Stop a plugin in the activation process when a certain WP version is not met then show error message in admin_notices action hook

I may be late to this party, but to stop plugin activation and have WordPress show an error message where the admin notices go, I simply output an error message and terminate execution. This has the added advantage of playing nice with wp-cli:

Example:

class testPlugin() {

  ...

   static function activate() {

   //[do some stuff here]

   if ($error) {
      die('Plugin NOT activated: ' . $error);
   }

}

register_activation_hook( __FILE__, array( 'testPlugin', 'activate' ));