The Atlas Air Headset from Turtle Beach is the first open-back design to include the world’s first floating earcup. Built from the ground up for comfort and longevity, Atlas Air aims to offer a premium gaming experience for PC and console gamers alike. Sporting 40mm drivers, impressive 24-bit Audio, 50-hour battery life and a noise-reducing, detachable microphone, Turtle Beach holds nothing back with its release of the Atlas Air.
Turtle Beach has included some great components to accompany the Atlas Air as well. In the box, along with the headset, is a carrying bag, a detachable mic with windscreen, a USB Type-A dongle, a 1.8m USB Type-C to Type-A adapter for charging and a 1.88m 3.5mm audio cable. Each element included feels premium thanks to such design choices as braided cables and included volume control on the audio cable.
A pioneer in gaming headset design, Turtle Beach has once again pushed the bar forward with the release of the Atlas Air. Featuring what Turtle Beach calls the floating earcup, the Atlas Air offers an impressive amount of flexibility in the earcup, allowing it to adapt and fit your head comfortably no matter the position. In essence, three rubber bands connect the earcup to the headband, giving each earcup an impressive amount of flexibility to move as needed. The result is an incredibly comfortable wearing experience.
“When all put together, the Atlas Air is the most comfortable and impressively light gaming headset (weighing only 301g) that I’ve tested.”
When paired with soft memory foam earcup cushions and an open-back design, the floating earcup is one of the most unique and adjustable earcups on the market. Turtle Beach didn’t stop here, however; the headband features an adjustable floating mesh band that is breathable and comfortable when resting atop your head. While most headbands include some form of cushion, the Atlas Air mesh back headband design is by far a superior concept.
When all put together, the Atlas Air is the most comfortable and impressively light gaming headset (weighing only 301g) that I’ve tested. Even over long gaming sessions, thanks to the aforementioned design, the Atlas Air is breathable and allows hot air generated from the enclosed earcups to dissipate away from the head, making the whole experience much more enjoyable.
The Atlas Air also includes a volume control dial that is cleverly designed to blend into the left earcup. This simple control allows for easy volume adjustments on the fly. Additionally, users will find a mode switch, power, Bluetooth sync and USB Type-C connections all discreetly tucked along the bottom of the left earcup. Leveraging its signature flip-to-mute mic design, the Atlas comes equipped with a fairly impressive broadcasting mic.
Shifting from design to tech specs, the flip-to-mute detachable mic supports a 16-bit, 32kHz sampling rate with a uni-directional pickup pattern. This helps reduce overall background noise while also focusing on directional vocal patterns. In practice, the Atlas Air microphone provides a solid audio capture experience. Even with a noise gate off, the Atlas Air did a solid job of activating only when it registers vocals.
As for the overall quality of the audio capture, it is clear and easy to understand. It does suffer a bit from minor artifacts in the capture, much like most headset mics. The Atlas Air can be managed when connected to a PC, and audio settings can be adjusted thanks to Swarm II, Turtle Beach’s in-house device management software. This allows for additional tweaks to the mic settings, such as gate, monitoring and gain. For those wanting a little more control over their mic output, thanks to Swarm II, you will have access to a 10-band EQ module to adjust to your desired output.
The Atlas Air features 40mm high-precision drivers for audio reproduction. As with most gaming headsets, these include a driver frequency response of 20Hz-40kHz. In frequency tests, the Atlas Air performs exceptionally well. The low-end frequencies were clean for the most part, with some slight distortions in the 60Hz and 40Hz range. As for the mid and high-end, there weren’t any notable distortions.
“As for the overall quality of the audio capture, it is clear and easy to understand.”
Impressively, when connected to a PC, the Atlas Air can produce 24-bit Resolution audio with a 96kHz sampling rate. This sample rate, along with support for Waves 3D audio (PC only) results, is an incredible audio experience. Gaming audio is incredibly immersive with rich, robust low end while still maintaining crystal clear mids and high end. While the Atlas Air does support Turtle Beach’s SuperHuman Hearing Mode (it essentially boots the mids and highs to a near-ridiculous amount), I never felt it was needed. The audio produced with the default profile is exceptional.
As for music and video, Atlas Air delivers once again. Testing with one of my favourite tracks, Hans Zimmer’s The Dark Knight Melody, the audio reproduction is beautiful. Instruments were faithfully reproduced, and everything was crystal clear. As for video audio, the vocals are clean and not overwhelmed by musical scores and sound effects. For those wanting a bit more control over the audio mix, thanks to the aforementioned Swarm II, PC users will have full access to 10-band EQ. This allows for fine-tuning of the overall mix in real time.
While the included 2.4 GHz dongle allows for connection to PC, Playstation and Nintendo Switch, the Atlas Air also features Bluetooth support for iOS, Android and Switch along with a wired mode for all of the above along with Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. Thanks to the mode switch, jumping between wireless and Bluetooth is quick and painless. As for connecting to Bluetooth devices, the Atlas Air is quick to be recognized and paired with. Once paired, clicking the mode switch allows you to seamlessly switch between wireless and Bluetooth mode.
The Atlas Air also includes an 800mAh lithium polymer battery rated for 50 hours. While there hasn’t been time to test to that full extent, in the 10 hours of use the batteries are still holding strong at just over 80%. There should be no issues getting several days out of the Atlas on a single charge.
The Atlas Air from Turtle Beach is an exceptional gaming headset. With a host of impressive components and smart, innovative design the Atlas Air sets a new gold standard for comfort and audio quality. While there are some slight distortions in the low end, and the mic does produce minor artifacts when capturing, the overall quality of audio reproduction is stellar. Thanks to Swarm II, users have an exceptional amount of control over their listening experience. If you are in the market for a new gaming headset, the Atlas Air doesn’t disappoint.
- Exceptional Audio from Hand-Selected 50mm Nanoclear Drivers
- Unrivaled, Adjustable Active Noise Cancellation
