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Amano owner Savor reports loss as economic pressures take bite out of earnings
The hospitality group is positioning itself for a strong recovery as conditions improve.

Turtle Beach Stealth 500 review: Don’t underestimate this budget headset
At a glanceExpert's Rating ProsAudio tuned for a variety of game genresIncredibly lightweight with almost no clamp pressureGood selection of controls for such an inexpensive headsetConsThe cups don’t swivelThere’s no adjustability in the main headbandThe headband is made from plastic rather than metalOur VerdictTurtle Beach’s entry-level Stealth 500 gaming headset sounds great and is exceptionally lightweight and budget friendly. Best Prices Today: Turtle Beach Stealth 500 Retailer Price $79.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 is an interesting proposition. Being an entry-level gaming headset in Turtle Beach’s new lineup, its main point of difference to the more premium Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 3 is its more modest design that slims down on some of the former’s fancy features and materials. That being the case, only $20 separates the pair at the checkout. While that almost negligible price difference may entice many gamers to take the plunge on the more premium device, my playtesting revealed a bunch of good reasons to pocket the $20 and go for the Stealth 500 instead. One is that it’s by far the lighter headset. Another is it has an almost non-existent clamp pressure for superior comfort. It also has more premium-feeling leatherette earcups and its 40mm audio drivers deliver an unpretentious sound that’s not too overzealous. Read on to find out more… Turtle Beach Stealth 500: Design and build Being a step down in price from the Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 3, the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 does slim down on some of the exceptional value I saw in the former. That’s not so much a reflection of any failings in the Stealth 500 as it is an indication of the excellent value in the sub-$100 Turtle Beach Stealth 600 Gen 3, which has a generous set of features for its price — and great audio to boot. The Stealth 500 was quite well suited to games other than FPS games, so playing RGPs and adventure games with these cans on was particularly an experience to savor… The good news is that most of those compromises are limited to the design and the materials used in the Stealth 500’s band and cups rather than the controls, which incidentally are the same as its pricier sibling. You still get a mic-monitoring wheel, volume wheel and connectivity button, as well as a flip-to-mute microphone, so that you have a high level of control from your left earcup. What kind of compromises am I talking about? The biggest is the obvious stretchy inner headband and the one-piece band that connects directly to each of the earcups. That configuration means the cups don’t swivel and there’s no drop-down adjustability, so finding an optimal level of comfort takes a bit of negotiating. Another qualm is that the main headband is made of plastic, which naturally brings up questions about durability. Putting it through its paces, however, instilled more confidence in me — the band is still highly flexible and can easily do the splits without snapping. It may not be impervious to dropping, though. That said, the Stealth 500 has a higher base comfort level than a lot of entry-level headsets on the market and I would say it’s suitable to wear for long marathon gaming sessions. It has a plush and impeccably soft material covering its earcups — it’s leatherette, but the kind that’s breathable instead of the shiny, greasy type. The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 sports thick memory foam cushioning and a flip-to-mute microphone. The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 sports thick memory foam cushioning and a flip-to-mute microphone. Dominic Bayley / IDG The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 sports thick memory foam cushioning and a flip-to-mute microphone. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG The cushioning deserves praise too, being a deep, luxuriating memory foam. It’s so soft, you’d want to curl up and sleep on it if you could find a cushion made from the same stuff. The headset is ultra lightweight. Indeed, if you’re the kind of gamer who really has an aversion to pressure on your head, then you’re going to love it. It weighs just 8.28 ounces (235 grams), which is lighter than the Stealth 600 Gen 3 and the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7X. That exceptionally light weight is accentuated by a very light clamp pressure that I could only marvel at. The great paradox is that it forms an effective passive noise barrier, which I put down to the leatherette and the way the cups hug rather than squeeze your ears. The Stealth 500 also features classic Turtle Beach styling: It comes in only black, but with iconic D-shaped cups with “Turtle Beach” splashed across the middle of each. It looks attractive and modern at any time of the day. Turtle Beach Stealth 500: Connectivity and compatibility Gone are the days when only the priciest headsets could connect to most of your devices — the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 is proof of that. It comes with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi connectivity via the packaged USB-C dongle, which provides a low-latency connection to your PC or PlayStation console. The headset also features Bluetooth, which connects to a Nintendo Switch console and/or your mobile device. My review unit was the PC version, but you can also buy an Xbox version that connects to just Xbox consoles and mobile devices. Additionally, there’s a PlayStation version that has the same compatibility as the PC version. Switching between connectivity modes was straightforward enough, involving just alternate presses of the QuickSwitch button on the headset’s left earcup. The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 has a lot of controls for an entry-level gaming headset. They’re located together on the left earcup. The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 has a lot of controls for an entry-level gaming headset. They’re located together on the left earcup. Dominic Bayley / IDG The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 has a lot of controls for an entry-level gaming headset. They’re located together on the left earcup. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG While I found Bluetooth didn’t work simultaneously to allow multiple audio sources to be played at once, I could connect to a Bluetooth device while also using the 2.4GHz wireless connectivity and switch to take incoming calls with a simple touch of the Bluetooth multi-function button. Once the call ended, another press returned me back to my game’s audio. The Stealth 500 also comes with a 6-foot USB-A to USB-C cable, which charges the device via the USB-C port located in the left earcup. You can expect a two-day battery life based on the approximately 39 hours my review unit lasted after I used it for heavy gameplay and music at varying volumes. Turtle Beach Stealth 500: Gaming performance The Stealth 500’s 40mm audio drivers are a wise driver choice for a headset like this since they’ve allowed for such a lightweight design without compromising on audio fidelity. To gage the Stealth 500’s audio quality, I ran a little headset-versus-headset playtest since I still had the previously reviewed Stealth 600 Gen 3 on hand. This consisted of testing the two side-by-side in games like Fortnite, Helldivers 2, and in RPGs like the classic The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. To sum up the many hours of analysis and switching between the two sets in one breath, I was impressed by the Stealth 500’s audio which sounded clear and balanced and with good fidelity at the ends of the audio spectrum. In Fortnite, sounds like doors and chests opening and closing, and radio beeps sounded lively and convincing. The Stealth 500 didn’t mash frequencies together like some entry level sets. Rather tones sounded distinct and refined, which was really obvious in the range I got playing Skyrim — the headset even played the theme music with enough gusto to make me a little nostalgic. Trying out the headset’s four default audio presets in the Turtle Beach Swarm II app was a great way to test the tonal range. I found that in swapping from the default Signature Sound preset to the Bass Boost preset I could clearly hear the bass become stronger. The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 has a solid outer plastic band and an inner stretchy fabric band. The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 has a solid outer plastic band and an inner stretchy fabric band. Dominic Bayley / IDG The Turtle Beach Stealth 500 has a solid outer plastic band and an inner stretchy fabric band. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG It means that if you go ahead and set up audio profiles in the Swarm II app to emphasize bass for gunfire and the like, you will really notice the difference when you switch to those profiles in your games. Compared to the Stealth 600 headset, however, the Stealth 500 did have a slightly narrower soundstage. But that was to be expected, being the headset with the smaller 40mm audio drivers. A little more on that point: I get a lot of overzealous gaming headsets with punchy mid tones that are more tuned for FPS games than anything else. They’re great for emphasizing explosions and gunfire. But the Stealth 500 was more of a relaxed-sounding headset. It didn’t so much overemphasize any frequency as provide a pretty consistent range which made the mids and treble tones a lot easier to hear. That it had such an audio signature meant the Stealth 500 was quite well suited to games other than FPS games, so playing RGPs and adventure titles with these cans on was an experience to savor. Another benefit from that narrower soundstage was the fact that I didn’t have to keep lowering my volume wheel when starting new games. The amplitude was mostly acceptable from the get-go. The omni-directional flip-to-mute microphone also sounded clear for my voice chats. I didn’t get a Blue-Yeti-microphone kind of audio clarity, but it was still pretty decent. I did wish the microphone’s length was slightly longer, though, if just to make my voice sound slightly more audible when speaking softly. Turtle Beach Stealth 500: Software The Turtle Beach Swarm II app is where you’ll do all your settings tweaks. Here you can do things like check your battery status, assign hotkeys to your keyboard for your controls, and change settings like your microphone’s sensitivity, volume, and noise gating. It’s also where you can switch on and tweak the settings for SuperHuman Hearing — a feature specific to Turtle Beach headsets that emphasizes certain game sounds like footfalls and explosions. The Turtle Beach Swarm II companion app has four default audio presets but you can also create your own. The Turtle Beach Swarm II companion app has four default audio presets but you can also create your own. Dominic Bayley / IDG The Turtle Beach Swarm II companion app has four default audio presets but you can also create your own. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG SuperHuman Hearing is one of those features that can really aid your performance in the right context. I found its “Gunshots” preset useful for emphasizing gunshots in FPS games that were densely packed with players and buildings, helping me better approximate the location of opponents. If the app’s presets aren’t specific enough for you, Swarm II also lets you flex your gamer muscle by creating and saving your own audio profiles. It’s easy enough to set these up using a 10-band equalizer chart. Once you’re done, you can simply switch through your profiles using the headset’s Mode button too. Should you buy the Turtle Beach Stealth 500? Deciding between the Stealth 600 and Stealth 500 may seem like a no-brainer based on the minuscule price difference between them. You might think you need to beg or borrow the extra $20 to bag the more expensive Stealth 600 for its slightly better features. But having tested the two alongside each other I’m not so convinced of that. Indeed, the Turtle Beach Stealth 500 may lack the durability factor of a metal headband and the convenience of adjustable earcups, but it does carve out a niche as the more lightweight headset and with virtually no clamp pressure. It also won’t overwhelm you with overzealous audio. If you really rate those things highly in a gaming headset, then the Stealth 500 is the no-brainer option for you.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign is a feast for James Bond fans
At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Long 10-hour campaign Very well written Excellent actors who bring CoD to James Bond level Finally staged on a much larger scale again Beautiful locations: casinos, coastal towns, luxurious villas Booming 7.1 sound Graphically on a new level for CoD Cons AI glitches here and there when Sadam’s guard simply runs in front of our assault rifle Rare object pop-ins, for example in the Iraq level Our Verdict Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a genuine epic-action single-player experience with a campaign that’s not only the longest in the series’ history at 10 hours, but also full of Constant surprises. In addition to its thrilling action, the strong acting and the sometimes truly congenial mission designs are also impressive.Ultimately, Black Ops 6 delivers what we’ve been missing in recent years, complete with intelligent, emotional, and smart storytelling, well-written characters, and truly epic action that could well be a Game of the Year candidate. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The single-player campaign of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 isn’t just a feast for James Bond fans. It has everything that makes CoD, CoD. The bombastic staging. The blockbuster action. The mass battles in Washington DC. The moment when a CIA black site is raided by special forces from a secret organization and half the government district is reduced to rubble. All classic stuff that’s great to have again. But it also brings the spirit of Sean Connery’s Bond, who could undress women with just one look, when we wrap a senator’s wife around his fingers or catch our good friend Bill Clinton red-handed at his governor’s party in the capital city. Keep reading for why we love Call of Duty: Black Ops 6‘s single-player campaign and how it seriously blew us away. The best campaign in a long time It’s a Call of Duty for James Bond fans. Not just action fireworks with huge battles, but also a smart espionage thriller with excellent actors.IDG We think of Roger Moore when we’re deliberately captured by a drug cartel, given a little tour of the mansion, and made to feel like the boss is in control, revealing his secret plans. That’s how James Bond used to be characterized. He didn’t always shoot and punch his way through, but instead infiltrated opponents undercover and elicited his adversary’s plans through dialogue. We really like this because Raven Software has tackled one of the major weaknesses of CoD campaigns in recent years: they were too samey, too familiar, too much of a copy of the better originals. MW2 and MW3 were 10 times more ambitious than their new versions, if we think of the invasions of Washington, New York, Paris, and Hamburg. CoD has lost its blockbuster epicness in recent years because the single-player campaigns were conceived far too small, too safe, too bland. They felt more like limited series, not Hollywood cinema. Black Ops 6 turns up the heat again. Almost every level has its very own atmosphere — the splendor of a casino here, Governor Clinton’s presidential campaign there — and we’re treated to stretch limousines, the Secret Service, and dubious politicians. Many missions have alternative endings If you want to, you can almost always shoot your way through. But there are also ways to act more like a gentleman agent. You know, Sean Connery instead of Daniel Craig.IDG What we really like is that the missions are designed as self-contained experiences that often contain multiple different endings. For example, we can play the Washington mission in Sean Connery style as a gentleman who organizes a few photos that show Clinton in bed with his secretary to thus obtain the photo that overcomes the retina scan at the entrance to a security center… …or play in a way that lures him into an ambush, knocks out his secret service, beats him up in the kitchen, to then get the needed photo. You know, the Daniel Craig way. With Black Ops 6 offering a whopping 10 hours of fun, you can expect plenty of high-octane moments — but the campaign also takes its time to savor moments.IDG Daniel Craig was an extremely rough Bond, one who favored brutal hand-to-hand combat over the good old Walther P99, one who was often quite bloody in the shower afterwards. He’s a new generation of Bond, not the cool Brosnan type who could fight his way through a ship, jump into the sea, swim ashore, and check into a five-star hotel wet in boxer shorts as if he owned the place. Raven Software likes to quote James Bond when appropriate: Casino Royale in this case. The iconic scene between Daniel Craig as 007 and Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre is almost a 1:1 homage in its choreography.IDG In general, Black Ops 6 has a lot of replay value. If you want classic Call of Duty, you’ll get it. Just as Daniel Craig easily kills 50 Russian Speznas elite units within 10 minutes in the last third of No Time to Die, we can also shoot our way through if want to. This is much more challenging in Black Ops 6 than before, though, because the special units of the secret organization called Pantheon use their forces more intelligently, to quickly surround us and throw grenades at us or even seal off entire corridors with electromagnetic fields. But we can also take the stealth route with the silenced Glock, in Sean Connery fashion, posed for the cover of Dr. No with a silencer because he used it the most of all the Bond actors. And just as the mission design is smartly conceived, the story is just as well written. Very black-ops style, very opaque, with lots of players laying their cards on the table late in the game. A bit like Casino Royale, where Le Chiffre was also just the way to the big fish. Black Ops 6 delivers twisty storytelling Every action game fan needs to experience Black Ops 6. This is CoD‘s BioShock moment: so unexpected and it works so well, opening up a whole new storyline in a fun way.IDG Black Ops has always been the Inception of the CoD world. A mind-melting parade with brilliant storytelling, where we don’t know what’s going on for a long time or who we can trust, where friends become enemies faster than Adler smoked his cigarette. Black Ops 6 is generally well written and we like the pacing. It has no problem slowing down from time to time so that we can enjoy the magnificent levels and environments. The development team had a lot more time than usual — a whopping 4 years — and you can feel that in all the masterful details.IDG A lot of work has gone into the lavishly detailed Casino Luttazi. You don’t just want to shoot your way through it; you want to sit down and play poker there, like in Casino Royale. We also spend quite a lot of time in a villa where we get to know the team and Sev with a personal vendetta, a real quick-change artist who can go from an Afro look with Rasta curls to Mexican drug boss in two or three minutes. Like Halle Berry in Brosnan’s best film, Die Another Day. Black Ops 6 introduces many new characters, all of whom are well written and strongly acted. Former Stasi hacker Felix Neumann, for example, is played by Tom Wlaschiha, who has already made a big impression in Amazon’s action series Jack Ryan.IDG Then there’s the ex-Stasi code specialist Felix Neumann, who’s basically the Q of the troupe, the laid-back guy who always has a new toy ready for us but also likes to cook for the crew from time to time. Marshall is the classic US soldier. He’s a little too loyal, has often been screwed over by his country, but still wants to believe in the great cause. And there’s Adler, whom we knew as an older man but appears here as younger yet just as pissed off by Washington. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is all about epic action and is much bigger than its smaller-scale predecessors. These ambitions are evident in the storytelling, the sets, the action, but also the moments of surprise when friends become enemies.IDG And then there’s a story component that we’d rather not spoil, but will delight fans of the zombie storyline. It also involves brainwashing and mind manipulation, forcing us to ask ourselves: Are we doing this right now? Are we experiencing this right now? Is this just a hallucination? Let’s just call it Call of Duty‘s BioShock moment, and it makes this entry in the CoD franchise one that’s a must-experience. Great writing, strong acting, bombastically staged, all in a fantastic package. Our verdict on Black Ops 6 At last, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is once again a real action epic with a campaign that, at 10 hours, is not only the longest in the series’ history but also full of surprises and twists.This is a true James Bond-style espionage thriller that we can play loud, impulsive, and raw, whether as Daniel Craig’s Bond or as Sean Connery’s Gentleman 007. You can sweet-talk wives, catch politicians red-handed, outwit retina scanners with high-tech cameras, track down bodyguard routes, work with your brain instead of bullets.Black Ops 6 delivers much of what we’ve been missing in recent years. We get huge sets, like a Casino Royale-style casino where we don’t just shoot and blow up safes but also play poker like Bond against Le Chiffre. Recent CoDs have felt small, only taking place at a harbor or a military base; Black Ops 6 cranks it all up and more to great success.