Let me show you something, dude. The quick decision is not always the best one, which is why we're going to be taking a slow and steady look at two of the bestselling gaming headsets, both from Turtle Beach. Oh, I get it. I'm a turtle. I found a beach. Cool. But are these headsets cool? The Recon 50 and Recon 70 combined have over 192,000 ratings on Amazon, and considering that only an estimated 3% of consumers leave reviews, Turtle Beach must have sold somewhere in the ballpark of 6 million units of these on Amazon alone, similar to the number of sea turtles left in the world. Down it, bro. So let's not think about that. Instead, let's think about why the expit of Laden chuckle balls. Everyone is buying these. Now, normally, we try to focus on a single product for this series, but considering that these two differ by only $15 and just a few thousand ratings, we figured we'll check out both to see if the extra money would be better spent on a small

upgrade or maybe on our sponsor next to their anniversary sale is on right now, and that means you can bundle up the Aurora Pro projector and a 100in Fresno screen, saving $1,000. We'll have a link in the description where you can check that out. That way [Music] for nearly 20 years, Turtle Beach made their name producing music software and sound cards, and it wasn't until the mid-2000s that the company became the gaming headset manufacturer for Xbox Gamers, including the 2007 release of the first wireless gaming headset, at least according to this GameStop video with 486 views. Later, they became official partners with the now-defunct MLG, then went public in 2014, acquired German Tech brand Roccat in 2019, and now they're doing AE bill in annual revenue. But are their headphones any good? Let's find out, starting with the $25 Recon 50s. As you might expect at this price point, the build is all plastic, save for the electronics and a couple of screws, not

Even the headband, or even the headband adjustment mechanism, has any metal in it. That's a disappointment, and so is the overall feel. They're creaky and squeaky, though to their credit, the ear cups do tilt and rotate for better comfort. Though the cushion up here is best described as per funter, why even bother at this point? The leather on the ear cups is more faux than Vietnamese soup, and while they are removable, the mechanism that holds these on can be described as hateful, forcing me to reach for my iFixit kit every time I want to reattach them. They're also relatively small and shallow, so if you have large ears or ones that poke out a little, you may find them quite uncomfortable after about 3 minutes. Also on the small side is the length of the non-removable cable with inline controls. The cable terminates to a combo 3.5 mm plug and works great for plugging into your controller or laptop. If you want to use it on a desktop, you're going to need an

extension and probably a combo Jack splitter since they don't include one in the Box. What is included though is the detachable gooseneck mic, and I've got to say wow. I mean obviously it's not going to sound amazing next to our studio microphone, and it doesn't have the best ambient noise rejection, even picking up sounds from cable movement and the poorly isolated driver housing. But that's nothing that some software noise cancellation can't overcome, and under ideal conditions it manages sound quality that would be the Envy of gaming headsets more than four times the price. Honestly if the only thing in this box was this mic I would say that it's an okay value. Unfortunately the rest of it was also there, and Andrew from headphones.com who tested it for us had this to say. Now I think he's being a touch melodramatic but even objectively speaking they're not great. This dotted line here is our Target representing a sound signature that will appeal to most people. The purple line is the average

measured response of the Recon 50s, starting at the left then B. Performance falls far below the volume that we would expect from good-sounding headphones. Then the lower mids are a bit overdone, maybe to try to compensate for the lacking bass. Not great, but not too bad yet. It's not until the upper mids in treble where things get ugly. You see this big dip at 5 kHz that has a huge impact on sound and is what colors it in such an unpleasant way, resulting in a cheap and tiny sound signature. The bizarre thing is we couldn't even come up with a gaming justification for this tuning, like, uh-oh, yeah, they sound like garbage because they enhance footsteps or whatever. That was the excuse many gaming headset brands used over the years, and they just haven't even bothered. These just sound bad, on par or maybe even worse than some of the hardware store and AliExpress specials we've looked at recently. And adding insult to injury, when we turned them up, the quality went down even further.

distorting to the point where they were downright unpleasant to listen to. Of course, if you're spending $25, maybe you're happy with a good microphone that happens to have some functional headphones attached to it, or maybe you're not. Maybe you wonder about the One That Got Away, the one that cost $15 more dollars. That one is the Recon 70. The packaging and included goodies, or lack thereof, is hardly different from the Recon 50s, and the build, while similar in size and materials to the Recon 50, is much more robust and significantly less squeaky. The ear cups are thicker and a little bit larger, and the pad on the headband feels like less of a joke, but also has this rib down the middle of it that feels like it's going to find its way to your skull pretty quick. Head adjustments are better, though the volume adjustment has moved from the still a bit too short cable to the left ear cup, though. So, so far so good, but do they sound better? Let's start with the... which is located on the

left ear cup as is tradition and is now on a swivel arm that auto-mutes when it's tipped up, but is no longer detachable and unfortunately no longer excellent. It's still okay, but it was kind of disappointing to see such a step down coming from its cheaper sibling. Hopefully, the same isn't true of the headphones themselves. Oh, it's not. That's much better. In fact, I would even say adequate for the price point. While the '70s do still struggle with bass reproduction, less rumble and more humble, if you know what I mean, the mids are more in line with our target, and that awful treble dip from the Recon 50s is completely absent, making them both more accurate and more pleasant to listen to. But why are you guys buying them? Well, as it turns out, they're cheap, and thanks to their tried-and-true 3 and 2 mm interface, they just plain work. Huh, that is until they don't. We scoured the Amazon reviews for both of these, and they tore us some

things for starters. Most of you guys are actually happy with the sound quality of both Recons. Yes, even the '50s, and like I'm happy for you, but it does make me kind of wonder about the folks giving five stars to these compared to nothing. Yeah, they're going to give you a Competitive Edge, but I guess that gives you some idea of the Discerning of the typical buyer of a Comm headset. Not all of you were happy though, as you would expect. Most of the onear reviews for both headsets focused on concerns about longevity. We saw many complaints about Comfort, which is obviously going to vary a bit from person to person, but does not surprise me based on the overall build quality of especially the Recon 50s. And also especially on the Recon 50s, we saw a lot of complaints about the mic. So when it works, it's great, as we just showed you, but the reviews were full of reports of loose connections resulting in audio dropouts, static, and even the mic just falling out due to poor

tolerances. We also saw some feedback that the mics are too quiet, which is a problem that we encountered when we were recording the clips you heard before in Audacity. The mics needed to be boosted pretty heavily, but what's weird is we didn't encounter those problems in calls or on Discord, so your mileage may vary. Where does this leave us then? The Recon 50s are really hard to recommend for their price. They work, and the mic is kind of outstanding, but honestly, I'd rather see you guys skip your next Uber Eats and spring for the Recon 7s instead, with their still good mic and much better audio reproduction and comfort. With that said though, neither of these really knocked my socks off, and if you can be patient and snag a deal, the HyperX Cloud X can be found for about 40 bucks, the same as the Recon 70s. They're all around decent, quite sturdy, and could end up saving you money in the long run by just lasting longer. Or if you want to go wireless, the Logitech G435 are a

great option there just whatever you do do not buy them direct from Logitech. Get them on sale pretty much anywhere else, and it's also worth noting those will not work with Xbox. They might work though to hear our sponsor back blazs. Sometimes it disasters happen, and it feels like your entire business is about to come crumbling down. Prevention of those situations should always be top of mind, but how you recover from them is equally as important. Enter back Blaze. Starting at just n bucks a month, you get unlimited data backup through centrally managed admin that you can access from anywhere on any platform. You can even get one year of retention history for free, meaning your files are saved for longer. Plus, when it comes down to actually retrieving your data, it's as simple as downloading them back, or you can even get a USB drive shipped directly to you. Just mail it back for a full refund. They have over three exabytes of data under their management, and we use them at lmg to back up our data nightly. So sign up today at back

blaze.com LT for a 15-day free trial with no credit card required. Thanks for watching. Do you guys own this headset or another Turtle Beach headset? Let us know in the comments. And if you like this video, why not check out our Why is everybody buying this controller video to learn more about controllers that don't cost as much as an entire game.

Why is EVERYONE buying this headset?

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.
