After about forty minutes of use, I’d already determined that the Turtle Beach Elite Atlas Aero was the best PC gaming headset I’d ever used. But in order to remain credible, I spent much longer using the device to make sure the headset’s quality held up for an extended period of time.
And it did. After two weeks of use, my statement still stands. So now let be breakdown everything I love about this headset, and why I think it’s a great pickup for every PC gamer. Let’s start with the design.
Turtle Beach Elite Atlas Aero Design
When I originally saw pictures of this headset, I thought it looked as bulky as many other gaming headsets on the market. I often don’t like my headsets to be too bulky as I have a small head. But when I opened the Turtle Beach Elite Atlas Aero box and saw how small and neat it looked inside of its well-presented encasing, I was instantly impressed with its design. Its earcups take up a lot of real-estate here, being the chunkiest part of the headset, but a thick layer of padding ensures that the headset won’t dig into your face while you play for hours.
At night time I like to throw on some anti-blue light glasses and the headset can make the glasses temples press into your head, but what’s great is that Turtle Beach already thought of a solution to the problem. You can completely remove the padding from the cup, pull on a strap and adjust it to accommodate your glasses. There’s also a slot inside the earcup to keep your USB wireless transmitter so you don’t lose it after use.
There are speaker grilles on the outside of each cup to help deliver the promised Waves NX 3D Audio, a system that provides pinpoint location accuracy and lifelike sound. Indeed, whenever I enable Superhuman Hearing inside the device’s Control Studio, I can hear every subtle background noise in my games.
At the backend of the left earcup, you’ll find controls for volume, microphone level, Superhuman Hearing and there’s also a charging port and a jack you can use to add a wired connection to your PC, phone or console gamepad. There’s also a mute button on the flat side of the same earcup.
The microphone is removable as with many of Turtle Beach’s premier headsets, allowing you to omit it when you don’t need a microphone hanging in front of your face.
The headbands are adjustable as on any headset, but what’s cool is the way they slide in or out of the earcups themselves. The cups can also be turned sideways to allow for easier storage.
Turtle Beach Elite Atlas Aero Performance
What’s the most important part of a headset? How it sounds, of course. To be fair, once you get used to how a high-performance headset sounds, it can be tough to distinguish it from another one. To me, the Elite Atlas Aero is everything I could ever want soundwise in a headset. I use it to listen to music, play games and even watch videos; and its unlocked a bunch of extra sounds that I wouldn’t have caught by listening through my subwoofer speaker system.
And what I’ve found to be an extra bonus is the Turtle Beach Control Studio, a piece of software that every owner should install to use with the device. As soon as you plug in your headset, whether you’re opting to use it wirelessly or with the cables, this software will recognize your headset and unlock a whole new level of control.
In the software, there are a ton of additional features you can switch on and off as you need to. Perfect for re-calibrating when transitioning from gaming to music (or any other form of media). You can also choose your settings from a list of built in presets or save your own presets and easily flip back and forth between them.
In the “Audio Settings” tab, you can EQ your game, microphone or chat more accurately to get the exact levels you need. And from the “Macro” tab, you can assign buttons on your mouse or keyboard to turn features on/off seamlessly. Quite simply, Turtle Beach is offering users all the tools they need to get the tailored experience they need. So if you’re not happy with the sound out of the box, you have a ton of options to tweak until you get perfection.
Keep in mind that every video game sound design is different, so Turtle Beach itself has no control over how the out of box experience is with each game, therefore it’s down to the gamer to tweak the settings for each game when necessary. And that’s really when the presets come in handy.
The Elite Atlas Aero is of course a wireless headset, meaning it needs to be charged if you wish to use it wirelessly. When fully charged, the device can last up to 30 hours, depending on use. For those who like to still game with a wired connection for convenience reasons, Turtle Beach is also selling a PC Audio Enhancer that enables you to convert the headphone jack connection to a USB, allowing you to still have access to all of the features in the Control Studio, including Waves Nx 3D Audio.
Final Verdict
With the Elite Atlas Aero, it’s as if Turtle Beach took the time to understand the needs of every type of PC gamer. They made it easy to use this headset on both PC and console, and they even considered that there are gamers who prefer both wireless and wired. Wired players will still get all the special features available to wireless players, but of course an extra dongle is required. The only downside here is that you’re dependent on either the Control Studio or the Macros to turn Superhuman Hearing on or off when wired, because the buttons on the earcup seem to be unusable if you choose to use the headset in this way.
But without a doubt, this headset literally has everything I could ever need in a PC gaming headset, and its generous layer of padding means it’s comfortable to use for hours on end.
There was a point when I would remove my headset as soon as I was done gaming and then continue to use my PC for work with the use of my speaker system, but now I often continue using the Atlas Aero even after my gaming session ends.
The mic is also high quality, and having the ability to turn it up and down, and even monitor what noises your mic picks up is incredible for both gaming and audio recording.
For £129 / $149 you can ensure you’re spending your money on one of the best pieces of audio equipment out there, and that you’ll have everything you’ll ever need to excel in gaming.
