Page 4 - Conclusion
When Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party won the most recent election in Canada, my colleague Brian Cheung told me a punny joke. "Why does Justin make the best bread? Because he uses Trudeau". Obviously I am not the only one around here that likes puns, but when it comes to the Turtle Beach Ear Force Stealth 450, I have to wonder if it is worth your hard-earned "true dough". This decision is mired with back and forth arguments, as there are some awesome aspects about the Stealth 450, but they are coupled with some not so great ones. I really like the internal voice-over for the commands, along with voice-over monitoring and the surround sound adjustments for gaming. Audio quality too has its pros and cons, but overall very appropriate as a gaming product -- it will definitely up your game. Wireless performance is superb in both range and running time, as I can easily match the quoted fifteen hours. On the other hand, if I were to give a reason behind Turtle Beach's choice of a name like "Ear Force", I would attribute it to the amount of force the Stealth 450 applies on the ears. It is rather unfortunate, but these headphones really are not comfortable over a longer period of time. In the build and design department, the Stealth 450 plastic construction makes the whole thing very lightweight, but also more flimsy than I would have liked. The plastic creaks and makes other sounds when it moves. Thus as you can see, the Turtle Beach Ear Force Stealth 450 has many positive points, but some unfortunate let downs too. When we look at the market, the Stealth 450 carry an MSRP of $130 USD. Considering it is less than half the price of the SteelSeries H Wireless, this is very competitive, especially with all the included features. In the end, we have an excellent feature-set on a pair of decent sounding cans, but the lacking comfort and build quality really detracts me from fully recommending it. The Stealth 450 is a good entry into the wireless arena, and with some changes, Turtle Beach will have a real "breadwinner".
Turtle Beach provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
APH Review Focus Summary:
7/10 means Great product with many advantages and certain insignificant drawbacks; but should be considered before purchasing.
6/10 means A product with its advantages, but drawbacks should not be ignored before purchasing.
-- Final APH Numeric Rating is 6.8/10
Please note that the APH Numeric Rating system is based off our proprietary guidelines in the Review Focus, and should not be compared to other sites.
The Turtle Beach Ear Force Stealth 450 is a nice wireless gaming headset with features and performance to boast about, but build quality and comfort has room for improvement.
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Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Subjective Audio Analysis
4. Conclusion
