The “Break it Down” Blog

Summary [8 out of 10]

The Turtle Beach Ear Force X4 are an excellent set of wireless gaming headphones that get dinged a point for the IR-interference issue from Plasma HDTV sets and dinged for the voice monitoring and auto-volume adjustment not behaving very effectively.

Review

Any gamer that lives with non-gaming family members has had to compromise at one point or another on the right balance between game volume and family tranquility, especially during those late night gaming sessions. I can’t even begin to count the number of times my wife has come into the living room at 1 am to tell me that she can hear my chainsaw and maniacal laugh from the bedroom! What can I say? I love me some late night Gears of War!

Despite having a 6.1 surround sound system that I love to blast, I knew that in order to keep everyone happy that I needed to find a good set of gaming headphones for use during those times when she would rather be sleeping than hearing the sound of gun fire.

With current gen gaming systems, like the Xbox 360 and PS3, whose games come in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio the the average set of stereo headphones simply do not accurately reproduce the game’s surround sound. Forget about not even having a built-in microphone for team communication. Today’s gamer is always seeking to cut cords and go wireless; enter the Ear Force X4 wireless gaming headset by Turtle Beach (retails ~ $200, $169 Newegg Link).

The features are highlighted below direct from the Turtle Beach website.

Powerful IR Transmitter with headphone stand Lightweight for long play sessions Works with XBOX Live Chat Large 50mm stereo speakers for deep bass

Ear Force X4 Headphones – Unique Gaming Features Enjoy Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound with your favorite games and DVD movies Dolby Pro Logic II provides surround sound from PLII encoded audio and also enhances stereo Hear XBOX Live Chat plus stereo game sound Heart-thumping bass boost adds sonic realism Dynamic Talkback lets you hear chat even when the game gets louder Separate controls for game and chat volumes Eliminates game sounds picked up by chat mic Mic Monitor lets you hear what you’re saying Digital input for highest XBOX sound quality, plus analog input for TV and other audio sources

What I would like to do is provide some real world perspective on what they advertise and what they manage to deliver.

Build

The transmitter seems sturdy enough and doesn’t feel excessively lightweight (or cheap) and the headphones themselves are light and they cover my ears well. The kit comes with an optical cable that is VERY small and frail looking. Despite the size, the optical cable works and it’s nice that you don’t have to buy another optical cable for the sound to pass-through to your stereo (transmitter must be ON for audio pass-through). The mic has an articulating type arm so you can position the mic where it’s comfortable and it can also detach from the headphones. The mic connects directly to your 360 controller ALMOST like the original mic (more on this later). It allows you to mute/unmute, and control volume like the original 360 mic. Unfortunately the X4s would not seem to work with a PS3 controller or mic.

Performance

The sound is quite good. I am able to discern where people are in games by the direction of their footsteps! The transmitter will pass-through audio from any optical source (360/PS3, etc..) to your receiver. Additionally, the transmitter will pass-through both Dolby Digital as well as DTS audio formats. However, the transmitter will not send any DTS audio to the headphones. So while these headphones would also work for listening to movies (DVD/BD) they won’t work for some movies that only have DTS as an audio format (Shoot ‘Em Up, for example).

The headphones don’t trap the sound well as my wife could hear sound from the headphones even at a modest volume while sitting next to me on the couch. This is not a deal breaker as this would definitely not be loud enough to wake anyone up, but they don’t trap the sound like a pair of Sennheiser headphones I own.

WARNING, for Plasma HDTV Owners

They do warn that plasmas can cause IR interference and it’s true! To overcome this the transmitter must be pointing directly at the headphones. If you are off axis the plasma IR will contribute noise. I turned off my plasma to test the extent of noise and with it off…the sound quality was impeccable….regardless of the location of the transmitter. But with the plasma on, the location and position of the transmitter must be directional to overcome the plasma IR. Friends that also own the X4 have commented that they also get some IR noise from CRT TVs as well. However in all these cases, the noise (a hiss/static sound) is typically not loud enough to prevent the game audio from coming through. That is to say that the noise is typically only heard if there is no game audio being transmitted. Currently I sit about 9 feet from my plasma and I have placed the transmitter at eye level in front of the plasma and this significantly reduces the IR interference. I will note that when I do get close (<4 feet) to the plasma that the noise increases significantly.

Voice Quality and Compatibility

With regard to voice, these headphones are designed first and foremost to happily coexist with your Xbox 360 controller. Voice and voice monitoring works, though I’m still not convinced the monitoring is as great as it could be.

The mic needs to be quite close for me to hear myself through my headphones. These headphones also have a dynamic talk back that increases the volume of chat as the game gets louder. This feature can get annoying as sometimes it raises the voice volume too much which requires the user to subsequently lower the volume on the controller.  Hearing your teammates is not an issue, but getting consistent voice sound was tricky and inconsistent. They recommend that the audio settings be changed to headset and speakers for best voice performance and I would have to agree. The audio controls for the game sound is on the left headphone (actually all the controls are) so it’s pretty easy to adjust the game sound quickly. People’s voices sounded a bit different to me, and other X4 users have also commented that when they started using these people’s voices sounded different…but everyone sounds different on different headsets. My biggest complaint (aside from IR interference) is with the voice headstage that plugs into the 360 controller. While it “looks” like the 360 one, it is shaped slightly different. In fact it is different enough that the Rock Band black mic adapter WILL NOT fit snuggly on the headstage as it does with the 360 headset…so I can’t get the voice to plug into the guitar or drums. I think I’m just gonna have to find a workaround.

Battery Life

The included batteries lasted about 1 month as I just changed the batteries this week. When the batteries are low the power to the mic is the first to go. I found this out during the course of gameplay when people all of a sudden said they couldn’t hear me anymore. It’s nice that I could still hear everyone and the game audio was still as loud as ever.

Conclusion [8 out of 10]

So overall, I am quite content with these headphones. These headphones are expensive, but there are always sales and I remember seeing these for sale on Amazon recently for less than $150. Thanks for reading!