Corsair Gaming H1500 USB Gaming Headset

Performance

As with any headset I test, I immediately set about pushing the driver to their limits. Picking my volume test track I managed to measure an ear-shattering 100 dBa peak volume with a direct reading! This is incredibly loud and more than enough to cause damage to your ear drums; it’s best you don’t max out this headset for long periods of time. That being said, if your source material is quiet, you’ll be grateful for the extra power. With the headset on my ears at 100% and 50% volume I found that the H1500 do a good job of keeping the noise in, and external noise out. Noise dampening performance could be better, but it’s likely that any extra protection would increase the overall weight of the headset.

Bass response is pin sharp, even at extreme volumes I couldn’t get the headset to distort one bit. Heavy death metal, thumping bass lines of electronic music and more proved no problem for Corsairs’ latest headset. Treble is also crystal clear, acoustic guitar and vocal heavy music shines through with plenty of details and there’s a nice warmth to the mid-tones that were well suited to classic prog rock music. A solid all-rounder for music performance from the H1500.

Gaming is obviously where the H1500 really needs to shine, it is branded “Corsair Gaming” after all. Fortunately, it doesn’t disappoint one bit. Play games like Battlefield 4 was an absolute blast. You still get the heavy bass of explosions and gun fire, but the higher frequencies and chat audio cuts through the chaos with ease; it’s easy to pick out the footsteps of your enemies in multiplayer. In fact, gaming audio performance was as rich and dynamic as the music performance, but it’s the microphone quality that stole the show. The noise cancelling works very well, blocking out a good portion of ambient noise with ease and it also makes for a good Skype headset, as voices sound natural and clear.

Generally speaking, I don’t like virtual surround features. Fortunately, the Dolby features on the H1500 work pretty well and for watching movies they do add extra depth to the sound that some may enjoy. However, for the most part, I think I’ll stick with the stereo performance as it has a little extra punch to it.