Turtle Beach Earforce XP SEVEN Gaming Headset Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,009 words · ~10 min read
0:05
want a portable power bank Wireless AP SD card and USB reader for your mobile
0:09
devices check the link in the video description to learn more about the ada8
0:13
dash Drive air ae400 welcome to my unboxing of the uh console headset
0:18
explosion here this is the a force xp7 from Turtle Beach which is going to be
0:23
very similar to the a force z7 which
0:26
would be the PC variant that doesn't include the cons
0:30
interface right here so why don't we start with what's actually included in
0:34
the box since it's all conveniently spread
0:38
out yeah all over the place here so
0:41
number one is you get the headset itself
0:44
it's a little bit on the heavy side but of course that makes it feel more
0:47
quality it's just whether or not that's worth it to you when you have it sitting on your head is totally up to you it's
0:52
not super heavy or anything like that though next up you've got the adapter
0:56
from their multi-pin connector here so there's a like a break way connector
1:00
that has a convenient line so you don't plug it in incorrectly to a simple four
1:05
Poole 3 1/2 mm Jack all right next
1:08
you've got the control unit okay so this
1:11
guy right here is where the magic happens because this headset is more
1:15
than just an analog headset I love that you have the option to use it analog but
1:19
they've got a fully programmable DSP that is right in here so that's a
1:23
digital sound processor and there's a whole bunch of cool stuff you can do
1:26
with that more on that later that comes with a nice long cable and comes with a
1:30
nice long extension cable so the idea is that that control pod should be able to
1:35
sit next to you while you're gaming even if your console is sort of across the uh
1:39
across the room and you're sitting on your couch or whatever else so there
1:42
extension cable goes there next up we have power for the console interface
1:47
here so that's just a simple USB connector and then that'll plug into
1:52
this control pod right here all right the next cable we've got is the mobile
1:55
cable which actually looks pretty similar to the regular headset cable
2:00
however what it does is it is wired so that you're not going to have
2:04
microphones interfering with each other and all that kind of stuff if you want
2:07
to take a call or whatever else so it is clearly labeled it has a little button
2:11
on it so that you can take calls see that and it's also a different size so
2:16
you can see that the uh the actual piece here is quite different okay and then
2:21
between those two things hopefully you can figure out which is which when
2:25
you're trying to set things up all right next up we've got their microphone which
2:28
is actually looks pretty excellent so it's got a a nice little pop filtering
2:33
sort of uh wind reduction foam on it then it has one of the most adjustable
2:38
and staying where you put itable snakes on it that I have ever actually
2:42
encountered it plugs into the headset just like this so that you don't have to
2:47
have it on but you do have the option should you so desire now it should also
2:52
be noted that there is a microphone Port built into the headphone one or the uh
2:57
to the mobile one as well so there you
3:01
have it all right finally you've got an auxiliary connector so you can use this
3:06
to plug into something like an MP3 player or whatever else if you want to mix your audio into your game track a
3:12
TOS link optical digital cable as well
3:15
as an Xbox 360 chat cable and that is all the cables that are included you
3:18
have all the cables you need which is great because the headset has a lot of
3:22
really cool functionality so let's get into the control pod here which oh okay
3:26
fine you know what let's let's do the headphones or the headset itself first
3:30
so there's it's got some pretty good clamping Force here and actually the
3:34
foam while very squishy is uh is is a
3:38
bit of a slow uh R coming back one like
3:41
a slow bouncing one so I suspect that the when you first put these on they
3:45
might not feel that comfortable I'm finding them a little bit tight but once
3:49
they break in I would expect them to be quite comfy like I said before they are
3:52
a little bit on the heavy side but at least they do feel very quality about it
3:57
they're not just unnecessarily heavy now I did find that the headband has a bit
4:01
of a a metal piece here that I was able to feel it does make it quite strong
4:06
obviously but I was able to feel that on my head um slick didn't have that
4:10
problem and I mean if you kind of loosen it a little bit you might not have that
4:14
problem as well but it's just something that I observed about the headset you
4:17
can replace the shields on the side which is kind of cool so you can put
4:21
like uh different ones on there if you want they just attach with little um
4:27
pieces right there so they snap into place I believe they've got a whole
4:31
bunch of different stuff I mean what I would probably do with something like this is like paint it myself or
4:34
something cool like that in fact you could even just leave them open if you wanted that looks kind of neat as well
4:40
all right adjustable adjustability not the most adjustable headphones I've ever
4:43
encountered but not bad either so you see if I'm wearing these they sit quite
4:47
quite high above my head and if I bring them all the way down to the very bottom
4:51
they are a little bit too a little bit too small for me so I use I wear a
4:56
mediumsized motorcycle helmet so there you go that should give you guys some
4:59
idea what's up the ear pads are takeoff
5:03
cleanable replaceable whatever you could want to do with them this comes off
5:06
quite easily and quite nicely so let's switch over to the other side and show
5:10
you guys ah yes here you go so they are very rotatable very adjustable they
5:15
should sit on your head correctly pretty much no matter what kind of a shape you
5:20
have to it now the microphone plugs in here and you can see there's actually a
5:24
little uh alignment dots right there so you can make sure you get that right if
5:27
you happen to be looking at it while you're while you're doing that okay so
5:30
you can see that there's also a guide right there so you don't accidentally put it in the wrong way this is actually
5:35
important because of just how this is intended to sit in front of your mouth
5:39
because it doesn't really Bend this way quite as well it kind of bends whichever
5:42
way you want but the orientation of the mic is right there so you don't want to
5:46
be talking into the wrong side of the
5:50
microphone now the headset does have 50 mm drivers however there's more to
5:54
headphone quality than the size of the speakers inside I hope you guys know
5:57
that but with that said a cursory evaluation just very very quickly does
6:02
tell me that these are not your typical gaming headphones where it's just all
6:06
marketing fluff and no sound quality whatsoever and they happen to have a
6:10
microphone on them that is not the case I haven't thoroughly addition them or
6:13
anything like that but at least you know for spending a couple hundred plus on
6:17
something you're not just getting something that you could have gotten for 20 bucks or uh you know similar but this
6:23
my friends is where the magic really happens this is the USB control module
6:27
and it does a number of different things so you can plug your headset your Xbox
6:31
communication connector over there as well as your mobile phone or your mp3
6:35
player or whatever else and this allows you to do a bunch of really cool stuff
6:39
so number one is you can do voice effects so you can change the timber of
6:43
your voice very very cool stuff number two is you can change the audio quality
6:48
effects so you can actually uh change your equalizer settings you can set up
6:53
different profiles for different games and select between them you can download
6:56
profiles from Turtle Beach that they've created or user created profiles but it
7:01
even gets more interesting if you have your phone plugged in as an MP3 player
7:04
while you're gaming you get a call you can actually go okay this little dial
7:08
right here whoop whoop whoop turn that up and you can continue your phone call
7:12
without actually even interrupting your game which is both really cool and a
7:15
little bit sad on the left side you've actually got a dial that you can use to
7:19
monitor your own audio input so you can make sure that people can hear you okay
7:22
and all that good stuff power on the right you've got your chat volume which
7:26
you can control separately from gain volume as well as a mode control button
7:30
this is your main volume dial switch right up here in the middle you've also
7:34
got microphone mute adjustments for the locations of your speaker so because it
7:38
does support Dolby Digital you can not only listen and Surround but you can
7:42
also kind of adjust speaker positions virtually on the Fly you can switch to
7:47
5.1 you can turn surround on and off
7:50
with sort of the buttons yes the buttons over on this side there's a dedicated
7:54
Dolby Digital button right there and of
7:57
course it works on PC Mac gamec is pretty much anything you could possibly
8:01
want and the last one that I personally think is really cool is their Dynamic
8:05
chat boost so what that does is because all the sounds are going through the
8:09
digital sound processor here and while being processed it can do cool things
8:14
like it can say okay there's an explosion in the game well you don't
8:18
want that to necessarily drown out your Bros who are trying to communicate with
8:21
you so it can dynamically adjust chat volume to make sure that you can hear it
8:25
above the volume of the game itself so I'm going to put these on and spite of
8:29
the fact that one of the ear pads is missing let me tell you it is not comfortable to wear like this but thank
8:34
you for checking out my unboxing of the Turtle Beach 7 Series headset this
8:38
particular one is the XP don't forget to subscribe to L techtips for more
8:41
unboxings reviews and other computer videos leave a like if you like the video leave a dislike if you dislike the
8:46
video and leave a comment if you think that this thing comes with an unbelievable number of cables if I had
8:51
to sort of come up with a disadvantage other than the fact that it's expensive
8:54
it would be wow look at all the cables you're going to be like buried in cables
9:01
this is what I would look like if I was buried in cables