Do Turtle Beach headsets help improve your gameplay?

Pre-order Black Ops from Amazon.

I bought the Turtle Beach X11 Airforce headsets about a month ago for my XBox 360 / PC (although I am well aware that you can also get the Turtle Beach headsets for the PS3). Now, I play Call of Duty MW2 nearly every single day, so for me; this was a great investment. The first thing that I noticed is that every single footstep is amplified. This was especially useful in Free For All (FFA) matches, where I would hear my enemies walking through corridors and passageways. I also noticed that I wasn’t getting shot in the back as much as I used to, as I would often hear people creeping up behind me, spin around and then take them out before they had a chance to fire their weapon. One of the guys that I did this to even remarked: “This guy must have a headset.” That player and I then spent the rest of the FFA match having a conversation about how the Turtle Beach headsets were so good.

In all honesty; the Turtle Beach headsets are like having a constant UAV by your side. You won’t get caught out from behind as much, you’ll know when an enemy is about to turn a corner and as soon as you hear gunfire or an explosion, the Turtle Beach’s will allow you to figure out where the action is happening. Frag grenades, car explosions, flash bangs, claymores, tactical insertions… you name it – the Turtle Beach headsets will allow you to hear them all and where they are coming from.

Before I bought my Turtle Beach X11 headsets, my Call of Duty MW2 Kill Death Ratio (KDR) was about 2.02. A week after purchasing the headsets, that number had climbed to 2.10. In maps such as Trailer Park and Scrapyard, the headsets were unbelievable. They let me know where everyone was, so I always had the upper-hand. This allowed me to play far more aggressively than what I was used to. Even when other players were using the Ninja Pro perk, the Turtle Beach headsets would often allow me to hear them sprinting through grass and other environments.

Another great thing about the Turtle Beach headsets is that they allow you to change the volume of both the game and the chat sounds with two separate easy-to-reach dials. For instance: If I didn’t want to hear people chatting, I could just quickly lower the dial for the chat volume on my headset. In Search and Destroy (SnD), I could “sound whore” by turning the volume for game sounds up to the top, which meant that I could hear a pin drop a mile away.

For private Call of Duty lobbies and private matches with friends, the Turtle Beach headsets are great. For instance, if you want to chat away to your friends and not worry about the game sounds, you can turn the game volume down and the chat volume up. Then, it’s almost as if you’re talking with all of your friends on the phone. I also find that the microphone on the Turtle Beach headsets is much better quality than the mic on the default XBox 360 headset. When I used to have the default headset, my friends would often have to ask me to repeat myself. I also found it a lot more difficult to hear them speaking, which meant that the conversation between us was pretty much non-existent and cumbersome to maintain.

Everyone I’ve spoken who has the Turtle Beach headsets, swears by them. You will be literally hard-pressed to find anyone who has regretted buying them. Although I can only offer examples of how they are useful for me while playing Call of Duty, I am 100% sure that they will increase the enjoyment of any game; especially seeing as they greatly increase your ability to chat with friends online.

You can buy the Turtle Beach X11 headsets from Amazon.com for a really good price. The PS3 version of Turtle Beach can also be bought from Amazon.com.

Related posts:

1. How to record your gameplay – XBox and PS3