this is a new product or rather new product category from Corsair this is
from their gaming audio series which until now didn't exist it's the hs1
which I'm going to go ahead and guess stands for headset one it is their first
headset and it is a USB gaming headset Corsair is of course a gaming oriented
company so it stands to reason they would want a gaming headset you can see
actually here on the front it's got a little duby logo here with a headphone
on it so that's to indicate that it does feature duby headphone technology so you
can enjoy multi- chnnel games and movies in a way that ordinary stereo headsets
can't match that means that this does support 7.1 virtual surround so even
though it only has two speakers it uses the built-in digital decoder to actually
convert your USB port to the audio chip
built in and then take that digital signal and turn it into an analog output
for your ears okay let's talk a little bit about some of the other points while
we open up the box cuz that is what I do
I unbox products and since headsets are a bit of a passion of mine I'm actually
going to test this one out and I will let you know what I think I'll either do
it via annotations over top of this unboxing or I will do a separate review
video but uh I've tinkered around with
most of the gaming headsets from the key uh gaming peripheral companies and I'm
very interested to see how this one Stacks up especially because because
it's the first one that's actually a dedicated USB headset that I have had a
look at I mean I've used some of the steel series ones that are analog
headsets with little USB adapters but uh
yeah never one that's just purely USB so
it has massive 50 mm drivers which is competitive with some of the other
high-end headsets on the market right now and it is built for comfort and I
can already tell you that based on the construction of it right here um I think
that's pretty much all I wanted to say about what is on the box so why don't we
go ahead and get started removing it
from the packaging so first of all at the
back because it's a digital product and it uses USB I'm going to go ahead and
assume there's a driver CD in here stop do not return this product to the store
contact cors our support please disable your antivirus software
huh there you go disable your antivirus software while you install the product
and then reenable it apparently their software can be accidentally detected as
a virus so here's a quick start guide shows you how to put a disc in your
computer shows you how to use the volume controls and whatnot wow that was it
that was the whole thing awesome using the software okay
allows you to enable and configure dby headphone and dby prologic
2x all right well that's pretty much it oh did I mention throw this away and
download the latest from the Corsair website mind you this product's so new
uh there probably aren't any driver updates yet so it may actually be safe
to use an included uh driver disc for
the first time ever on lineus Tech
tips okay wow they're quite heavy which
uh I guess is both good and bad because heavy usually to me anyway indicates um
you know some actual materials went into the construction but on the other hand a
heavy headset is you know there's a fine line cuz you don't want a headset that
weighs like 30 lb either that would get tiring fast I I'm still trying to figure
out this box because a professional
unboxer um so yeah the battery ran out I know this is a common occurrence uh on
my blog anyway like I was saying though I am a professional unboxer I am having
quite a bit of difficulty with this box because it doesn't appear to come away
come away come apart in any straightforward
Manner and that's making unboxing it a
bit of a challenge so as far as I can tell there's a little door here okay so
from there I'm supposed to maybe pull out these cables and then
what then what indeed maybe this comes
off no don't want to force
it uh okay well I'm going to do some so
I'm doing something I rarely do and I'm just completely destroying the box here
there seem to be some perforations for you to more easily destroy it but
they're not even really that helpful it's a very strange box design never
seen one quite like it so here we are this is the hs1 from Corsair the first
thing I want you to notice about it and because it's the first thing I notice
about it is look how puffy the headband
is it's actually it's actually okay not
only very thick here you want to come in a little bit closer don't use the zoom
it's better not to use that um not only is it very thick but you can see there's
kind of a a very very soft foam like no
matter how lightly I press on this it easily gives away and it's quite deep as
well so the hard part of the headband is actually quite deep inside there and it
feels like that would be very comfortable for extended uh gaming
periods up at the top is also puffy although that I can't imagine would have
any effect on on Comfort all right let's have a look at the design of the
headphones themselves you can see they do fold up so that would be helpful if
you're packing them up to take to a lan or for some other reason packing them up
they swivel so they swivel this way okay so
that will give you some flexibility if your head is shaped kind of like this or
like this or like this or you know if your head's shaped like this then you'll also be able to wear the hs1 quite
comfortably indeed these uh these hinges
right here look very robust so you can see the construction in them there they
are plastic but you can see they use quite thick plastic pieces in their
construction and I really can't imagine you'd have much success breaking these
even if you tried there are many metal elements to these as well which would
explain the considerable weight to them so this is metal this is metal this
piece right here oh hard to say cuz it's quite
cold so it's cold but it sounds like plastic so I'm not really
sure I'm like 99% sure these are metal
though okay let me just see so okay you can see
you've got a boom mic right here so it goes all the way down this
way and um it's adjustable okay so it's not the first
time I've seen a design like that but you can tuck it up out of the way just
like that all right he uses one cord
okay so it's a lot more convenient than some headsets that do use one cord to
each earphone and then but rather it has
one cord and then it goes up through the head piece and then down to the other
ear all right so why don't I go ahead and put these on and then we can see
what kind of a fashion statement they are oh those really comfy actually those
are nice so you got some adjustments in here so if you have kind of a taller
head wow you can see they're actually very adjustable so even if I had that
much more like that much more of a tall head
I'd be able to wear these quite comfortably and uh so yeah I mean I'm
going to adjust them to more like a smaller head size right there so
you can see I've gone ahead and adjusted that out a little bit and the ear cups
are absolutely huge so I don't know if you you can compare it to the size of my
ears here but it fits over very comfortably even with my earrings on
hanging down below my ears so it doesn't put any pressure on the earrings which
is uh actually kind of a a nice thing uh
based on how much I can hear outside they're fairly open although it's uh
hard to say 100% for sure because I don't know if I saw any notes on the Box
about whether these are an open or a closed
headset ah they noise isolating okay so there are they are going to call these
closed but I can tell you one thing is
that the closed headphones I've used in the past that have been more effective
at isolating noise don't use a foam earpiece but they usually use like a
fake leather like a pley material and that will cause it to isolate the sound
a little bit better although one advantage you do get from like a hybrid
design where it's using a closed ear cup
but then you've got a little bit of sound leakage here is that you will actually be able to hear people who are
talking to you in the same room room a little bit better although you will get
a little bit more sound leakage out from the headphones to the people around you
so they'll be able to hear what you're listening to uh which should be fine as
long as it's nothing you know too outlandish okay so you can see that's
where the mic sits so it's a very comfortable distance from my mouth
anyway and uh what's nice about it sitting off to the side like this is
that when I breathe out when I talk it's not going to uh have air brushing past
the mic and create that whooing noise so it should pick Pi up the sound really
well because of the distance to my mouth but the fact that it's not sitting right
in front of it means that it should be a more clear sound so we'll have a look at
the cord itself it's a braided covered
sleeved cord very very nice uh very tangle resistant I mean you probably
can't even tie this in a knot if you try to I mean maybe you could but it would
come out quite easily even if you did that so that's a pretty good design
feature and then here we have a mute button audio control These are nice big
buttons so they should be fairly easy to find should you be concerned about how
to find them and then last but not least there we go the uh the unique feature of
these headphones is that they are entirely USB powered entirely USB
driven so what that means is that you don't even need a sound card to use this
headset so that means if you have like a laptop with crummy sound and let's face
it most laptops have crummy onboard sound uh then this is a perfect solution
because you go ahead and plug it into a USB port and all the Sound Processing is
done up here so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the hs1 once I have a
chance to play around with them a little bit I will let you know my Impressions and don't forget to subscribe to Linus
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