Corsair Corsair HS50 Pro – Stereo Gaming Headset

This headset was a recommendation by a friend, it has clear sounds, sounds can be loud if you want, clear communication and a long battery life 12+hrs ez , comfortable, got the warranty better to be safe, over all it was a great recommendation and a great buy for a fair price.

I wear these basically all day for meetings, music, podcasts, and gaming.

Pros:
Good, though not amazing sound quality. I think these provide good sound for this price point. Plenty of clarity and range. The microphone works just fine, and the ear pads do a good job with passive “noise cancellation.” I also find them reasonably comfortable.

Cons:
After not quite 3 years of use, the plastic/vinyl/whatever material that coats the ear and head cushions has started peeling off pretty badly. It just flakes off. Also, the ear cups are coming detached from the main housing of the speakers. I’ve already repaired one with epoxy, but the epoxy did not bond well to the plastic, so I’m going to have to try again, probably with electrical tape. Hopefully they are repairable, because I like the sounds quality of these headphones, and it would be a shame to have to chuck them because the stupid ear cup won’t stay attached.

This headset is comfortable, the audio is good, the battery life is good. I really like that the mic flips up and down and mute itself when you do so. All the things you think about with a headset are on point. I wish I could end the review there, but everything else makes this thing a pain to use.

The main reason I went with this is because I already use some other Corsair peripherals with iCUE. Using this headset with iCUE is actively worse than without. First and foremost, when you’re not using iCUE, the headset uses a series of beeps to for audio feedback when you mute or unmute. These beeps are very clear, and they vary in tone in a manner that makes it intuitive whether what you just did was to mute or unmute. These beeps sound whether you click the physical mute button or flip the mic up or down. When the headset is controlled by iCUE, these beeps are completely disabled, and you’re left with two options: No mute sounds at all, or use the extremely grating voice prompts. Why can’t I just hear the beeps? It makes no sense.

You can replace the voice prompt audio with your own .WAV files, but what you’ll find is that iCUE has a something like a half-second delay in reading custom .WAV files, and even if there wasn’t, there’s no active audio connection. The audio connection only starts when audio plays, and it takes an additional half-second *after* audio starts for anything to get to the headset, so it cuts off the first half of the audio. In practice, this means if you have a second long audio clip, you’ll only hear half of it. If you have a half-second long audio clip, you’ll hear nothing. Why send audio feedback through the audio channel instead of playing them natively on the headset? It makes no sense.

Note that this is through the USB dongle with a dedicated connection to the headset. I understand that the various versions of Bluetooth will have these latency and cut-off issues, and that’s the main reason why I chose this headset that comes with a dongle. Why does the dongle have the same issues that Bluetooth does? Does the dongle use Bluetooth for its connection? If so, then *what is the point of the dongle*? All phones, all laptops, all consoles, and most desktop PCs (mine included) have Bluetooth built-in. Why ship a dongle that has all the downsides of not having a dongle? It makes no sense.

Also, when connected through the dongle, infrequently (but extremely noticeably) something goes completely wrong and the microphone audio just totally corrupts. I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing it myself, but multiple times have the people I’m talking to started freaking out about how I was getting sucked into a wormhole. When this happens, it doesn’t stop, and the only way to get the audio back in working order is to unplug and replug the dongle. Turning the headset off and back on doesn’t even work. I don’t know if it’s a driver issue or what, but I can’t risk a losing customer or client trust because my hardware just fails in the middle of something.

So throw the dongle out, right? Just use Bluetooth natively. Yeah, I tried that too. The latency issues with the headset are much worse than what I see with other Bluetooth devices, outside of my $5 set of earbuds. This thing is $50 ($100 with the dongle that makes the experience worse), they couldn’t have put a better Bluetooth module in it? I’ve used no-name speakers with better Bluetooth. Why put inferior components in your mid-range device? I’d say it makes no sense, but it’s really just cost cutting at the expense of consumers who don’t know any better. (Un)Fortunately for me, I do know better.

And one last issue, and last because this might just be my system, but when the headset is connected via Bluetooth, Windows Audio Service uses upwards of 5 GB of RAM and some 10-15% of CPU on my 13th Gen Intel i7. I don’t see other connected devices, audio or otherwise, using this amount of resources. On top of that, the headset broadcasts itself as multiple different devices, presumably one to connect to the dongle and one (or more?) to connect via native Bluetooth. This makes it really hard to isolate and troubleshoot any issues, because it’s not easy to tell if you need to look at “CORSAIR HS55 WIRELESS Gaming Headset” or “CORSAIR HS55 Stereo” or “CORSAIR HS55 WIRELESS HANDS-FREE AG” or whatever else in device manager or sound settings.

I put up with all these issues for a month, swapping between connection methods, trying different settings, googling workarounds, convincing myself that there must be a way to make this thing good. After a month, I have found that there is not. There’s no way to use this thing that isn’t aggressively bad in one way or another. I wish I could pick and choose different aspects of the different connection methods and combine them into a singular, cohesive, and broadly good experience, but it’s not possible. And since the return window closes after 30 days, I guess I’ll just be out the cash with a bad product that could be good but isn’t. If this is the sort of experience I can expect from Corsair, then I guess I know not to get any further invested in the ecosystem.

A couple years ago i bought the Corsair HS70 which lasted me about a year. And then bought the Sennheiser EPOS GSP 302 headset which has an amazing microphone.

Anyways, about this headset. The headset has really really good audio. Amazing bass (im a bass head) and really clear highs. And what i really appreciate is the lack of muddy mids. Deep bass and clear treble is good, but no muddy mids is even better. Clearity should be ehat you’re after and these headphones check that box.

However… the comfort of this headset is quite unpleasing. My previous HS70 LE headset was amazingly comfortable but these HS50 Pros aren’t exactly comfortable. They sit on your head well which is one thing but they clamp quite hard on your head. Along with that is the somewhat rough headband. I start to recieve nausea and a mild headache from the earpads and headband so i did return these. But for a sub 14year old i would definitely recommend.

Conforto e áudio imersivo a preço acessível. Ideal para sessões de jogo prolongadas. Microfone de boa qualidade. Design Durável e Estiloso.

En todo sentido son muy buenos, no molestan en los oídos, buena fidelidad de audio e incluso de sonido a través del micrófono. Excelentes para las videollamadas.

love the headset ! super comfortable and don’t even feel it while wearing it. good mic as well