Turtle Beach PX21

MARCHANDS	€
Amazon marketplace	115.04
Amazon.co.uk	116.52




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Caractéristiques
Headphone Type	Headset with Microphone
Frequency Response	20 Hz - 20 kHz
Speaker	Dynamic transducer
Impedance	N.A.
Sensitivity	N.A.
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Cable Length	4.87 m
Weight	233 g
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Tristan François
Translator: Sam McGeever
Test date: July 26, 2011

Plug it in ... and unplug ... plug it in ...

You're just going to have to get used to it: if you try to use the PX21 with several audio sources, you'll spend a lot of time plugging and unplugging different cables.

Turtle Beach has opted for nesting RCA cables to go between different analogue audio outputs and the cables you connect to your amp or TV. Every time you want to change the audio input, you'll need to unplug everything, but the unused cables back and then put the new source back in. It's very frustrating, but easier solutions are more expensive.

Not everybody has a fortune to spend on a gaming headset, but fortunately there are some good value stereo headsets at there that produce decent quality audio for a low price. Is the Turtle Beach PX21 one of them?

Design: almost too simple

The PX21 is relatively simple: it includes a USB cable for power, and a double RCA cable to plug into your console—but after that, things get trickier (see inset). That means it's compatible with your computer, as well as the PS3 and Xbox 360.

But the quality of the manufacturing and the finish is less of a simple matter. The glossy black plastic looks especially cheap, although we do like the mesh fabric used on the ear cushions, which are amongst the most comfortable we've ever one.

The mic is on a flexible boom and rotates through 360° so you can get it to exactly the right spot, and push it back out of sight when you don't need it.

The biggest problem here is the quality of the manufacturing.

Audio Quality: no real isolation

With such a long cable, there's definitely enough room to get up and walk around with the headphones on. The audio quality is pretty good, and comes close to equalling Turtle Beach's other headsets in stereo mode.

It's nice and accurate, and we had no problems locating where the sounds were coming from in the games we played without any real spatialisation. It's a shame that treble sounds so aggressive. In theory, you can adjust the loudness using the remote or the power block to improve things, but we didn't notice much of a change.

Despite being almost entirely passive, the audio from both the headphones and the mic is more than acceptable for gaming. Music, however, sounds a lot duller and is less fun to listen to.

The overall results, then, are decent enough, but we would still have preferred a more rounded result, especially with improvements to the hardware.

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