Turtle Beach Stealth 500 - The midrange quality king

Comfort and first impressions

My first impression of the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 headset was confusion. At well under 100 Euros, it’s an easily affordable piece of gear, but one that might initially hide its best features under some cut corners.

For example, and this is a big thing for folks with larger heads like myself, the headband adjustment is almost non-existent. It’s a unibody design, and I get why it’s there, I found the initial fit and comfort to be quite tight. My partner, who is smaller than me, had no such issues. In the end, the fit didn’t bother me as much as I anticipated, but it’s worth noting in case you’re looking for something with more leeway.

The earcups, on the other hand, are supremely comfortable for their price class. I had no issues with fit or finish, and even longer gaming sessions felt nice to my ears. That’s something not everyone gets right. I’ve had other, much more expensive headsets heat up and sweat under use. Others have caused aches around the temples. Not so here, and Turtle Beach’s solid design deserves all the praise it can get.

As for sound isolation, especially during hectic games like Apex Legends or Call of Duty, the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 creates an immersive, solid experience. Even in loud environments (which we’ll get to in a bit), the headset provided solid feedback and little bleed from exterior sources. It’s not true noise isolation, and the headset didn’t work as well on a plane, for example, but it’s still perfectly fine for gaming at home or on a lighter commute.

Portability

Which leads to common use cases. An area where the Turtle Beach 500 shines in almost every way. It comes packed with a USB-A dongle, and a solid Bluetooth connectivity on top of the regular 2.4GHz wireless connection. Switching between sources feels like magic, and the first time I realized I could easily jump between devices, I admit that I played around the setting just for the heck of it.

At home, I paired the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 with my desktop, Macbook, and Nintendo Switch. On the road, my primary use cases were on my Samsung S23 Ultra and Nintendo Switch Lite.

On a desktop, the Turtle Beach 500 works perfectly fine, with great sound reproduction despite some lacking software tweaks. There's an app to follow battery life and EQ adjustments, but I found the experience fiddly and left it alone for the most part. The buttons are laid out nicely on the side of the earcup, but I found them difficult to distinguish from one another, and often pressed the wrong ones. Especially at night, since the black headset has few markers to separate buttons.

That said, the chat-volume mixer and main volume wheels are welcome additions to this price range, and I had a great time with the headset once I found the perfect balance for my own tastes. Friends reported that my voice came through clear on Discord, although at times the mic volume needed adjusting to compensate for the unibody design, which, again, forces the headset in a particular shape.

On the road, the Bluetooth connectivity was rock solid, delivering great performance with no latency issues or lag no matter where I was. On a smartphone, I found the using the Turtle Beach 500 for games like Call of Duty Mobile and Genshin Impact terrific. Even the Discord mobile app worked wonderfully, and I took a few remote meetings with the headset on the road.

Similarly, the Switch Lite had no issues with the Turtle Beach 500, and my play sessions on games like Crisis Core and Vampire Survivors were both pleasurable.

I found the Stealth 500’s at their best outside of the office as a commute-friendly addition to my day. On a bus, train, metro, or tram, they provided just enough noise isolation that the daily grind faded away nicely. Compared to my daily drivers, the Sony 1000XM4’s, I found the Stealth 500’s less capable as music or movie headsets, but that’s not what they’re designed for, either. They’re not bad, I should note, but rather I’ve been spoiled by much more expensive gear.

But as a mobile solution for gaming on the go, I’ve yet to find anything as reliable that delivers on the price-to-performance ratio like the Stealth 500. Regardless of where I was, apart from a plane, I found myself reaching for the Turtle Beach offering instead of my usual gear. Especially if I knew I was going to play something.

Battery life and competition

As for battery life, I found the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 to have excellent staying power. At home, on a wireless connection, I got five days of mixed use — meaning office tasks, Discord, gaming, and Youtube — amounting to around 35 hours. Which is super solid in this price range.

On the road, with Bluetooth and some challenging weather conditions, the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 gave around the same time, some 30-32 hours of use. Which is extremely good for something this cheap.

If you’re in the market for a solid headset, and you know that you’ll want to take it outside the office on occasion, I warmly recommend the Turtle Beach Stealth 500’s.

At the time of writing, they’re on sale for just 60 Euros, which puts them well under the average range of headsets in this class. Yet they punch well above their weight, and their durability makes them a perfect fit for first-timers and those on the road, who want to get higher quality out of their regular gaming sessions.