Turtle Beach X41

American firm Turtle Beach has put a lot of work into the hefty X41, a multi-channel headset with plenty of options available whatever your console of choice.  Turn it up loud!

Design: easy to install

There's not really anything to set up on the X41: you plug it in and it just works.  It comes with a base station and all the inputs you could ask for, including optical S/P DIF, RCA and a line in, and is compatible with the PlayStation, Xbox and your PC.

The base station itself is pretty ordinary, and we only have one real complaint, and that's that the only way to power it is via USB.  You can plug it in to the wall, but for that you'll need to shell out for a separate power adaptor, which is bad luck for console owners who've already used all their available USB ports.

The headset rests on your head quite well, and isn't painful to wear even after a long time.  The large weave fabric that's used to cover the ear cushions is much better choice than imitation leather and cooler than velvet, and it doesn't get damp if your ears start sweating either.

The mic is on a flexible boom and can be removed if you wish.  It's easy to install and adjust, but we would have preferred a slightly better looking mic.

Audio Quality: great spatialisation

Headphones and headsets that boast audio spatialisation often trip up on their number one feature: instead of genuine spatialisation, they produce a mangled '3D' signal where it's impossible to pick out any detail and you end up sounding like you're listening in either a cave or a cathedral.  It's usually far from ideal.

But the X41 is one of the few headsets that gets it right.  The base station includes some smart digital signal processing.  As well as reproducing native 5.1 Dolby Digital sound via the stereo headphones, it can also simulate 5.1 surround sound using Prologic.  You only need to start gaming with it to hear how good it is: we never had any problems locating a particular sound where was coming from.

This might not be a hi-fi quality headset, but when it comes to accurately reproducing an audio input, it does a lot more than the bare minimum.  The output is relatively neutral, despite a small dip in the mid-range and treble which occasionally sounds a little too aggressive.  It is very accurate.  Lastly, the built-in bass boost doesn't really add much other than a louder, more thudding sound, but takes away a lot of extra battery life at the same time.

That's actually the X41's biggest weakness: making it battery-powered really wasn't a great idea.  It might well last for up to twenty hours or so, but you'll still find yourself going through a lot of batteries.  You can of course go for rechargeable batteries, but it would have been so easy for Turtle Beach to include a charger on the base station.  Finally, as the X41 uses the same frequency range as WiFi and microwave ovens, some users report that it occasionally loses signal.  We weren't, however, able to reproduce this defect in the lab.