Turtle Beach Ear Force X41 Headphone

Pros: Great sound,
Very comfortable,
Ease of use,
Design flaws can be over-come.

Cons: The price,
Some minor design flaws,

Summary: After reading many reviews I was worried if I was parting with £150 for something that would end up disappointing me.
The next set of headphones in this league (the Astros) are £50 more, didn?t have the same reported problems, but I would be back to trailing cables across my front room. My girlfriend is a star at tripping on cables and my cat loves the taste of them so I decided to take the risk. I?m glad I did.
Before I run through the minor problems with this product, I?ll first like to say how your £150 WILL put a smile on your face. Out of the box I had this hooked up and working in under 5 minutes. Very straight-forward. Five minutes after that, I was in a game of MW2 with a great big grin across my face. It provides a completely different gaming experience if you have not used gaming headphones before. The sound is crisp, very detailed, very loud, and the 7.1 surround sound decoder does a decent job of making you feel ?in the game?. Enemies are easily located by their foot-falls or even reloading sound. No one sneaks up on me anymore (ninja pro aside!). Details you had not noticed in your game before become apparent, and you wonder how you ever missed them. The bass boost function adds even more low-end wallop to the already clear and well-defined bass. On one occasion I carelessly wandered past a doorway with my back to it. The resulting shotgun blast from the unseen enemy nearly made me drop my controller. With Forza Motorsport 3, you can anticipate an overtaking maneuver as you now have a much better idea of not only who is behind you from the note of the engine, but where they are as well. No more missing the breaking point from looking behind me.
And now to the problems. OK I know that for £150, Turtle Beach should really have dealt with most of this during the R&D phase, but the point of this review is that with a little bit of care and some minor additional expense, you can solve these problems. I do agree with the reviews that say we shouldn?t have to do this though for £150. You decide if it?s worth it for you.

The fist flaw, and the most likely to be the deal-breaker for a lot of people is the reports of interference, or popping, crackling and cut-outs. There are varying reports and opinions of the cause, the most common being wi-fi interference as they share the 2.4GHz band most wireless routers use. I found that after about 1 hour of play after first using these, some of the popping and cut-outs started. It got worse after another hour. The first thing I did was to swap out the cheap batteries these headphones came with, and replaced with high-end 1000mAh rechargeable ones. The popping became GREATLY reduced, but not completely eliminated. Whilst wearing my headphones and leaning right over the router, it made no difference at all. No more or less interference. I then played some music through the xbox and completely shut off my router. I also removed the wireless N adapter fro the back of my Xbox. The popping continued! Again no more or less interference. I then moved the base away from my entertainment stand. The popping completely stopped! I have ordered a 5m USB extension cable + 5m TOSLINK cable for a total of £10, and now have the base away from all other electronics. It seems that the base unit extremely sensitive to all manor of electrical noise, not necessarily wi-fi. If you can accommodate a base location at least one meter away from your other electronics you should be ok. Make sure you use decent rechargeable batteries and keep them charged up too.
The second issue is the reported increase in ?hiss? when the chat cable is plugged in. I can confirm that yes, when you are in the lobby of MW2, or the xbox dashboard and plug the chat cable in, the hiss noise is very noticeable. However, once the game (in this case MW2) starts to load, it has almost completely gone. By the time you are in your game, and chatting with your team mates, the only noise comes from your team mates as they complain about becoming the victim of the dreaded speculative grenade.
The last problem is the chat cable itself. It very easily comes loose from the headphones. There are two potential fixes for this that I have found to work. Firstly, don?t plug the chat cable in as per the instructions. Do the opposite. Plug the ?L? shaped plug into the headphones, and the straight plug into the Xbox controller. Secondly, find a small rubber band! Tie one end around the end of the chat cable, and the other end around the base of the boom mic. This further counteracts the effects of gravity and movement. Yes I know we shouldn?t have to. But there you go. Ironically the connection for the boom mic is also a 2.5mm plug, yet is very securely locked into place in the headphones, cannot swivel once in place, and takes quite a pull to remove!
So, if you are prepared to buy a couple of extension cables, some decent batteries, and can find a small rubber band, these headphones are a fantastic buy.