Hardware Turtle Beach Ear Force Z60 Review

'...this is predominantly a headset for fans of bass heavy music and action games and music.'

I think you meant to say movies instead of the second use of music.

 

Nope. Not Turtle Beach. Never again.

They look good and they sound decent, but they don't build them to last.

I'm not talking about this specific model, but their general build quality has been lacking for years.

 

+1

Got a pair of Z6 and after only a year the faux leather on the headband is peeling off, one earcup has a split in the padding, the other earcup broke of the headband and had to be glued back on.

And to think before i bought them that i ignored people saying they lacked build quality, or that they fall apart. Must just people mistreating them i thought, i treat my things with care so that's not going to be the case with me.

 

Any chance of getting a review of some Sennheiser U320's, or something similar. I'm very curious how they measure up to other headsets.

 

I no longer buy headset/phones/IEMs with inline controls/mics. I didn't care much in the past but I've had several sets of all these classes fail mechanically at the junctions even with properly-implemented strain relief. I was also regularly annoyed by their bumping into and pressing against my body, clicking and grinding against desks and zippers, etc. The fewer the breaks in the line from set to source the better, I think. I like the trend of controls/mics being integrated into to the speaker housings.

 

I said this in the last headset review, but can future reviews feature more about the microphone please? Just telling me that it can pick up sound tells me nothing about how well it picks up sound: what's the frequency range like, does it handle sibilance well, etc. It doesn't need to be much; in fact, just record a wav file (not an MP3, please!!) of someone saying something like "check one two, this is a test of the microphone on the SuperGamingForce5000X Ultra headset" - at least that way I can judge for myself and analyse the waveform if I really want to.

You don't need crystal-clear studio quality microphones for voice chat, I'll give you that, but having a rubbish microphone is a real pain in the backside. Other people will struggle to hear you, especially if you've got a poor connection between chat participants and you're using something with an adaptive bitrate like Skype.

It's not just bit-tech that's guilty of this though. I had to go to "pro-audio" gear when I went looking for a headset, since microphone quality was very important to me (I was buying it to replace a condenser mic which I use for voice-over stuff & streaming) and few reviews of "gaming" headsets had any substantial information on the microphone quality. I ended up with an Audio Technica BPHS1 broadcast headset, and while I'm exceptionally pleased with it I could have potentially paid a lot less than £130-odd. Especially when the BPHS1 doesn't have any fancy tricks like surround sound to justify the >£100 price tag.

While I'm at it I'm gonna plug the BPHS1. Stunning bit of kit; the audio quality through the headphones is exceptional - listening to Devin Townsend Project's Epicloud through this headset was like listening to a new album - and the microphone is fantastic, albeit lacking in a bit of low-end (understandable given the diaphragm size). Although you do need an XLR connection for the microphone and a 1/4" jack for the headphone connection, so it's not exactly as simple as a USB connection - you need to pair it with a proper audio interface ideally (I've got mine hooked up to a mixing desk which runs all my PC audio).

 

Seriously getting pissed off with the 'Bad Gateway' issue.