Turtle Beach AK-R8 Gaming Headphones
Available: Now
Price: $149.95 MSRP
So you like to play PC games late at night or your girlfriend/real doll doesn’t like hearing your World of Warcraft raids? You need a good set of headphones, but you want to take advantage of surround sound… take a look at these.
PROS:
* Surround Sound Actually Works!
* Includes USB 5.1 Sound Card
* Headphones Auto-Adjust and are Comfortable
* Monitors Room Audio or Cancels It
CONS:
* No Mac Support
* USB Sound Card Requires A Lot of Power
* Owners of 5.1 Sound Cards Already Own Half of this Product
* Noise-Canceling Could Be Better
First of all, these headphones rock. We here at G4tv.com were a bit skeptical of another set of “surround-sound†headphones, but these really work. We loaded up some Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and the 5.1 definitely worked.
We had almost everyone try them and they were all equally amazed that Turtle Beach was able to pull off believable 5.1 surround sound on headphones. The added bonus of the USB sound card means this set is perfect for gaming laptops that might not have a 5.1 sound card.
Most desktops come with on-board 5.1 sound cards now and the quality of this set won’t be anything better than an on-board card. It definitely won’t out perform a PCI sound card, but even using this set on a desktop like this leads to great sound.
Again, like the OTTO USB set we reviewed, this works off of USB and you’ll have to change the output device in Windows everytime you want to switch between speakers and the headphones. Since the USB sound card requires drivers, there is no Mac support.
This is a perfect product for a dorm room or nocturnal PC gamers that don’t want to piss off their family, roommate, or neighbors. The price tag is a bit high if you already own a 5.1 sound card, but if not, this becomes a great value.
