Corsair HS1 Gaming Headphones - Good Stuff or Average Joe?

Games today are high defined stuff. Not only in terms of story and gameplay, but also in terms of graphics and sound. If you think you can enjoy most of their sound by using your standard earphones –irrespective of them being quality products, think again. You don’t want to be left guessing in the middle of a FPS where exactly your enemy is barging in from. You need gaming headphones for this job. We review the Corsair HS1 and give you a taste of our experience.

Design

Call me Bulky Bigears

“It is large and it is bulky!” is what will circle your head at first glance. Guess what? You are right. It really is. Wearing them is quite comfortable, at the same time it is quite heavy. But adjust the earpieces from the sides to fit your head (loosen them up a bit if needed) and you won’t find any reasons to complain. Down the wire, there is a small piece for controlling volume and muting the mic. The mic is attached on the left earpiece and is small and sturdy. What is really good about the earpieces is that they rotate at an angle of 90 degrees, so wearing/removing doesn’t cause damage to the headphones. It has a standard USB interface and looks like an average set of headphones so the HS1 doesn’t score any brownie points here.

Volume Control: I've got the power

Performance
This is where HS1 should make a mark. Does it impress? Let’s find out.

To experience the headphones you need to install the software from the CD that comes bundled with (it’s a plain jane headset without the software). Now in the HS1 application, you can tweak a host of different settings to give you feelings of different environments. There are five tabs, Main, Mixer, Effect, Voice Effect and Information. Obviously the Information tab gives you basic detail about the headset. The rest of them is where you can do all the tweaking.