With the arrival of summer and its intense heat, long gaming sessions become essential to catch up on your backlog. With the Turtle Beach Atlas Air, the American brand offers here the first open-design headset with floating earcups. We are therefore here in front of a premium gaming headset emphasizing comfort and longevity. We tried it for more than two weeks, we can thus affirm that we are in front of one of the most complete and comfortable headsets of the year 2024.
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Design
At first glance, the appearance of the Turtle Beach Atlas Air may leave something to be desired. Its unsightly shapes and polyurethane structure don't really show it off. And yet, all these choices are assumed in order to emphasize lightness, flexibility and comfort. Indeed, the headset weighs only 301 grams (with the microphone), which makes it one of the lightest headsets on the market. The headband also has nothing to do with the standards of gaming headsets since we have here a floating headband covered with breathable mesh. The adjustment via the tabs and the velcro is super intuitive.
The Atlas Air should therefore fit all head sizes. Its memory foam cushions and open design allow it to be worn for hours without discomfort or overheating in the ears. For those who don't know what an open design is, it means that the earcups are designed to allow air and sound to flow freely through the earcups. The controls are intuitively laid out, including the volume dial cleverly integrated into the left earcup. This side also includes a power button, a button to activate Bluetooth 5.2, a 3.5mm audio port, a button to switch between Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz wireless connection, and a USB-C port for charging or wired use.
The Turtle Beach Atlas Air is thus very complete and that's the least we can expect from a headset at €179.99. It also benefits from a well-stocked packaging with a wireless UBS-A receiver, a removable detachable microphone, a 1.8 meter 3.5mm audio cable, a 1.8 meter USB-A to USB-C charging cable and a storage pouch.
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Performances
As we explained above, the open design also offers a better sound quality. This system allows for a more precise sound and eliminates unwanted sounds. The downside to this process is that it isolates less well than a closed headset. If you are on the street (via Bluetooth) or in a noisy environment, you will not be able to appreciate it to its full potential. The Atlas Air is equipped with 40 mm speakers and a frequency range of 20Hz to 40KHz, which allows it to offer undistorted bass and clear sound.
It shines particularly on PC, whether for gaming, listening to music or watching series, thanks to 24-bit sound and a sampling rate of 96 kHz. All this combined with support for Waves 3D audio (via PC software only), offers an incredible sound experience. Unless you are quite picky about the perception of sounds during competitive games, you can even do without the brand's “Superhuman Earing” mode which amplifies the mids and treble. If you get a level of precision equivalent to other gaming headsets in this range, the combination of an open design and floating earphones really makes a difference on games with very pronounced sound atmospheres.
This was particularly evident on titles like Baldur's Gate 3 Or Remnant II. It also passed the usual gaming tests with flying colors: Genshin Impact, Rocket League, Counter Strike-2 And Battlefield 2042. In addition, the headset is compatible with other platforms: PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series and mobiles. On the other hand, Xbox consoles are the only ones that require a wired connection to be used. Although the sound quality is appreciable, the Atlas Air is much more relevant on PC. This can do the trick if you are looking for hybrid use, on the other hand it will be better to turn to dedicated headsets if you play mainly on consoles. We have also tested the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 mainly intended for consoles and mobiles.
Software and autonomy
This year, Turtle Beach has completely renewed its software. The Turtle Beach Swarm 2, which succeeds the Roccat Swarm (Roccat being a subsidiary of Turtle Beach), centralizes all the devices in the same set. This is particularly practical, especially since the interface is more modern and much less austere than the Roccat Swarm. Each new connected device also includes a short tutorial explaining the main features.
You can customize the audio rendering via the equalizer or the Waves 3D modes (game, music or movie). The detachable microphone can also be adjusted via the software. Although this microphone, with its 16-bit bandwidth and a 32 kHz sampling rate, is not the best in its class, it is still more than enough to guarantee voice clarity during in-game or Discord communications.
As for the Turtle Beach Atlas Air's battery, it promises 50 hours of battery life on a full charge, a promise that we were able to verify after several days of continuous use without recharging. In addition, thanks to the fast charge, the headset is quickly ready to use for many more days.