Turtle Beach Ear Force X2 Wireless Headphones (X360)

Turtle Beach is back with a new set of headphones designed for use with the Xbox and Xbox 360. The Ear Force X2 headphones are wireless, lightweight, and come in a lovely white color to match the 360. Most importantly, the sound quality is surprisingly good and the headset is very comfortable for long play sessions. They’ll set you back about $100, but for the quality and features you get with the Ear Force X2 I highly recommend them.

Design and Features

The Ear Force X2 headphones come with a wireless headset, a transmitter, a DC power adapter, a cable to connect the headphones to the Xbox 360 controller / Xbox puck, and audio cables so you can hook the headphones up to your sound system. The headphones are fairly standard in design with a moderate level of padding on the ear cups and the fully adjustable microphone is located on the right side. What is surprising about the headset is just how lightweight and comfortable it is. Since these headphones are wireless, you can wander around your apartment and listen to music or movies or whatever and the range is very good. You just have to maintain line of sight with the transmitter, but that is SOP for most wireless headphones. The transmitter is an alien looking little device, but the extra plastic bits on the sides of it are actually meant to hold the headphones when you aren’t using them. Brilliant!

Setup

Setting up the Ear Force X2 headphones is a pretty simple process. You just plug the power adapter into the transmitter, hook the transmitter up to your audio system, and away you go. The simplest, and best, way is that you can use the included audio connection cable to hook up to the audio out on your stereo or system selector (most have two audio outputs, one for your TV and one for whatever else) so this is a very easy solution that allows you to use the headphones for more than just your Xbox. The headphones require two AAA batteries, which are included, and once you have everything plugged in you just flip the switch on the back of the transmitter and the switch on the headphones and you’ll be set. To use the headphones with Xbox Live you just use the included cable to hook your controller up to the port on the headphones.

Performance

The performance of the Ear Force X2 is what really makes them stand out. When you are using a normal Xbox Live headset you get chat in one ear and game sounds from your TV (which usually has to be turned down so you can hear others and also to not interfere with your own chat) in the other and neither one sounds very good. With the X2 you get chat and game audio in both ears in glorious stereo sound and it can be as loud as you want since you don’t have to worry about the mic picking it up.

The audio that is produced by the headphones is rather impressive. I don’t want to sound like I’m just regurgitating promo materials, but you really do hear every footstep and gunshot and everything else that is happening in the game or movie you’re watching and it all sounds very clear. There is no hiss or static during quiet moments either, something that the AXT headphones I reviewed last year suffered from. Just pure silence when there should be silence and booming audio when there should be booming audio. They have performed perfectly during long GRAW, Burnout Revenge, and Oblivion play sessions and handled watching King Kong like a champ so I’m pretty happy with them.

Bottom Line

Last year when I reviewed Turtle Beach’s Ear Force AXT Xbox headphones, I liked them and still recommend them now that you can find them for under $50. But I have to say that the X2s blow them completely out of the water in pretty much every area. The X2s produce better sound with no hiss, they are far more comfortable, they look better, and wireless headphones simply rock much harder than wired headphones. The $99.99 price tag is decent for a set of wireless headphones of this quality, but keep in mind that this is also an Xbox Live headset so the value is actually quite good. The Turtle Beach Ear Force X2 Wireless Xbox Headphones are solid all around and I highly recommend them for a purchase.