Turtle Beach Recon 70 review

Turtle Beach's budget gaming headsets fuelled my childhood years of yelling at friends on Call of Duty, but there's a reason I haven't touched them in a while. In my experience, poor audio quality, flimsy builds, and mediocre microphones proved to me (or more so, my mum) that putting just a little extra cash in often gets a much better investment in the long run. However, I'm fully prepared for the Turtle Beach Recon 70 to change my mind.

At its $40 price point, I reckon it mostly just needs to do its main functions well enough to be unnoticeable, or at least not noticeably bad. We've seen the HyperX Cloud Alpha all the way down to $50 during sales events, which is still confidently the best gaming headset, even so long after it arrived on the scene. It's a tough price point, mostly because the jump in quality is tangible once you move out of the tightest of budget brackets.

Right out of the box, however, that reasonable price point shows in its build quality. Everything, apart from a light cushioning on the top and in the earpads, is made out of plastic. The whole thing rattles with a light shake, and it's noticeably designed for a head that, well, isn't mine.

The scale of the Recon 70 suggests it was maybe created for children and teens, and with that in mind, both the design and price make sense. The top of it becomes very, for lack of a better word, square-like, wrapped over the top of my rather large cranium. The side stretches, and the plastic bends under pressure. It all feels a tad flimsy.

The Recon 70 is available in a wide range of colours, and the Blue Camo variety mine came in looks quite pretty. The top of the earcup is the camo design, while the bottom is a solid navy style blue. There isn't too much branding on the headset either, which is a plus, with just the logo on the very top.

Different colours not only look different but also denote the difference between platform-specific headphones. This is an odd distinction, though, as they all seem to be multiplatform, with just marketing differences on the box. Though marking headsets as platform-specific makes more sense in the more expensive Turtle Beach headphones like the Stealth 700 Gen 3, which has PC-specific 3D sound.

Once on and plugged in, the Recon 70's 40 mm drivers perform just okay. The mids are clear and easy to make out, but both the highs and the bass feel lacking and generally weak. It takes that oomph out of songs, even if the drivers can deliver on the overall clarity.

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Footsteps and the thump of an AWP in Counter-Strike 2 are certainly distinct enough to make out in the heat of the battle, though, and that seems to be what this set of cans is going for. You won't miss out on the actual sound of the world, but you will miss out on the feel the violin trills of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's wonderful music evokes. You can hear the subtle jazz bass of Le Grand Café de Lumière from Expedition 33, but it doesn't quite rattle as it should. The sound is simply flat.

Fallout: New Vegas' blend of shots, screams, talking, and ol-timey radio, however, works absolutely fine. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice's unique use of audio, too, is fairly distinct when played through this cheap set of cans. The whispers and hushed tones in my ear feel well-projected and clear. The Recon 70's strongest points are in the mids, and you won't be missing vital information in single-player games, even if it takes some of the gut punch out of the best soundtracks.

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Even after hours of wandering around the Mojave wasteland, the headset still feels comfortable on my head, thanks to its light weight and stretchy fit. The spongy earcups offer light protection from the hard plastic shell of the headset, though this isn't enough to fully isolate. If you happen to play in a room with others, you will likely catch an earful of whatever conversation they're having if your volume isn't loud enough to drown them out.

Listen to the microphone test below:

Even for a resolutely wired headset, the connectivity is a tad lacking, with just a single 3.5 mm jack that can't be unplugged. This means it can technically work in any device with an audio port, but the lead is fairly short at just over a meter. This is restrictive, particularly if you have your PC sat under your desk or use a standing model. This limitation is fine for console use—the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 controllers have audio jacks built in—but PC gamers will feel tightly tethered to their rig with the Recon 70 thanks to that wire.

The fact the jack can't be unplugged also means that if the wire ever breaks for any reason, you have to throw the entire headset out. This maybe isn't the end of the world for such a cheap set of cans, but it's a shame to throw the whole thing out should your cat fancy the forbidden bite of a tasty set of audio wires.

Another light annoyance is the microphone. Though it actually performs admirably for its price range, and sounds clear without much artifacting or muddiness, the flip-to-mute system is not completely fit for use. Not only is there not much of a tactile click alerting you when it's muted, but you don't get an audio notification either. This means you're never quite sure when it's muted. At a right angle upward, I assume I'm always muted, but it has certainly left me paranoid that I haven't quite pushed it far enough up.

The Turtle Beach Recon 70 looks pretty clean for the price and has a clear microphone, but the quality dip from headsets that are even just tens of dollars more is notable. For a closer price point, the Corsair HS55, at an MSRP of just $20 extra, offers a more complete and more attractive package.

If you can only afford this sub-$50 price point, the Recon 70 will reasonably replicate sound in your games, but if you have the funds for more, or the patience to wait for a sale on the HyperX Cloud Alpha, it's hard to recommend the Stealth 70's weak audio over even slightly more expensive headphones.