Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 Max

Verdict

The Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX isn’t a must-buy gaming headset. It’s good where it counts, but it takes too few shortcuts to get there, sacrificing build quality, accessories, fit, and versatility. It’s a tough recommendation for most. If the design speaks to you, at least you’ll get some solid cans.

Introduction

There once was a time when almost every gamer held a Turtle Beach headset close to their heart. They were the Beats headphones of that generation, enjoying recommendation and endorsement not necessarily for their accurate sound staging, but for their booming bass. It’s what the people wanted, and the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX continue to offer just that.

That era has long passed but the lessons still linger. Older, casual console gamers still swear by them, and their reputation has continued to trickle down to the younger generation.

There’s far more choice in the headset space than there was back then, but if you have £100/$100 to spend on a new gaming headset, it’s one worth looking at.

Design

• Plenty of styles to choose from
• Quite cheap construction
• Left-side controls

The Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX take style to heart. What arrived on my doorstep was the Arctic Camo version, which have a naturally matte look to the printed plastic finish. Depending on your platform of choice, you’ll have the additional option of red, black, pink, teal, and white.

PlayStation fans don’t get as many of the colourful variants, with even a white model to match the PS4/PS5 console being out of the question for some unexplained reason.

The headset itself is a wide fit out of the box. It’s easy to spin the cups around and have the band rest around your neck.

Despite the wide-looking opening, there’s almost too much clamping force when they’re cupping your ears. It isn’t too tight and does an admirable job of limiting sound leakage, but those blessed with larger craniums might want to find a pair to try before committing to the buy. 

The cups have a slight degree of pivot to them to naturally adjust to a comfortable position. They’re also adorned with thick, plush, fabric cushioning, which should be breathable, but can get quite warm during longer sessions.

Underneath the left cup, which interestingly mirrors that of the Turtle Beach’s Stealth Pro headset, is where you’ll find every single onboard control. There are two identical wheels for controlling the volume of audio output and microphone input, a clicky Mode button beneath that, a slightly recessed power button after, the USB-C charging port just after that and the short flip-down microphone arm capping things off.

Packaging is kept to a minimum here. It almost feels a little too cheap for a £100/$100 product, but it’s sustainable at the very least. Outside of the plastic wrapping for the headphones and the cable tie around the comically short charging cable, it’s all paper manuals and cardboard inserts.

Features

• USB-A wireless only
• Flip-to-mute microphone
• Plenty of dials and buttons for on-device tweaking

The control hub may seem like a lot, but there’s a major omission: a headphone jack. These cans are wireless only. They may be multi-platform by virtue of their wireless receiver, but they’re not equipped to deal with the rise of handheld consoles or the woes of a dead battery.

The large, simple receiver has an equally simple switch on the side for flicking between PlayStation and PC compatibility modes. The second one really should just read ‘Other’ though as it’s what you’ll use to make it work on anything that isn’t a Sony console. So long as there’s a USB-A port for it to sit in, the receiver of the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX will know what to do.

If you’re looking for a headset to use with your portable machine like a Switch, ROG Ally, Steam Deck, or Lenovo Legion, this isn’t it and that’s a real shame.

The omission of the headphone jack means you won’t be able to plug these cans into your controller’s headset jack. No Bluetooth support means there’s also no way to use it on a Nintendo Switch unless it’s docked to the TV, affording it a compatible USB-A port on the side – that’s something only clarified in small print on the back of the box, which feels a little sneaky. 

In PlayStation mode, the Mode button on the headset lets you cycle through presets made on the system. These carry straight over into PC mode as well, so you can tailor each presets to your favourite games on either platform, but the button will change to a media control key instead.

Interestingly, the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX hides the brand’s Superhuman Hearing mode behind a quick click of the power button. It’s a shortcut you’ll struggle to find without reading the manual, which is bizarre for a feature that enables the signature soundscape the brand is best known for.

The 48+ hours of battery life you can expect from these is already quite good. Better yet, you get a respectable run-time from a brief 15-minute charge, too. If they go down between matches, you won’t inconvenience your squad too much while you juice them back up.

Sound quality and microphone

• Rich, warm sound quality
• Acceptable, tweak-free microphone experience for calls
• Just enough volume

The Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX are a strong pair of cans. With so many other pairs vying for your cash, though, it’s hard to say whether they stand out.

Again, brand recognition alone means the bass you feel as soon as you plant them on your head doesn’t come as a welcome surprise – it’s more a confirmation of well-placed trust. You know what you’re signing up for, and you’re getting it.

That’s not to say those deep lows are overpowering, they’re not. If anything, the default EQ is balanced, with just enough thump at the lower end to give life to tracks and in-game sounds.

I played around with frantic games like Overwatch 2, moodier titles like Diablo 4 and engaging RPGs with plenty of ambient sounds like Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter: World. The 50mm drivers do an exceptional job of delivering clear audio with minimal effort. The prominent strings and synths on older tracks like David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes were handled beautifully as well.

They’re not intensely loud no matter how high you crank a connected PC or the on-board wheel, and them being completely wireless means you can’t expect an external DAC to drive them any higher, but you shouldn’t need to. Unless you’re hard of hearing, you might not get what you want from these, and if you do want that deeper bass then it’s something you can easily sort by fiddling around with the EQ.

Being able to set them up on a per-game basis means you can crank it high for a competitive advantage and quickly switch it back to boost vocals or ambience in more relaxing, immersive titles in a pinch. It’s where the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 2 MAX displays a level of flexibility despite missing the mark on corded listening.

On the subject of the flip-down microphone, don’t let its stubby size fool you – it performs better than it looks but not by much.

It’s far from an exceptional way to record audio that you want to use elsewhere, but it’s good enough for most in-game chatter scenarios. It seems to appreciate deeper voices more, and anyone is going to sound a little muffled through it, but it’s clear enough for idle chatter right out of the box and can handle noisy environments to a certain degree too.

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