Need to keep that gaming desk tidy? Does your cave seem cluttered? You’ll want to grab Turtle Beach’s latest offering – the Fuel Dual Controller Charging Station & Headset Stand, as not only does it ensure you’ve got a neat little spot to charge a couple of Xbox controllers, but it throws in a headset stand for good measure.
We’re well versed with docking stations, charging docks, battery packs and the like, and we love a good headset stand, ensuring that our delicate audio-givers aren’t just chucked willy-nilly on the sofa. But we’re not sure we’ve ever seen a pack which combines the two like the Turtle Beach Fuel Dual Controller Charging Station & Headset Stand for Xbox does. It’s a well considered pack, one that contains the kit required for the job at hand.
As you’d suspect from something called the Turtle Beach Fuel Dual Controller Charging Station & Headset Stand, there are two distinct elements to what is found in the box – you’ve got the Charging Station itself, capable of delivering power to two Xbox controllers, and you’ve got the separate Headset Stand.
It’s the Charging Station which is the main draw – mostly as you shouldn’t be paying some £30 odd for a metal stand to stick your headset on – and so it’s with that in which we’ll start.
Like many of the products that fill out the charging solutions market for Xbox players, the Turtle Beach Fuel Dual Controller Charging Stand is a big old slab of black plastic, one that has been designed to hold to Xbox controllers, powering them up when not in use.
This is one of the better looking options though, black all over with some flashy Turtle Beach logo sitting front and centre, accompanied by some small grey detailing on the sides. It’s a pretty short, fairly compact, little piece of kit, very much capable of sliding two Xbox controllers in place with little wastage. We like how it looks, how it feels in hand and how it holds our controllers.
Four small rubber feet are mounted to the bottom of the unit, whilst a USB-C port on the back provides the power. You can therefore power this either by making the most of the included USB-C to USB-A cable, attaching to your Xbox console, or – as we’ve preferred – but making use of any one of a plethora of USB-C cables that are found scattered around the place. We’ve mostly used our phone charger, for instance.
Two small connectors on the top of the device line up with the open battery covers on your controller (more on those in a bit), with well created slots holding the actual controllers in place easily. It really is a case of being able to throw your controller on in the most simple of ways.
The Charging Stand also comes with a little screen on the front, letting you know at a glance the status of your controllers. This screen brings up an amber controller symbol when charge is being inputted, whilst white signifies full charge and completion. Neither of the lights are too bright either – something that can be a pain with other chargers; we’re looking at you Venom, lighting things up like a Christmas tree.
Also appreciated is the fact that if there is no controller on the Charging Stand, no light or symbol is shown. Again, that fixes another pet hate of ours; something which annoyed on Gioteck’s recent DUO Charging Stand.
We’ve also been mighty impressed with how Turtle Beach have gone about implementation of the batteries and covers.
In the box you’ll find two battery packs, each of some 1200mAh in size, ensuring that you should have enough power across the two controllers for something like twenty-two hours of play.
Those batteries fit both older Xbox One controllers and newer Xbox Series X|S controllers. Further, the four covers that are thrown into the box cover both bases too; you’ll find two black covers for each of the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S controllers; the latter being those with their new and ‘improved’ tab positionings
Batteries and covers slide into place really well, installed and then uninstalled (if need be) in a matter of seconds. Perhaps it would have been nice to see a white battery cover or two included, but we’re not too fussed about that.
In all, as a standalone unit, the Turtle Beach Fuel Dual Controller Charging Stand is pretty much perfect. In fact, we’re thinking this is the one that we’ll be using going forward.
But then we’ve got that Headset Stand too. Honestly, out of the box you would expect this to in some way fit in nicely with the Charging Station, but it’s a completely separate, fully independent unit that can be placed anywhere on your desk or in your gaming room. The flexibility is nice, but we’re slightly concerned that Turtle Beach are marketing this wrong, with pretty much all press materials and marketing shouts pointing to this fitting into the dock. It doesn’t.
Granted, it does fit well underneath the Charging Station should you so wish, but we’ve preferred to have this simple Headset Stand running away from it, totally separate. It does that well.
But what is it? Well, if you thought the Charging Station itself was simple, this is even more so. A fairly hefty, but thin, metal base unit comes complete with a couple of vertical cylinders screwed in. These cylinders accommodate a basic metal stand, pushed in within a matter of seconds. This stand is slightly bent in design, with a horizontal top-end to ensure that any headset – ideally a Turtle Beach one like the Stealth 700 Gen 2 – can balance delicately on the top. Aside from a bit of Turtle Beach logo-ing on the base unit, there’s absolutely nothing else to speak of in terms of the Headset Stand itself. It stands, it holds a headset, it does what it needs to.
We can’t get excited by the Headset Stand by itself and we’re slightly disappointed that it doesn’t attach to the Charging Station in any way, but the two individual units go well together, both doing as you would expect of them.
We’d certainly pay the £30 for the Charging Station as it is, so it’s nice that Turtle Beach are throwing in a second element too, giving gamers somewhere to hang their headset whilst not gaming. But don’t go purchasing this for that Headset Stand itself – the main thrust of the pack is definitely within the Charging Station. And in those terms, the Turtle Beach Fuel Dual Controller Charging Station & Headset Stand for Xbox is something we can highly recommend, ensuring that you’ll rarely need to go without charge in your Xbox controllers.Â
Huge thanks go out to Turtle Beach for providing their Turtle Beach Fuel Dual Controller Charging Station & Headset Stand for Xbox for review. You’ll find it available over at Turtle Beach for around £29.99.
