Every holiday season, game consoles fly off the shelves. Given its popularity and recent price breaks, chances are good that someone on your holiday shopping list is getting an Xbox One. But what they may not be getting is the right chest of accessories to take their new toy to the next level. Extra controllers, rechargeable batteries, and an Xbox Live Gold card are all great ideas, but if you ask us, a quality gaming headset should be a top priority, and the Turtle Beach XO One is one of the best affordable choices on the market right now.
The little communication headset the Microsoft bundles with its Xbox One console is what we call a throw-away accessory. It does a bare minimum — usually not very well — at the lowest possible price, and costs the manufacturer next to nothing. In this case, the little communication headset will let gamers chat with their friends, but it does not play game audio and, frankly, it isn’t very comfortable for extended use.
Though the XO One is Turtle Beach’s “entry-level” gaming headset, it will outperform most contenders in the sound quality department alone (save, perhaps, Polk’s Striker series). Add on convenient features such as game/chat audio balance, bass boost, variable mic monitoring, and a detachable microphone, and you’ve got a high-value product on your ears.
