Corsair HS1 USB Circumaural Gaming Headset Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

We found the Corsair HS1 USB Gaming Headset to have an excellent build quality and rather good sound quality for a company that is just getting into audio products for the very first time. The 50mm drivers and the enclosed ear cups offer great mid-range tones and, to our surprise, high-range tones didn’t sound half bad either. The biggest shock to us was that the high-range sounded pretty darn good on the HS1 headset and listening to music on them was a great experience on any music where you have crisp vocals. We thought the 50mm drivers would be bass heavy, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The HS1 bass levels seemed rather low even when we set the equalizer for rap music and other settings that usually improve the bass response. If you are a fan of bass tones you can set the equalizer settings manually and then save a custom profile for times you want some extra punch. Overall the sound quality was excellent and much better than some of the gaming headsets that we have used in the past.

The comfort level of the Corsair HS1 USB Gaming Headset was nothing short of spectacular. The combination of the thick memory foam and absorbent cloth fabric is a great match and to be honest, it makes us wonder why more companies don’t do this. The faux leather covers feel cheap, look cheap and often stick to your head and crack after a year of use. Speaking of cracking, we like the fact that Corsair offers replacement pad sets for $10 as we all know these pads do wear out over time. The unidirectional noise canceling microphone was easy to use, sounded crisp to those in-game and stayed exactly where we wanted it in use.

The Corsair HS1 USB Gaming Headset is a great entry to the audio market and we have to give Corsair the thumbs up on their efforts. They managed to pick out a good base design and then modify it to fit their target audience quite nicely. Far too many companies just re-badge a headset they see at a trade show and then market it as the next best thing. You can tell that Corsair spent some time improving things on the HS1 and, like we said, it took nearly a year to bring these to the market. That said, we can expect Corsair to expand their audio lineup down the road and we wouldn’t be too shocked if we see them go wireless at some point and then maybe bring out some desktop speakers. We can only hope that Corsair brings some innovation and new features to the market there as well. It would be nice to see Corsair come out with a headset that both PC gamers and console gamers could use as we tried out the Corsair HS1 headphones on our Nintendo Wii and found that while the volume control LEDs started blinking the headphones wouldn’t work. We asked Corsair about console support and they said they never tested them on consoles and that they were designed for use on PCs.

When it comes to pricing the Corsair HS1 USB Gaming Headset has an estimated street price of $99.99 and they come backed by a two year warranty. This puts them up there in price with other circumaural headsets like the Steelseries 61001SS, Creative HS-1200, Tritton AX PC Pro and Razer Megladon. Three of which have identical frequency responses of 20Hz20KHz. Corsair is entering a tough market with some big name competitors, but their audio quality is solid and their comfort level is, dare we say, superior!

Legit Bottom Line: The Corsair HS1 USB Gaming Headset is super comfortable with crisp and clean audio that any gamer should love. Just be sure to spend some time setting up the audio settings in the software control panel to dial in the headset to your specific likes. If you don’t you’ll be missing the point!