Turtle Beach Atlas 200 Review: It sounds better than $60

Turtle Beach's Atlas Air is one of the best gaming headsets we've reviewed — despite its relatively cheap-looking (and feeling) build. Turtle Beach's Atlas 200 has a very similar look and build — but with a price tag that matches.

Okay, they're not the same headset — far from it, in fact. The Turtle Beach Atlas 200 is the budget-friendly part of the Atlas lineup: a wired over-ear headset with a non-detachable cable and a non-detachable boom mic that costs just $60 (versus the Atlas Air's retail price of $179.99). It features the same design as the Atlas Air, with a lightweight plastic frame, a mesh suspension headband, and large, round over ear earcups that don't swivel and aren't height-adjustable. And, like the Atlas Air, it sounds... surprisingly good?

Again, it's not the same headset. At all. But all the things I had problems with in the Air are much more forgivable in a headset that's less than half the price — and the audio quality still managed to surprise me, so it's definitely worth a look. The Turtle Beach Atlas 200 is available now in black and white colorways for $59.99.

Design and Comfort of the Atlas 200

The Atlas 200 is a wired over-ear (circumaural) headset with a lightweight frame and a flip-to-mute boom mic. It looks pretty similar to the (much) pricier Turtle Beach Atlas Air — it has the same large, round earcups and lightweight plastic "floating" headband with a mesh-and-elastic-band suspension system. It is a closed-back headset, however, so it doesn't have the same "floating" earcups as the Atlas Air, but these two headsets look very similar considering the large difference in price.

The Atlas 200 features an all-black design with silver accents — the headset is made of matte black plastic, with "Turtle Beach" printed above each earcup and the brand's palm tree logo embossed on the sideplates. The earcups tilt but do not swivel, nor are they height-adjustable — the headset has a "floating" headband design with an elastic band encased in mesh that keeps it from touching your head (you can adjust the fit by tightening or loosening the elastic band). Of course, this works best if your head is smaller than the headset's maximum size, since there's no padding once the elastic band is at its loosest. The headband measures approximately 12 inches (304.8mm) long, so you'll want at least an inch (or more) of space, I think. Also, the elastic band is adjusted via velcro — the hooks of which face inside the headset. I didn't have any issues while testing, but I can see hair getting caught if you're not careful.

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Despite its relatively limited adjustment options, the Atlas 200 is a very comfortable headset if it fits your head. It's extremely lightweight, weighing just 9.88 ounces (280g). It's not the lightest headset we've ever tested — the similarly-priced SteelSeries Arctis Nova 1 weighs just 8.3 ounces (235g) — but it's close. It's also lighter than the Atlas Air (10.61oz. / 301g). Ultra light weight aside, the Atlas 200's headband is extremely flexible, which sort of makes up for the fact the earcups don't swivel. It also seems to have identical earpads to the Atlas Air: moderately thick foam padding covered in slippery "athletic weave" fabric, with Turtle Beach's "ProSpecs" dual-foam (basically: the foam is softer around the front, so the headset is more comfortable for users with glasses). The earpads are large and roomy and do a decent job of passively cancelling noise.

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The Atlas 200 is a budget-priced wired headset, so it has just one control: a volume wheel on the left earcup. The left earcup also houses the flip-to-mute boom microphone, as well as the non-detachable 6.5-foot (2m) rubber 3.5mm 4-pole audio cable. The only other accessory in the box is a 3.5mm-to-USB-A audio adapter for plugging the headset into your PC.

Specs

Audio Performance of the Atlas 200

The Atlas 200 sports Turtle Beach's 50mm "Nanoclear" dynamic drivers, which have a standard frequency response range of 20 - 20,000 Hz. The headset plugs into any device with a standard 3.5mm audio jack, and it comes with a 3.5mm-to-USB-A adapter dongle that is also a DAC. If you plug the headset directly into your PC (or any other device), it will use your PC's (or device's) built-in soundcard, and this will affect the audio quality. The included USB adapter / DAC functions as a sound card, allowing for (probably) better audio than you'd get from whatever built-in sound card you have. Specifically, the Atlas 200's adapter allows for 24-bit / 96 kHz audio, and also lets you access a handful of fancy Turtle Beach software features in its Swarm app: Waves 3D audio, "Superhuman Hearing," and the customizable 10-band EQ.

Gaming sounds very good on the Atlas 200 when it's plugged in via the USB adapter. Audio performance is pretty impressive all around for the price point: The Atlas 200 features fairly powerful bass and full, rounded mid-tones, and highs are present but not too shrill. I could hear a decent amount of detail in games like Where Winds Meet and Uncharted 4, and I especially liked how large the soundstage sounded — almost like an open-back headset, though the Atlas 200 is closed-back. It wasn't quite as good as the sound on the Atlas Air, but it had a similarly open, airy feel in general.

Music also sounded very good on the Atlas 200 — while I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a headset solely for listening to music, I enjoyed listening to music on the Atlas 200. As I mentioned earlier, the bass was pretty powerful in games and it was perhaps a little too powerful in some of my bass-heavy songs (like Kaskade's POW POW POW), overwhelming the rest of the score. But midtones were also nicely present, and the open, dynamic soundstage made listening fun.

I did have some trouble with getting the 3.5mm plug to work perfectly with the adapter — even though it was fully plugged in, I had to wiggle it around a few times during my testing to get the sound flowing correctly. This does concern me a little, as the Atlas 200's wire is non-detachable and is a pretty basic rubber cable. So if anything goes wrong with the cable, you're basically going to need to buy a new headset. It's not a great sign if there are connection problems out of the box.

Also, while the Atlas 200 is not an open-back headset (like the Atlas Air), it does have a pretty open soundstage. However, it also has a decent amount of sound leakage for those around you — this is probably not a great headset if you've got sleeping roommates or family members, or if you're otherwise trying to keep your gaming and/or music contained.

Microphone of the Atlas 200

The Atlas 200 has a non-detachable uni-directional boom microphone that sits on the end of a flexible gooseneck arm. The mic has Turtle Beach's signature flip-to-mute feature, with three positions — flipping it up halfway still mutes it, so you don't have to fully stow it away every time.

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While the microphone is a pretty standard headset mic, I was impressed with the quality given the headset's price. My voice was loud and clear to everyone I spoke to, with minimal background noise from my PC fans (though it was pretty easy to hear more erratic background noise, such as typing). I didn't sound like I was ready to start a podcast or anything, but people could hear and understand me without issue, and the flip-to-mute worked very well — what more do you need from a $60 headset? You can also tweak the mic's sound in Turtle Beach's Swarm software, though it doesn't have any extra settings for noise suppression.

Features and Software of the Atlas 200

The Atlas 200 works with Swarm, Turtle Beach's universal peripheral software. There isn't too much you can customize on the Atlas 200, but you can also use the software to update the firmware for both the headset and the USB adapter.

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The Atlas 200 setup in Swarm is pretty straightforward. There are a handful of standard controls — volume, mic mute, mic sensitivity, game/chat mix, and mic monitoring — as well as some extra features you can toggle, such as Turtle Beach's "Superhuman Hearing" (amplifies footsteps, weapon noises, etc.), chat boost (increases chat volume when in-game audio volume increases), and Waves 3D (virtual surround/spatial sound). The software also has a customizable 10-band equalizer for both the audio and the mic (with a handful of preloaded presets to get you started).

Bottom Line

The Turtle Beach Atlas 200 is definitely a budget headset — but it doesn't look or feel much cheaper than Turtle Beach's $180 Atlas Air (although that might be more of a ding to the Atlas Air than it is a boon to the Atlas 200). There are a few caveats, but if you're looking for a wired PC headset and you don't have a large head, the Atlas 200 is a pretty impressive fpr $60, especially if you use it with the included USB-adapter-slash-DAC. The non-detachable wire is a little concerning, but if you can keep your cables organized and out of the way of pets, children, and wayward chair casters, you shouldn't have problems.