Turtle Beach offers an earful with M-series headphones

The Gadget Show  Friday 06 January 2012

Turtle Beach is getting in ahead of the crush of CES 2012 news releases by announcing not only updated gamer headsets in the form of the Ear Force X42, Ear Force X32, and Ear Force Z11 but also a brand spanking consumer range in the form of the Turtle Beach M-Series.

Turtle Beach are certainly among the gamers favourites when it comes to gaming headphones and and with the Ear Force X42, Ear Force X32, $160 and $100, respectively, we have updates that will appeal to those who want to game without wires.

Check out our review of the Turtle Beach Ear Force DSS

Both headsets come with 2.4GHz RF radio signals, working over dual-band frequencies of 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wireless LAN. Both come fitted with neat 50mm drivers and the over-the-ear design has been tweaked and refined. The Turtle Beach Ear Force X42 gets its higher cost courtesy of coming with support for Dolby Headphone for 7.1 virtual surround sound.

However, possibly of more interest is the news that Turtle Beach is reaching out to a more mainstream audience with the launch of the M-Series headphones, which are just as effective for music playback as they are for gaming.

These new ‘Mobile Lifestyle Headsets’ initially come in the form of three different models: the in-ear Turtle Beach M1 with 10mm drivers with neodymium magnets, the Turtle Beach M3 over the ear headphones with 40mm drivers, a fold-flat design and noise-isolating ear cups, while the Turtle Beach M5 offers up the same 40mm audio drives but come with noise-isolating ear cups instead.

What’s more, these wouldn’t be mainstream headphones if they weren’t designed to work with your smartphone, so you’ll find that inline controls and support for Android and iPhone smartphones come as standard.

Turtle Beach will be letting people get their hands on the new headphones for a demo at CES starting this weekend but we’ll have to wait for official word on when they’ll be available, along with UK pricing.

Turtle Beach and the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 headset