Sadly, my trusty and super cheap Sennheiser EH150s gave up on me tonight. Well, one earpiece did... again. I can fix them, but I'm tired of using such cheap headphones for gaming on the 360, and I don't want to waste my good headphones on it either - I like to keep those for music and PC stuff. It's time I got myself a dedicated Xbox 360 headset. I've heard good things about Turtle Beach gaming headsets and the Sennheiser X320. I've also heard that the higher price tag on the Turtle Beach headsets is worth it over the X320s, but only if you want surround sound, wireless etc. I don't want to spend over £150 on them, but I would like a wireless set which are decent for watching movies/TV and listening to music with as well. For all that functionality I would stretch to more than £200 if I knew I was getting a really good headset. I have been playing Halo Reach just fine with my EH150s, but it would be nice to have surround sound for intense firefights in matchmaking and I think it's time I had something which has a built in mic compatible with the 360 - I'm tired of having to charge up my three wireless headsets all the time, it's a complete PITA and some of the XBL parties I play in will kick you for another player if you haven't got a working mic, even if they know you and are friends with you. A player who can't communicate with his team on the battlefield isn't a teammate. At the moment, my 360 audio comes out of the 23" TV I play on ay my desk, into the Line-In jack of my PC sound card, then through the line out jack to my headphones. I like being able to listen to PC audio like Youtube videos and music as I wait for games to start/lobbies to fill, but it's not 100% essential. I think any decent headset, wired or wireless, should be able to do this anyway though. Any recommendations welcome. I'd like to order them tomorrow evening so they're here and I can get used to them before the weekend As a reference, the Turtle Beach XP400 looks like a clear winner with amplified Dolby, wireless chat and all the other shiny bells and whistles I'm looking for at less than £150, but I'm still interested in suggestions *Reach is the only 360 game I play, Halo 4 failed hard so that stays in its box. There has not been a different game disc in my 360 since I made that discovery and went back to Reach. And no, I haven't abandoned PC gaming. Once I hit Inheritor in Reach, I'm going back to CS:S, CS:GO, BF3 and all the other good online FPS games on the PC. In true man style though, I can't concentrate on more than one game at once :-D
Personally I would get some Astro A40's if you can find some in your price range. I don't rate Turtle Beach headsets anymore as I've had 2 sets (X4 & X41) die on me just outside of warranty. I currently use a set of Razer Chimaera 5.1 and whilst they are comfortable they have a serious issue where the chat volume is so low you have to fiddle with in game volumes for each game to get it working.
I don't rate Razer either for exactly the same reason - they don't last. I was afraid someone would say that about Turtle Beach though, because I really liked the look of their wireless range like the PX400, 510 etc and wanted to believe that they had good build quality, but if and when I do stretch to spend £200+ on a wireless Dolby headset to get more features than a £150 one, I will expect them to have great build quality and last a long time. The Astro range look very nice, but now I'm thinking a wireless headset would be great, something like the A50s... so I might end up spending >£200 on them in the end. I really like that the TB PX510 offers true wireless 360 gaming with the bluetooth controller dongle. I think they're the only set on the market to offer that, but if they're not well built I won't be buying them. [edit] From "Latest Purchases" thread:
