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this is part two of our series of wireless gaming headsets so this will be
part three and this one right here is part one the A50 from Astro um this is
the Corsair Vengeance 2100 now normally I don't review gaming
headsets because frankly I don't really care about them um generally speaking
from more of an audio file brand you can get something for cheaper that sounds
better and will have comparable or better comfort and build quality this is
just a fact but when we move into
Wireless products that fact starts to change a little bit because audio file
grade wireless headphones are very very expensive so I wanted to check out the
wireless options that are available out there if nothing else so the engin 2100
from Corsair comes with a USB receiver
or transmitter dongle rather that can plug directly into a port or it can plug
into the little base station that has an extension cable on it and it comes with
a usb2 micr B connector that is for
charging the headset itself in terms of the construction and looks I really like
the idea of Corsair's headsets the industrial design it feels quite solid
and is a big Improvement in the uh
solidity Department over the previous generation Vengeance 2000 things like
the hinges have been reinforced significantly in terms of the weight it
comes in at around 325 G making it almost exactly the same weight as the
steel series H Wireless it does feature Dolby headphone virtual surround and
that is pretty much it you can either have stereo over USB or you can have
Dolby over USB because there's no uh
base station there's no Optical input or anything like that so it's PC and mac
and that's it so there's no consoles or anything like that it has an integrated
non-user replaceable battery so you just plug that in and charge it just like
that and uh it does also have an integrated volume wheel which I quite
like it's got a nice knurled finish on it in terms of comfort um the weight is
a little bit uh further out than I would than I would necessarily like so I find
it Jiggles a little bit and unfortunately it doesn't fit me particularly well it has okay clamping
force and in terms of the of the construction I mean the foam a little
bit on the hard side but once it breaks in I would expect it to be nice and
comfortable for me the problem is that at my head width they don't uh angle in
enough and I don't quite get a seal at the bottom so so they leak which is
which is really important for optimal fit as well as optimal sound quality now
with all of that said with a longer break-in period I would expect these to
improve in a way that I wouldn't expect from the Astro a50s as well as the steel
series H Wireless cuz both of those come with softer foam out of the box which I
guess is sort of one of those well do you want the one that feels better out
of the box or the one that might wear out slower or it's up to you anyway uh
for the range test I did my usual range test which is from the office having the
base station installed I stayed within the same room pass I went to the other
side of the wall about 8T away that was okay I went down the hallway about 15 ft
away that was okay and then the 2100s
failed when I went down to the stair Landing so it was quite far away and a
as well as in the bathroom and the basement so I tried in five different locations the max volume of the
Vengeance 2100s um I was noticeably
discomfortable discomfortable uncomfortable caused discomfort I
wouldn't want to listen to them like that I actually found that 20 to 30% was
plenty for day-to-day music listening or casual gaming but what's great about the
2100s compared to the a50s is that once
I reach the maximum volume on them I there's no Distortion they seem to be
capped internally so that you don't go so far that they sound bad they always
sounded good uh noise isolation was a weak point of this headset for me
because they don't seal correctly on my head but when I manually adjust them I'd
say they're about they're about average for a closed back headphone and that's
about the best that they can do because they do use a cloth ear cup a pleather
ear cup will tend to uh will tend to isolate better than cloth although the
benefit of cloth is of course that there's a sweat absorption as opposed to
sweat causing uh the battery life is about 10 hours but the good news is you
can run while you're connected to a charger so just like the a50s
unfortunately unlike the H Wireless it doesn't have a swappable battery so you
can pretty much go continuously the Vengeance 1500s are fully driverless I
was up and running in about 15 seconds which is great um there is a sort of
rudimentary software thing that you can install it's it's not fancy but it's
functional so you can control surround as well as volume you can set your mic
listen functionality and you can control your graphical EQ from within there and
that's pretty much all there is to it the volume wheel is well integrated into
Windows and actually controls your system volume as opposed to just
controlling an independent volume on here whether you prefer that or not is
up to you um I liked that the H Wireless controlled its own volume separately
because they didn't really get that loud so being able to play around with the
software and crank them a little higher would be kind of nice whereas with the 2100s it doesn't matter cuz they can get
as loud as you would definitely want pretty much now when we move on to
listening tests they were all tested the same way that is to say um on both of
the ones that accept analog inputs I did use digital inputs so I used USB on a PC
for all three of them H just for the best Apples to Apples comparison and
about the Vengeance 2100s I'd say that bass was actually pretty tight without
being overpowering it was quite nice to listen to and they felt fairly fairly
flat a lot of gaming headsets will tend to have pump pumped up base the a50s
were guilty of this a little bit and actually my personal favorite example of
uh expensive gaming headphones that uh amp up the base a lot the razor Kraken
forged um a lot of gaming headsets tend
to do that the Vengeance 2100s didn't I did find the highs were a bit harsh to
my ears at high volume but this is normal for me with with reference flat
headphones so um your mileage may vary
on that one and the mids were well controlled as well over overall I was pretty impressed with the 2100s
especially given that they're a $150 wireless headset for the mic I
actually wasn't that impressed with it this was the first one that I tried
though so once I tried the H Wireless and the Astro a50s I uh I considered a
strong performer now I'll let you guys listen though and make your own judgment
call here this is my test of the Corsair Vengeance 2100 microphone I hope that
you have enjoyed it thoroughly with a wireless headset a replacement mic
solution like a clip on or a desktop microphone is really not much of an
option so the built-in has to be adequate and although I hate boom mics
and I really find them hard to position just right and I feel like retractable
is the way to go I got to give Corsair full marks especially now that I've more
carefully evaluated the competition for the microphone Solution on the Vengeance
2100 so whether or not this guy makes sense it's going to come down to pretty
much one or two things so number one is price it costs half as much as the other
two headsets in this r Roundup half as much at $150 it's still quite expensive
but at least it sounds good and it costs
half as much as the other options but it lacks the features of the other ones so
the H Wireless has their sexy little base station control thing with live
mixing between your chat volume and your game volume it's got better Comfort
better sound quality it has better range it has uh console compatibility the A50
also has console compatibility it's got
I would argue better Comfort it's so it doesn't have as good of a mic but it's
got um the included stand and stuff like
that so these I would consider the barebones value option for the strictly
PC Gamer thank you for checking out this review of the Corsair Vengeance 2100
like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it I'd love to hear
from Vengeance 2100 owners what do you guys think of your headphone do you
think that it'll be the big winner in this series of reviews or uh are you
disappointed with your purchase let me know in the comments below and as always
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