Turtle Beach Recon 200 Gen 2 Gaming Headset Review

Performance

The headset hasn’t actually changed that much from the original, from what I can tell, it’s broadly the same hardware on the interior. A lot of the changes come from the glass friendly design, the new earpads, the slight revisions to the ergonomics and external design. That’s no bad thing though, it’s a welcome refresh to an already great product. The sound quality is still surprisingly excellent for this price range too. With the amp turned off, I love that the volume wheel on the headset still works. I can plug it into a mobile device, such as my Shield Tablet, or directly into a console controller 3.5mm jack and it all just works as a gaming headset should. The sound is balanced, and they can be plenty loud if your output device can drive them well enough.

However, flick that amp, and it’s just straight-up louder and bigger sounding. There’s a nice EQ profile that pushes more bass and treble without cutting the mids, just giving everything a bit more pop without sounding silly. It’s not a particularly “gamer” EQ either, it sounds great with movies and music too. Unfortunately, you can’t tinker with that profile, but honestly, I never felt the need. But yeah, it’s power amp on or off, that’s your option. I don’t have a PlayStation to test on, but interestingly, the PlayStation mode is noticeably louder than the Xbox mode, but otherwise, they sound the same to me. Perhaps one of our readers can explain why their volume may differ?

Overall though, the sound quality is great with the amp off, and even better with it on. The microphone monitoring is a nice addition, however, as you increase the volume of your game or music, it does tend to down it out and really only feels usable if your media is at lower volumes. However, for just straight-up video calls and chat, it’s actually very good and the microphone has a nice open and clear sound to it.