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by an unlocked Intel fourth gen core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of Rome 2 total war click now to learn more welcome to an unboxing and review this is part 2 of our series of wireless gaming headsets so this will be part 3 and this one right here is part 1 the a 50 from astro this is the Corsair Vengeance 2100 now normally I don't review gaming headsets because frankly I don't really care about them generally speaking from more of an audiophile brand you can get something for cheaper that sounds better and will have comparable or better comfort and build quality this is just a fact but when we move into wireless products that fact starts to change a little bit because audiophile grade wireless headphones are very very expensive so I wanted to check out the wireless options that are available there if nothing else so the Vengeance 2100 from Corsair comes with a USB receiver transmitter dongle rather that can plug directly into a port or it can plug into the little base station that has an extension cable on it and it comes with a USB two micro B connector that is for charging the headset itself in terms of the construction and looks I really like the idea of Corsairs headsets the industrial design it feels quite solid and is a big improvement in the solidity Department over the previous generation Vengeance mm things like the hinges have been reinforced significantly in terms of the weight it comes in at around 325 grams making it almost exactly the same weight as the SteelSeries H Wireless it does feature dolby headphone virtual surround and that is pretty much it you can either have stereo over USB or you can have Dolby over USB because there's no base station there's no optical input or anything like that so it's PC and Mac and that's it so there's no consoles or anything like that it has an integrated non user replaceable battery so you just plug that in and charge it just like that and it does also have an integrated volume wheel which I quite like it's got a nice old finish on it in terms of comfort the weight is a little bit further out than I would then I would necessarily like so I find it jiggles a little bit and unfortunately it doesn't fit me particularly well it has okay clamping force and in terms of the construction I mean the foams a little bit on the hard side but once it breaks in I would expect it to be nice and comfortable for me the problem is that at my head width they don't angle in enough and I don't quite get a seal at the bottom so so they leak which is which is really important for optimal fit as well as optimal sound quality now with all of that said with a longer break-in period I would expect these to improve in a way that I wouldn't expect from the astro a 50s as well as the SteelSeries age Wireless because both of those come with softer foam out of the box which I guess is sort of one of the well do you want the one that feels better out of the box or the one that might wear out slower or it's up to you anyway for the range test I did my usual range test which is from the office having the base station installed I stayed within the same room pass I went to the other side of the wall about eight feet away that was okay I went down the hallway about 15 feet away that was okay and then the 2100 s failed when I went down to the stair landing so I was quite far away and a wall as well as in the bathroom in the basement so I tried in five different locations the max volume of the vengence 2100 sigh I was noticeably discomfortable discomfortable uncomfortable caused discomfort I wouldn't want to listen to them like that I actually found that 20 to 30% was plenty for day-to-day music listening or casual gaming but what's great about the 2100 s compared to the a 50s is that once I reached the maximum volume on the my there's no distortion they seem to be capped internally so that you don't go so far that they sound bad they always sounded good noise isolation was a weak point of this headset for me because they don't seal correctly on my head but when I manually adjust them I'd say they're about they're about average for a closed back headphone and that's about the best that they can do because they do use a cloth your cup a pleather ear cup will tend to will tend to isolate better than cloth although the benefit of cloth is of course that is a sweat absorption as opposed to sweat causing the battery life is about 10 hours but the good news is you can run while you're connected to a charger so just like the 50s unfortunately unlike the H wireless it doesn't have a swappable battery so you can pretty much go continuously the Vengeance 1500s are fully driverless I was up and running in about 15 seconds which is great there is sort of rudimentary software thing that you can install it's it's not fancy but it's functional so you can control surround as well as volume you can set your mic listen functionality and you can control your graphical EQ from within there and that's pretty much all there is to it the volume wheel is well integrated into Windows and actually controls your system volume as opposed to just controlling an independent volume on here whether you prefer that or not is up to you I liked that the H Wireless controlled its own volume separately because they didn't really get that loud so being able to play around with the software and crank them a little higher would be kind of nice worse with the 2100 it doesn't matter because they can get as loud as you would definitely want pretty much now when we move on to listening tests they were all tested the same way that is to say on both of the ones that accept analog inputs I did use digital input so I used usb on a PC for all three of them and just for the best apples to apples comparison and about the menus 2100 side say that bass was actually pretty tight without being overpowering it was quite nice to listen to and they felt fairly fairly flat a lot of gaming headsets will tend to have pumped-up bass the a 50s we're guilty of this a little bit and actually my personal favorite example of expensive gaming headphones that amp up the bass a lot the Razer Kraken forged a lot of gaming headsets tend to do that the Vengeance 2100 s didn't I did find the highs were a bit harsh to my ears at high volume but this is normal for me with with reference flat headphones so your mileage may vary on that one and the mids were well controlled as well overall I was pretty impressed with the 2100 s especially given that very 150 dollar wireless headset for the mic I actually wasn't that impressed with this was the first one that I tried though so once I tried the H Wireless and the Astro a 50s high I consider it a strong performer now I'll let you guys listen now and make your own judgement call here this is my test of the Corsair Vengeance 2100 microphone I hope that you have enjoyed it thoroughly with a wireless headset a replacement mic solution like a clip-on or a desktop microphone is really not much of an option so the built-in has to be adequate and although I hate boom mics and I really find them hard to position just right and I feel like retractable is the way to go I got a give course there are full marks especially now that I've more carefully evaluated the competition for the microphone solution on the Vengeance 2100 so whether or not this guy makes sense it's going to come down to pretty much one or two things so number one is price it costs half as much as the other two headsets in this round up half as much at one hundred and fifty dollars it's still quite expensive but at least it sounds good and it costs half as much as the other options but it lacks the features of the other ones so the HP Wireless has their sexy little base station control thing with live mixing between your chat volume and your game volume it's got better comfort better sound quality it has better range it has console compatibility the 850 also has console compatibility its God so I would argue better comfort it's also it doesn't have as good of a mic but it's got the included stand and stuff like that so these I would consider the bare-bones value option for the strictly PC gamer thank you for checking out this review of the Corsair Vengeance 2100 like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it I'd love to hear from vengeance 2100 owners what do you guys think of your headphone do you think that it'll be the big winner in this series of reviews or are you disappointed with your purchase let me know in the comments below and as always guys don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos