Astro A40 2011 or Turtle Beach PX5 : elfin beauty or multifunctional beast?

Story old as time......

Thegameveda needs a new gaming wireless headset ... my ageing but awesome ( 17 hours game time) Motorola S805s have literally biodegraded in my hands ... they actually fell apart piece by lego sized piece...like some plastic eating nanites chewed through them .. the cones and Bluetooth still function .. just the band has disintegrated ....

A piece of your favourite hardware dieing of course makes an excellent excuse to look at some upgrades... And  so I take to the web and find the awesomely expensive Astro A40 2011 edition and the now a lot less expensive Turtle Beach PX5

Hands down the Turtle Beach PX5 has so many more options to mess with wireless sounds 2 Bluetooth radios , and 7.1 2.4 Ghz wireless

And the beauty and mountain of kudos on which the Astro A40 proudly sneers down from on all rivals is also quite the deal clincher ... most Steve Jobsian in fact ...

But I come at this dilemma with years of experience , whilst I  loved the freedom and 17 hour battery life of the S805s , as the world moved to wireless broadband I started to notice , cut offs , playing with consoles , external Bluetooth transmitters and downloading on iPad , PCs ,laptops and tablets which is mostly where thegameveda lives now all produced cut outs or complete drop outs .. downloading a Steam game on a tablet or PC , or a game on PSN or Xbox live would kill the music or sound stream to the Bluetooth receiver

So when I read the official blurb re possible interference of  the 2.4ghz speed of the wireless used on the otherwise excellent Turtle Beach PX5s coupled with the fact that it also has 2 Bluetooth radios .... a nightmare scenario of hours spent pairing , unpairing , messing with router settings followed , plus the certain knowledge that the number of wireless devices we use will increase with time really made the decision easy for thegameveda...

So it is not the kool aesthetics ,or the chic boxing , or the heaps of praise that lead me to make my choice : which as you probably guessed is going to be the Astro A40 2011 edition

7.1 sound in Bluetooth headsets will arrive for $99 this September in the Official Sony PS3 7.1 Bluetooth headset , cannot wait to connect it to my mix amp and see what happens .


It is the wise choice of the developers of the Astro A40 2011 edition  to use a 5.8 ghz frequency , and all that experience of Bluetooth vs Wireless N Broadband  that made me part with what now seems far too much money . 

Full review when I have finished cracking my piggy bank collection and have the Astros in hand...


In the USA 

  














and in Blighty : if you reside in a wired Internet gaming household : get the PX5 from Game or

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Turtle Beach Ear Force PX5 Wireless Headset for £143.20 ! Great but isn`t that your Astro A40 money?

So  I am the happy recipient of a very expensive some may venture too expensive Astro A40 gaming sound system ... which I talked myself into getting over the PX5 ... and boy am I glad because the PX5 just dropped a whopping £50 in price ..... 

The bane of all wireless headsets is interference with your internet connection , this is one of many reasons Apple pulled Bluetooth headsets from its stores , you can pair one with your iPad 2 , but watch for drop outs as you download an app, the same happens on PC , PS3 or 360  , this is also the reason why Sony ..ok ..hopefully why Sony is bringing it`s official PS3 Bluetooth headphones late to the game and A2DP is missing on the PS3 since it launched... 


If you need a Bluetooth 7.1 headset that does not kill your Internet connection then wait a few weeks till Sony brings out theirs ( which may still revert to using RF for 7.1 and Bluetooth for chat and A2DP) ..it is promised at $99 which will likely translate to £99 in olde world money. The thing that turned me off the PX5 is the 2.4ghz frequency it uses.. mixed with Bluetooth radios . I know from experience all these things interfere with wireless N ( the ONLY source of the Spice Melange) and having used the Astro A40s for all of one day ..I have literally been floored by them ...falling out of my chair every time something shot by my head ... or somebody shot me ( in gameland)


So whilst the PX5 may now be a budget wireless headset compared to Astros , there be a darn good reason for that .... and that is highly likely to be the design choice to include 3 radios that interfere with your favourite wireless internet connection  and run at the same frequency as your beloved Xbox 360 slim joypad... and remember not to walk by your microwave with them switched on..... oh and of course there may also be a new version on the way to coincide with one of the AAA releases due this Autumn.....


thegameveda is currently testing the Astro A40 2011 Edition to see if there are drop outs whilst downloading and streaming using wirless N , but since I was having too much fun opening and closing the Bento styled box of the mix amp... the results  will have to wait ...


this content is © and originated from thegameveda http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/  if you are reading it from any other site that has not provided a link back it has been leached