The Atlas Air is nowhere near as impressive on the exterior when it’s out of the box. It is an open-back wireless gaming headset with more emphasis on its weight, which gives it such a minimal design. It weighs a mere 301 grams, and compared to some of the competitors in this bracket, it doesn’t feel nearly as luxurious in one’s hand as a prized possession might; instead, it feels like a mallet.
Don’t expect fancy swivel cups with joints that will likely wear in a couple of years: this thing feels like you could pull it out with a snap band, you know, snap snap. Fortunately, massive-heads people, here’s some good news regarding the Sackler family’s decision to step down. Known klutzes, shovers, and pushers could find this useful.
The retirees’ homepage follows this rational utilitarian thinking. The left cup and a huge volume wheel make it impossible to unpair your headset or switch to Bluetooth modes as you try to adjust the volume. The microphone is a pull-back-to-mute design, and I presume no one would frown at the straightforwardness of this idea.
On top of the Liberate, in addition to the headphone’s power switch and Bluetooth or wireless connections controls, there’s also a power indicator light that blinks when the battery is low. The battery it carries is said to last for up to 50 hours, and I only needed to recharge the smartphone twice in three weeks.
The whole impression is of a headset that is going to function. It has a clean design, and although the polyurethane shell does not give a luxurious feel to the hand, one can be offended by its headband being a flexible mesh. It is not cheap, as one may fathom, until one gets to value the whole affair. This band is extendable with Velcro and is most likely the heaviest factor in Atlas Air’s lightness and its sublime comfort, even with hours of gaming in the chair.
Describing the ‘comfort’ objective with headsets is always tricky because much depends on the size of the skull and one’s usage of the piece. However, as a big skull man using this for 4 hours plus each session while doing this review, I don’t think I have ever felt so constrained.
I mean, how far do these cans extend from the infrastructure underneath? The distance between these cushions is 300 mm:
Turtle Beach Atlas Air
The memory foam cushioned cups ‘float’, which means they are not part of the band but are held in place by twelve elastic bands. This must, of course, be seen to enhance the stretchability of the unit as a whole, as can be further seen in the following figure. Cleverly fastening a headset’s two most critical parts may sound questionable in concept.
I suppose how long-term Atlas Air does here remains to be seen, but it seems far more secure than the cups, which swivel on the band or are attached to it via usually slim metal pins. Based on these principles, I’ve had headphones that cost more than twice as much as the Atlas Air shatter after six months of use; maybe some creativity is required in this case.
In the three weeks I spent using this thing for review—both at my desk gaming and also using the headphones for walking and commuting—the Atlas Air’s featherweight comfort surprised me. It has its other advantages, but oh boy, does this thing love to disappear as soon as you put it on your head.
But that is one of the key points in Atlas Air’s selling proposition; the other is its audio performance capabilities. It is, therefore, not surpris¬ing to see half of the contenders for the title of the best audiophile headphones for gaming are open back. Remember that list is also for ” headphones, “not gaming headsets. They form a fairly small part of the demand, and the problems that such interfaces define are too prohibitive to be incorporated into a device specifically built for gaming.
This type of headphones seeks to provide better sound output by eliminating the back side of the speaker enclosure, which produces stray sound resulting from a resonating speaker enclosure. Of course, it sounds more closely to the original—almost at the level of monitoring headphones—but there is an issue of crosstalk, which, under this design principle, can not be eliminated and thwarts one of the primary purposes of headset use.
But it does exist, and while anyone can hear it with their own ears, it may take an audiophile to either complain or not give a damn. Playing Animal Well on my HyperX Cloud III—a headset I use a lot because it’s always on my desk—I was impressed by the dank, subterranean atmosphere: the complex society teemed with an almost overwhelming, threatening undertone.
The game’s ambiance changed when you switched to the Atlas Air: the ooze became more detailed. Some forms of coos and cries otherwise drowned by deeper pitches could be heard far in the distance. It was not a broth of looming suspense that I was teleported into but a subtextual realm where I was placed. Actually, I was in the well.
When closed-back headphones are working, that’s exactly the difference that one should expect. However, one should also expect the sound that both emits and lets in due to the opening at the rear part. This can be a concern at low volumes.
However, I was only especially bothered by seepage while using the Atlas Air for a purpose it wasn’t expressly designed for going for a stroll in a parking zone while walking while listening to audiocassettes. Since it has Bluetooth here (it has a 2.4GHz wireless dongle, which is actually better for gaming, and a 3.5mm jack for the dinosaurs),
it may be useful to think of the Atlas Air as a sort of wireless headset on the go as well as an actual gaming one. However, for that use scenario, this will undoubtedly fall short of a mid-range pair of headphones with active noise cancellation (ANC) capabilities: Open-back and ANC are
As Turtle Beach puts it, this is the first wireless open-back headset “for PC.” Of course, it is not the first open-back gaming headset—I reviewed this Audio-Technica model a few years back—but the combination of wireless and open-back is apparently here for the first time. In general, for an open-back user like me, this combination is very welcome, despite the inevitable downside that the style brings.
