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One of the biggest challenges as a gamer is staying comfortable as the hours go by. Thegaming chairgets hard on your back, your eyes start to burn after hours of staring at a screen, and enough smashing away at a keyboard and mouse earns you soreness in the wrists and hands, too. It’s even worse with headsets; the pain brought on by having something clamped onto your skull is slow, but inevitable.
Sometimes, however, something different comes along: the rare comfortable gaming headset. It has to cater to your ears, minimizing the pain and sweat that comes from long gaming sessions, and it has to discourage headaches even as the hours of play go by. One of Turtle Beach’s new gaming headsets, the Atlas Air, is one such rare headset that gamers can use with ease, match after match.
Turtle Beach Atlas Air
Natural sound, natural fit
The Turtle Beach Atlas Air is a great budget-friendly open-backed headset for gamers. It’s extraordinarily comfortable, even when worn for hours at a time, and the battery life outpaces many competitors. There are a number of other features to enjoy, including a low-latency wireless connection, and support via Turtle Beach’s Swarm II software.
What’s in the box?
The Atlas Air ships with everything you need to get started. There’s the detachable microphone and windscreen, plus a 5.9-foot-long audio cable (USB-A to 3.5 mm). The charging cable is the same length, and uses a USB-C connection on the headphone side.
We also get the USB-A wireless dongle, the quick start guide, and a soft carrying pouch.
Design and comfort
This headset’s design can be best described as durable, yet flexible. Without any RGB accents or color variations, the all-black headset is simple and understated. Even the Turtle Beach logos on either side are devoid of their famous purple hue. (There are some gorgeous modular replacement packs available, though, to add pink, blue, or Turtle Beach purple accents to the Atlas Air.) Its plastic chassis doesn’t exude the feel of a premium build, but that doesn’t mean the Atlas Air feels cheaply made, either.
The Turtle Beach Atlas Air has two standout features: its open-backed ear can approach, and the mesh net situated on the headset’s band. Because of this net, the headset “floats” when worn, instead of pressing all of its weight firmly down on the crown. The suspension of this mesh piece is adjustable via Velcro tabs on either side. Despite initial skepticism, the relief provided by the mesh suspension was noticeable and immediate.
The Atlas Air’s open-backed nature is evident through the visible grilles on each earpiece. These open grilles allow more air passage through the headset, which changes the overall sound – but more on that later.
Let’s look closer at the ear can structure. There’s thick, plush memory foam cushions, encased in a standard athletic weave material. These cushions were, for the most part, plenty enjoyable to wear, and they don’t hang on to body heat as many headset cushions do. The earpieces are round in shape, which suits some gamers, but if you’ve preferred oval-shaped cans in the past, take note that these may not create a perfect seal or provide the same comfort.
The microphone attaches to the left earpiece, and flips up to mute. Also on the left earpiece is the control suite, where you’ll find the Bluetooth button, the USB-C power port, the 3.5mm wired audio connection, a QuickSwitch button to change between the wireless transmitter and Bluetooth, and the power button. The outer piece of the left ear can spins to control volume. This is an especially appreciated feature; it’s always nice to have easy-to-find volume controls, rather than fumbling with a crowded control panel.
Performance
Overall, the Turtle Beach Atlas Air performs well even for gamers with a diverse library of titles. It was tested in co-op and online play, as well as solo play, with a wide variety of games, including:Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077,andCall of Duty: Warzone.
Microphone
Turtle Beach’s Atlas Air has several remarkable hardware features, starting with the microphone. The mic arm is flexible, allowing users to bend the piece closer to their mouths, unlike with Turtle Beach’s other new headset, theStealth 600 Gen 3.
The mic offers impressively sharp clarity, even without an added windscreen. Gaming headset mics have fallen short in the past, and in this regard, the Atlas Air is a clear standout. While firsthand testing found that the microphone’s sensitivity was perfectly usable right out of the box, Swarm II provides greater user control over microphone sensitivity.
Battery
Second on the list of the Atlas Air’s worthwhile hardware features is its battery. Turtle Beach claims that the Atlas Air has 50 hours of battery life under the hood; this spec was reinforced throughout the headset’s testing period, and even proved to be an underestimation, as the battery often did not fully die until about the 55-hour mark.
Charging times meet expectations. The headset reaches a full charge in less than three hours.
Sound
Now, for the sound quality. The open-backed performance, and likely one of the primary reasons you’re considering the Atlas Air. An open-backed headset like Turtle Beach’s creates a more spacious, balanced sound stage than a closed-back headset.
In layman’s terms, when using the Atlas Air, a game’s audio sounds more natural, its echoes and reverberations and perceived distances more similar to what they would be in a real-life situation. Footsteps echoing in an empty warehouse, the staccato of gunfire from a distance, thunder – all examples of noises that the Atlas Air brought a new sense of balance and realism to. The headset’s spatial audio does a nice job of adding to this realism; similar features, whether deemed spatial audio or 3D sound, are often distracting on gaming headsets, but worked well on the Atlas Air.
There are two sides to every coin, however. The Atlas Air was primarily used in a quiet gaming space, where there was minimal environmental noise. When that would change – when a dog barked, the doorbell rang, or a hungry five-year-old came soliciting snacks – the noise infiltrated the Atlas Airs much easier than it would, for example, a noise-cancelling headset from Bose, Sony, Beyerdynamic, or Razer. Still keeping in mind that this is by design with open-backed headphones, it’s something that may thwart some shoppers from the Atlas Air, such as people who have roommates or who game on a noisy commute.
Additionally, since this open-back headset doesn’t quite hit low-frequency sounds as well as closed-back headsets do, the Atlas Air isn’t what we’d recommend for shoppers looking for a music-first headset. Bassy notes are a touch soft and weak; it’s not all that noticeable with gaming, but is with regular music listening.
Should you buy it?
Turtle Beach’s first open-backed gaming headset is a great choice if your head or ears ache after an hour or two of gaming. The “floating” design genuinely reduces strain and pressure and, combined with a flexible enough headband to fit on any player, leads to lasting comfort even for gamers prone to head pain because of headsets.
Plus, at $180, the Atlas Air is incredibly fairly priced. It reflects Turtle Beach’s lasting reputation as a reputable, high-quality gaming brand that doesn’t skimp on its peripherals but also doesn’t demand a premium for them.
However, if ultra-isolation and best-in-class sound cancellation is a priority, then the Atlas Air isn’t the best option for you. Further, open-backed headsets aren’t the best option for you. These cans don’t produce the same tight-sealed, ultra-close feeling as, for example, a Sony or Bose headset. The Atlas Air doesn’t cater to the same music lovers that Sony and Bose headphones do. If you’re looking to try something different from the traditional gaming headset, whether to try out a new audio style or to get a more comfortable fit, the Atlas Air is certainly worth consideration.
Similar products
Open-backed gaming headsets aren’t quite in the mainstream yet, but there are a few to peruse if you’d like to shop other options.
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