Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 (2011) vs Astro A40

The Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 makes for a good, if unremarkable, Gaming Headset for people with a $180 budget.

The Astro A40, however, is merely mediocre at its $115 asking price, when compared to similarly priced products, and won't satisfy the needs of most people.

In either case, we suggest that you first take a look at some other options at the $180 and $85 price points before committing to one of these - it's likely that you'll be able to find some better alternatives.

If you're still interested in learning more about the Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 and Astro A40, however, we wrote a summary of what we could find about them:

The Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 managed to earn a spot in roundups from two sources that are known for their trustworthy review methodology - Head-fi and Tom's Guide - but fell short of making it to the top of their lists.

As for the Astro A40 - SoundGuys, a source that conducts reliable hands-on testing, has featured it in its Astro A40 TR review roundup. However, it didn't make it to any of the top spots.

We couldn't find any sources that tested both of these Gaming Headsets, so we only analyzed how they performed in reviews from different sites.

We first examined which sources rated each of these best and found that the Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 got its highest, 8.4, rating from Head-fi, while the Astro A40 earned its best, 7.4, score from SoundGuys.

Lastly, we averaged out all of the reviews scores that we could find on these two products and compared them to other Gaming Headsets on the market. We learned that both of them performed far better than most of their competitors - the overall review average earned by Gaming Headsets being 7.2 out of 10, whereas the Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 and Astro A40 managed averages of 7.7 and 7.4 points, respectively.

Due to the difference in their prices, however, it's important to keep in mind that a direct Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 vs. Astro A40 comparison might not be entirely fair - some sources don't take value for money into account when assigning their scores and therefore have a tendency to rate more premium products better.