Thank you Turtle Beach for sending us this headset to review!

After several years of having a similar lineup, and having reviewed some of the competition, it became clear to me that Turtle Beach really needed to refresh their headset product line. It's not because the Stealth 600 and friends suddenly became bad, but that the feature set and price was lagging behind the market. It seems to me Turtle Beach knew they had to innovate, and innovate they did. At the time of this writing, they have released several new headsets; some are revamps of old models. However this one, the Stealth 500, is a brand-new model to the product line that fills in an important gap, and they did a bang-up job. While it doesn't sound better than its upmarket cousin, it's way more comfortable, and for some that may well be the winning combination.

This Turtle Beach Stealth 500 is the new entry level for Turtle Beach's wireless headsets. In the past, anything below 600 in their product line was always wired, and usually part of the Recon line. That's not to say they were bad; I felt like the Recon 500, with some tuning, could sound really good. Gamers (and the competition!) wanted less expensive wireless headsets, so Turtle Beach has delivered.

The Stealth 500 is a lighter-weight design, which often leads to premium comfort. Most of this is because of the headband, which is thin, light, and flexible. It's held in place by a soft to the touch elastic strap that has the headset just floating right over your ears. While the ear pads are a leatherette material (aka fake leather), they are very soft and are filled with memory foam. Because of how light the headphone is overall, the plastic doesn't feel super premium to the touch, but it nearly disappears when placed on your head. Above all, headphones must be worn, and these things are so easy to wear you can easily have them on all day and while your ears might get warm, they never become uncomfortable. These things are seriously comfortable, and that goes a long way no matter how else they work (or sound).

Thankfully, they have a ton of functionality. If this is the new baseline for wireless headsets from Turtle Beach, this year's new models are going to make a lot of gamers happy. First of all, these support multi-input. While I wish they would include 3.5mm inputs on more of their headsets, this one supports 2.4GHz wireless (with great range, too!) and Bluetooth 5.2. You can connect the headset to your phone and PC (or console) at the same time, and switch between them with a press of a button on the headset. I first saw this with the Corsair HS55 I reviewed last year; it's a great feature that you come to love, even if some higher-end headsets support both inputs simultaneously. You can answer a call, listen to music or podcasts on your phone, then switch to the PC when it's time to play. I use headsets for working from home, and this feature is indispensable for that use case.

Highlights:

Strong Points: Great value with a really good feature set, including four onboard EQ modes; excellent wireless range; lightweight and comfortable, especially the suspension headband; new design compared to previous products, so hopefully more resistant to breaking; sounds pretty good with a nice tonal balance; incredible microphone; PC software is feature-filled, including a custom ten-band graphical equalizer; mobile app is useful; works on most modern platforms outside of Xbox (for this PC version); supports 24bit@48kHz sample rate
Weak Points: Few at this price point, but I did mod it to make it sound a bit tighter; headband adjustment is not tool-less; max size could be slightly larger for my big noggin, but it fits

The headset itself has a flip-down microphone, which is very convenient when you need to quickly mute or unmute. There are also two volume wheels, which is standard game or audio volume for the top one, and adjusting your microphone monitoring level for the bottom wheel. The buttons are power (also can toggle on/off Superhuman Hearing), Mode (used to select one of the EQ presets), Bluetooth (used to pair and play/pause content), and input switch. That input switcher button gets the most use for me! There is also a USB-C port for charging, which you only need to do on occasion, as it gets forty hours per charge. At the time of this writing, I've used it almost non-stop for two days and have about half of the charge left.

Being an entry-level headset, naturally the sound is not going to be as refined as higher-up models. I found this to be true when comparing the Stealth 500 against its bigger brother, the Stealth 600 Gen 3. But, I've modded enough headphones to know what some design issues sound like, so I allowed my curiosity to get the best of me and I did some tinkering.

You see, I found that these headsets have a remarkably good tonal balance, and I even prefer that sound to some other models. But I noticed what sounded to me a bit like a hollow ringing or resonance. So, knowing what I know about modding headphones, I got to work.

The first thing I had to do was figure out how to open them up. This first required taking off the ear pad, then unscrewing the single screw behind the pad. Then, you need a small flathead screwdriver to press the three tabs each side back, so you can wiggle the ear cups open. It took a bit of practice, but I got it. What I discovered is that the driver in the headphones is sealed into its own little cavity, separate from the circuit boards or other electronics. It's a great design, but there is still enough open space and hard surfaces to create some resonance. What I did was put a tiny piece of fiberglass into each side, loosely filling but not overfilling that cavity. What this does is disperse some of the sound waves, making less of them likely to go right back at the listener. This really helped to tighten up the sound, even if they still have room for improvement. Here is the picture of what I did on the inside of mine:

Outside of that, I have no real major complaints. The EQ modes are nice, and I find that with some music/games, the bass boost or bass and treble boosts are nice (like racing games). Most of the time, the default Signature Sound profile is perfectly fine, and sounds the best.

Overall, the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 Wireless Gaming Headset is one very good value, and a great entry into wireless gaming headsets. The sound quality is good, but the lightweight comfort is unreal. It might be even better with fabric pads, but even still it's great. The wireless 2.4GHz + Bluetooth functionality is also excellent, and the headset even works at 24-bit @ 48kHz when connected over 2.4Ghz wireless, and SBC + AAC when connected over Bluetooth. This is a significant step up over the previous generation, which was limited to 16-bit @ 48kHz and SBC over Bluetooth only. I am really happy with this new wireless baseline in Turtle Beach's lineup, and if your budget for a headset is $79.99 or so, this headset is an easy recommendation!