Corsair HS50 Pro - Stereo Gaming Headset - Discord Certified Headphones - Works with PC, Mac, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android – Carbon

Great Battery Life. Comfortable. Mic quality is great. Very light. Connects without issue and can even walk around the room without connection issue.

Ok

A previous version of this review complained that headphone audio was bleeding through to the microphone. I have now isolated the cause of that, and it's my motherboard sound inputs. I guess my motherboard must not isolate sound input and output very well. That's a problem with my hardware, not the Corsair headset. It was solved by buying a USB soundcard adapter.Judging the headset on its own merits, I find it to be quite good. It's a little tight on the head, but the earcups are soft enough that it's not super uncomfortable. However, they are firm enough that people with sensitivity issues might not like how much they squeeze.I'm not a crazy audiophile, but I do care about good quality headphones, and I've definitely thrown my fair share of bad headphones in the trash over my life. The Corsair headphones sound pretty good to me. Decent range, and pretty alright bass. Don't know how I feel about the headphones themselves having a dedicated volume knob; it sounds fine now, but knobs like that always start to crackle as they get old. Would have preferred digital buttons.Microphone quality is where I get picky. I have shopped around because even on $200+ Sennheiser headsets, the microphone input is always just passable, sounding like an old telephone. All the demos I listened to with the Corsair HS55 made the microphone sound really good. In practice, it's... fine. It has much better range than most headset mics, giving it better clarity than the "old telephone" effect you get from most headsets.But it's also pretty noisy. There's a constant hiss at all times coming through this mic. The good news is that most voice chat programs have noise filters that will take care of things pretty well. On Discord and in livestreams I've done, there is effectively no hiss at all; you just have to configure your settings correctly. Sometimes it might leave you sounding a little muffled, but it still sounds miles better than the "old telephone" effect.In short, this is one of the best headsets I've ever used.

Unfortunately, the return window has closed for me, but I would return this product if I could.- Unreliable connectivity with both bluetooth and dongle- Unreliable audio quality (perfect for an hour, garbled for minutes, back to fine for no reason)- Unreliable mic quality (often told I sound quiet, or sound "underwater")- Awkward fit -- the ear cups don't contour well, it feels like they sit at a "straight up and down" angle where they contact at the top and have a large gap at the bottomI love my old headset (different manufacturer, same "style") -- I bought this new headset because I needed a specific mute feature that my old set did not have. So many times I have had to go and get my old headset out of storage because the HS55 was giving me trouble. I thought it might be a matter of drivers, settings, or other fixable issues, and for a long time I was too busy to troubleshoot it. Well, I finally found time to troubleshoot, but it looks like the headset is definitely the problem. And now the return window is closed, so the best I can do is leave this review.

Surprisingly great for 70$ clear quality easy to use buttons, very light works well with PS but doesnt with xbox which sucks but thats on microsoft, long lasting battery life and short charging time. Its quite small too so its easy to store or hang on the side. Been using for 4 months daily, even easy to remove the muffs if you want to switch em out. Also adjustable for better fit.

I really like this product, I work as a developer and the battery lasts me all day up to 24 hours constant, it is light and the micro is good. 10/10

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.