox 360, but the stock Xbox 360 component cable can be used in conjunction with an HDMI cable if you remove the back plate on the plug. The included 2.5mm cable plugs into the bottom of the 360 controller so you can chat through the headset. The mic on for the PS3 goes through the USB so there is no extra cable needed for that, just some set up in the PS3s system menu.

Audio Quality:

The audio quality that you get from these 50mm speakers is truly great compared to smaller speakers. I recently got an older Turtle Beach headset with 40mm speakers and the difference is truly light and day. These 50mm speakers deliver a crisp audio experience that is void of static. The speakers are 5.1 surround sound which I have never used in a headset before. If I enabled 5.1 on my PC with my older headset it sounded horrible, obviously, but with this headset you really can tell what direction sounds are coming from which adds a great deal to the experience when playing games.

For my first experience using a high quality headset as opposed to a pair of headphones I would have to say Turtle Beach and the Ear Force PX22 did not disappoint. This headset delivers a great audio experience on PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and any device with a 3.5mm input. The features you get from the inline amplifier give you many options for fine tuning your audio experience, and with the addition of the ability to unplug the headset from the inline amplifier and use it as headsets, you are able to get great audio without the long cables. I also like that you can plug in your phone to the unit so with the toggle of a switch you can chat with someone on your phone without having to take off your headset. I personally didn’t use the Bass and Treble adjustments at all (I rarely do) but I like that with the simple addition of a default line on the dials you can always know where to leave those adjustments if you want to keep them at their base levels.

The smaller mic arm is nice but it took me a while to get used to adjusting the mic from its base instead of just pushing the arm back. I was worried I would eventually do damage to the mic, but it seems to be made of metal and should be able to withstand the adjustments over time. I will say that there is a little bit of white noise added when you increase the mic monitor to its maximum level but I never had it maxed, and the only reason the white noise is noticeable is because the audio is so clear on its own compared to other headsets.

I was really sad when I was packing up the PX22 to send back to Turtle Beach. I ended up buying an older model headset from Turtle Beach since I needed a new headset. The problem is that, even though this headset is by no means bad, it is nowhere near as good as the PX22, with extra white noise, less clear audio quality, and less features on the inline amplifier. I would recommend this headset to anyone looking for a wired headset for a reasonable price. 

This is my first review of a peripheral so I was going in blind. Please let me know in the comments what you liked about the review and what you think I need to improve for future reviews. If you have any questions about the headset that I missed let me know and I will answers them. 

Video review coming soon....