In my unboxing of the Corsair HS1, which
uh was no small challenge getting it out of the box, I did promise more of an
in-depth look at this particular headset. So, the first thing I want to
touch on, you've already seen the unboxing, I hope. If you hadn't, then uh
go watch it now. But the first thing I want to touch on is the overall comfort
of this headset. Even when using it for an extended period of time with earrings
or I had a friend who has pretty large
uh really long ears. So, even if you have irregularly shaped ears or
earrings, they're extremely comfortable to wear for a long period of time
because the ear pads are so big. Also,
at the top of the headset, it's quite puffy and padded, and it is completely
adjustable for a variety of different head sizes. And really, you know what?
Comfort is probably the first thing that was on Corsair's list when they were
designing this headset because it should fit almost anyone very, very comfortably
for extended periods of time.
Another thing I want to touch on is the overall build quality of the HS1. You
can see Corsair starts with a very nicely braided cable that's going to be
snagree. you're not going to have any trouble with it getting caught on things
and you shouldn't have any trouble even if actually I have a couple cats as some
of my viewers may or may not know and I found that with braided cables such as
this one they have a lot less success chewing through them quickly than with
the non-braided cables that were on a pair of Sennheiser PC 350s rest in peace
that no longer function due to a broken cord. Now this works extremely well when
the microphone is on. The lights behind the buttons are actually blue. And when
your microphone is off, the lights are orange, which is a great feature because
for a gamer, you can quickly glance, oh, did I hit my microphone button? When no
one can hear you. And you can see without actually fumbling around with
anything whether your microphone is off. Moving our way up, we have more braided
cable. We have a very robust uh place
where it joins the left earphone. And then we have some incredibly strong
feeling hinges here. So, these are capable of folding down like this for
travel. They're capable of rotating
a great degree in either direction. Well, only a great degree in this
direction and then just a little bit in the other direction. You can see that
while they have metal caps on them, they're actually large plastic uh ball
and socket joints just like that, just like your shoulder. Okay? And those feel
very robust. There's pretty much no
likelihood that those would be damaged in the useful lifetime of this uh of a
product like this. And moving up the product, we've got the
pleathery covering that's over the top of the headband, which is once again
well stitched. It doesn't look like it's going to come apart in any way. Overall,
the build quality is such that I would feel confident dropping them on the
floor and they will still work.
I did run and test that. They do still work in case anyone was wondering.
Software-wise, the HS1 is a USBon
headset, which might be a bit of a deterrent for some people because you
are going to be limited by the chipset Corsair is using in the headset itself.
You can't go ahead and plug it into a dedicated headphone amp or into an audio
receiver, which is what I normally do with headsets. And you are going to be
limited to the audio software that Corsair uses. You can't go and just
switch your sound card. There's a built-in sound card, but that can be
very convenient for people like laptop users where you're stuck with what is
usually a terrible onboard audio solution and anything is an upgrade. So,
something like a USB headset that is powered and run off the USB port and off
an integrated audio chipset is very much
preferable. Microphone recording quality was
excellent. And I did play around with their voice effects feature, which
suggests that you modify your voice to amuse or terrify your friends when
playing games or making Skype calls. And the uh the high setting wasn't actually
all that amusing. It was just kind of chipmunky. But the low setting was
pretty creepy and uh my voice sounded very different, very, very creepy. So,
the microphone is definitely a big plus on this headset. Now, let's get into the
audio quality a little bit. For games, it was terrific. I was able to pinpoint
footsteps, which is the most important thing for any serious FPS gamer. And
what I found too was that the bass is not overwhelming. So, if there's an
explosion nearby or some other kind of deep noise, it's not going to completely
overdo itself and drown out everything else. But what that also means is that
it's at a bit of a disadvantage for music. I found that the onboard chipset
didn't do the greatest job of maintaining a level volume throughout
the highs, mids, and lows of a music track. And it also didn't really reach a
desirable loudness level on some tracks,
but with others, by the time I turned the volume up to the max, it was pretty
much unbearable to listen to. So, there was a little bit of inconsistency to it,
but I think that's the kind of thing that can be addressed with driver
updates. Overall, it does what it's
advertised to do. It's great for gaming. You have the convenience of being able
to plug in by USB to any computer and get a consistent audio experience, which
is something that you can't get if you're using onboard audio on a
motherboard or especially on a laptop
where most of the audio solutions are frankly just terrible.
So, in conclusion, the HS1 does exactly what it's advertised to do. It performs
very well for games. It has lots of great convenient features that are
optimized, you guessed it, for gamers, such as the color changing uh volume
buttons, the USB port, the excellent mic. It's very wellb built, which is
again a great feature for gamers who are
Yeah. Yeah. They're likely to drop their headset or spill Pepsi on it or whatever
else can possibly happen. I wouldn't expect it to damage the HS1 in the
slightest. Overall, Corsair's put together a pretty good package here, and
I just want to give them a big thanks for sending the HS1 for my unboxing and
review pleasure and your watching pleasure. Thank you for checking out my
video review, I suppose, of the HS1. And
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