Closer Examination

Let's start with the ear cushions. Even though they aren't very large - their inner dimensions are 4 by 6 centimeters - they surrounded my medium-sized ears completely. As far as I can tell without cutting them open, they consist of a foam material covered in mesh fabric. They're unusually firm to the touch, although that shouldn't worry you comfort-wise, as you'll find out on the next page of this review. Compared to pleather, the most frequently used material to cover ear cushions of gaming headsets, the mesh fabric chosen by Turtle Beach lets the ears breathe a bit. That's something you'll surely appreciate, especially during the summer months.


The ear cups can be rotated by 90°, which can be useful for when you put the headset around your neck and have it resting on your chest, or when you simply put it on the table. If you do rotate them, mind the microphone. Since it isn't foldable, you'll most likely have to bend it out of the way.


To be able to adjust to various head shapes and sizes better, the ear cups can be tilted.


You can also change their "height" by extending and retracting the plastic part of the frame that connects them to the headband. The mechanism is very rigid, so there's absolutely no chance for it to move by accident. Sadly, the height levels aren't marked in any way, so you'll have no way to be sure of whether you adjusted both sides of the headset equally, other than by visually examining the ear cups' positions.


To make the aesthetics of the Stealth 450 a bit more interesting, both ear cups are completely surrounded by a red ring. It serves no other purpose but to look good.


Another red detail - the company's logo, to be exact - can be seen on the inner side of the ear cups.


The Turtle Beach logo is also placed on the outer side of both ear cups, where it's surrounded by a bit of glossy black plastic. Behind it is a white LED, which makes it light up when the headset is on. The triangular logo on the right ear cup is actually also the power button - one you'll press when you want to turn the headset on or off.


The detachable boom microphone fits into the D-shaped hole snugly. The hole's design makes pushing it in the wrong way impossible.


The microphone arm consists of what looks like a series of interconnected metal rings. This is a common implementation, one that ensures great flexibility and leads to a microphone head that stays put at all times.


The head itself is bare, with no windscreen. Should you run into weird pops while talking, you might want to think about investing a couple dollars into buying a simple universal foam windscreen.


The outer side of the right ear cup is where all the controls and ports are, so you'll be reaching for it frequently. The uppermost control is a simple volume dial used to adjust the loudness of the headset. You'll have to be a little careful with it because it rotates easily and small movements result in disproportionally big volume changes. I'm not a fan of its location. They placed it exactly where my thumb naturally lands when I take the headset off. That made me accidentally change the volume in the process until I changed the way I grip the headset when removing it from my head.


Below it is a presets button. When pressed, it switches between four different sound profiles - equalizer setups, basically. They're called Natural Sound, Bass Boost, Bass and Treble Boost, and Vocal Boost. Their names explain their purpose. The only thing I can add to that is that you should stick with the Natural Sound profile, which is by far the best and most accurate sounding one. Whatever you do, steer clear of Vocal Boost, which messes up the bass and puts a strong emphasis on the mids and highs in order for you to be able to hear voices better. If you like the so-called V-shaped sound, one where the lows and highs are pushed forward and the mid-range is somewhat recessed, the Bass and Treble Boost profile might be to your liking. How will you know which profile you're currently on? They're announced by voice prompts you'll hear directly through the headphone. While they're being delivered, all other sounds are muted. I don't see this as a problem because the only time you'll hear them is when you change the sound preset, turn the headset on, shut it off, and start charging the battery.


Next, we have the microphone's monitoring dial. This might strike you as a strange feature, but it's an extremely useful one. It lets you hear the sounds picked up by the microphone - your voice, in other words - through the headphones, without any perceivable delay. Because of that, you get a feeling similar to that of using a pair of open-back headphones; you can hear your own voice, which prevents you from shouting or sounding unnatural (talking through your nose, to be exact). By turning the microphone's monitoring dial, you adjust how loud you hear yourself. You don't need to crank it up too much - even a quiet presence of your own voice will be enough to make your chats more pleasant.


The bottom side of the right ear cup contains two ports. The Micro-USB port is used to charge the built-in battery, which takes a couple hours when done through a regular USB 3.0 port, and the 3.5-mm connector can be utilized to connect the Stealth 450 to a mobile device. One thing to note is that even when you use the headset in wired mode, it still needs to be powered on in order to work. That means it won't work at all in case of an empty battery. Good news is that you can use it and have it charging at the same time. Once connected to a charger, the color of the LED on both ear cups changes from white to red.


Finally, there's the microphone mute button. There's no visual indicator to tell you that the microphone has been muted, but there's an auditory one, delivered to you over a voice prompt.

If you have by now gotten the impression that there's a lot of stuff happening on a single ear cup, you're absolutely right, there is. It took me a while to get used to the position of built-in dials and buttons. Some of them, such as the microphone mute button, I wasn't hitting accurately even after a full week of daily usage. This isn't a deal breaker or even a big issue, but do be aware that you have a bit of a learning curve ahead of you.

Battery Life

Turtle Beach doesn't specify the size of the built-in lithium-polymer battery. They simply state that it offers up to 15 hours of battery life, which my testing confirms. In fact, I was achieving up to 16-17 hours of usage with the volume dial cranked all the way up most of the time. When the battery goes low, you'll hear a voice prompt warning you about it. At that point, it's game over - you have about 5 minutes until the headset shuts down. There's an auto-shutdown feature built in as well, which activates in case nothing is playing on your PC for 10 minutes. Although I mostly resorted to shutting the headset down manually, that's a nice battery-saving feature to have.


Luckily, as I've already mentioned, the Stealth 450 can be charged and used at the same time, so the action technically never has to stop. You will need a replacement Micro-USB charging cable, though. The supplied one is only 60 centimeters long. What's up with that? I don't know about you, but I don't have any USB ports that close to my sitting position, which is why I resorted to using a longer Micro-USB cable I had lying around, most likely from an older smartphone.

Wireless Performance

The Stealth 450 comes with a USB dongle that's used to establish a wireless connection with the headset. It's a regular 2.4 GHz WiFi connection. I didn't have a single interruption or drop while testing this headset. The range is insane. I was able to freely move around my entire apartment while listening to music that was playing on my PC. That allowed me to, for example, go to my living room, sit on the couch, and control Spotify, which I had running on my PC, with my smartphone. My living room is about 20 meters away from my PC, and they were separated by two walls. As far as wireless performance goes, the Stealth 450 turned out to be quite impressive.