Gadgetory

in my unboxing of the Corsair hs1 which 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 been 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 leash really long ears so even if you have your regularly shaped years or earrings they're extremely comfortable to wear for a long period of time because the earpads 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 Corsairs 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 HS one you can see Corsair starts with a very nicely braided cable that's going to be snag free 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 then with the non braided cables that were on a pair of sennheiser pc 350's 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 aww 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 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 I'm great degree in either direction well only 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 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 life time of this of a product like this and moving up the product we've got the pleather e covering that's over the top of the head band 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 in tests that they do still work in case anyone was wondering software-wise the HS one is a USB only headset which might be a bit of a deterrent for some people because you are going to be limited by the chipset courser 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 often 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 terrifying your friends when playing games are making skype calls and the the high setting wasn't actually all that amusing it was just kind of chipmunky but the low setting was pretty creepy and my voice sounded very different very very creepy so that 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 for any serious FPS gamer and what I found to was that the base is not overwhelming so if there's an explosion nearby or some other kind of deep noise it's not going to completely overdue 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 turn 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 x 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 HS one 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 volume buttons the USB port the excellent Mike it's very well 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 HS 1 in the slightest overall Corsairs put together a pretty good package here and I just want to give them a big thanks for sending the HS one for my unboxing and review pleasure and you're watching pleasure thank you for checking out my video review I suppose of the HS 1 and don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips