Turtle Beach Ear Force Z11 PC Gaming Headset

No I don't get paid. These are great for the price point.

This is an excellent headset for its price, the best I have used for its price bracket. I have used extensivley the Turtle Beach X12, the Logitech Clearchat Premium, the Microsoft Lifechat lx-3000, and this Z11.Why is it the best?The second best are the X12's which are similar. The x12s are designed mainly for console gaming, but they work great on the PC too. The main issue I had with the X12's were that they were amplified which I personally do not like. There is a constant quiet hissing noise in the background due to the amplifier, which may not bother other people. The Z11's get louder then my ears can handle so amplification is not needed.The Microsoft Lifechat lx-3000's were ok. They hurt my ears after about an hour on my head and the earcups did not breathe very good. The earcups like to popoff the headband sometimes too, but it was never an issue popping them back on. Also they had a very strange issue. They had a strange limited volume range. If I moved the volume slider all the way down (doesn't matter the computer or operating system I tried this on) a normal headset would be completely quiet, but these seemed like all the way down was around %33 volume which is strange.The Logitech Clearchat Premiums were crap and I do not reccomend them. One of the earcups snapped off. They sounded worse then the other headsets, and they made my ears feel terrible. I do not reccomend these. The price was right however.The Z11s are the best I have used for cheap headsets. They are the most comfortable by far (same as x12's). More importantly they are not amplified, so there is no hisssssss in the background constantly (and I think they sound a little more pure for some reason). They also use a 3.5mm jack instead of USB which I personally prefer. There is a handly volume dial on the cord. USB headsets have a similar volume dial, but it just controls the windows volume slider via software. This gives ultimatley the same effect, but the hardware dial on the z11's is faster, more accurate, and can be fine tuned better. These also have the 4-conductor 3.5mm that can be used it laptops and Ipads that use it. The mic sounds great, no issue there. It has excellent sound quality with great bass, better then the others I have mentioned.These are not 100+ dollar premium headsets. They are built cheaply to reduce costs. However I do not ever feel like I will break these. The build quality is perfectly sufficient. Overall these are the best bang for your buck if you want a good set of headphones for gaming, don't want to spend a lot, and don't want to worry a nice set getting destroyed on accident.

The audio quality of the headset is pretty good, overall. Sounds are crisp, bass is plenty audible, and overall I was happy with the headphones themselves. Even the mic is pretty good for what it is. Seeing as I now mostly use a condenser mic, my standards are a bit weird with mics, but for a headset mic, it does its job pretty well.As far as comfort goes, these, again, do a decent job. They're not the most comfortable headphones I've worn, but they never really caused a problem for me. I would suggest trying to find a pair to try on before you buy them, though, as they won't properly fit all people.I do have one major problem with the Z11 - they're not built to last. When I first got them, they worked out of the box just fine, but within days wires had come loose around the volume control and connections became shoddy at the quad-pole to dual di-pole connector. This wasn't with ridiculous usage, either - in fact, I didn't even move around that much while they were in use, which makes me wonder how they were damaged at all. Regardless, I contacted support, shipped them back, and got another pair without any hassle. Good ending, right? I thought so too...The second pair lasted me quite a bit longer - it was several months before I had any problems, but when I did, it was the same two problems - loose wires around volume control and a shoddy connection around the adapter. I made do with it for a long time, using various configurations of tape and ties to keep the connections and wires in place, but eventually I became frustrated to the point of simply trashing the headset in favor of an entirely different setup - a USB condenser mic and some high-end headphones. Being a bit of an audiophile, perhaps I should've done that at first, but of well...If you're looking for a nice headset, this isn't a terrible choice, but I would suggest looking at what Logitech has to offer before you make your decision - the G230 and the G430 are both very solid headsets, and in my experience with having them, neither have given me any problems so far.