Corsair Vengeance 2000 Wireless Headset Review

Corsair are one of the leading brands when it comes to cases, memory and cooling. We’ve seen some great cases from them, that are not only feature rich but look great. Their AIO water coolers are also very popular amongst the PC community and with the release of the Dominator Platinum RAM, Corsair are set to take a position at the top of the market. The product we have in today is in a field that is relatively new to Corsair, and that is gaming peripherals, called the Vengeance Gaming series. They have released keyboards, mice, mouse pads and headsets, the latter of which we are looking at today. Conforming with Corsair’s image of high quality and feature rich, their peripherals were a great hit amongst the gaming community. What we have in today is the Corsair Vengeance 200 wireless 7.1 headset.

Headsets are a vital tool when it comes to gaming, particularly when playing competitively, as being able to track your enemies movement by their footsteps, or identify what weapon they are using can be a matter of life or death. There are several key points that need to be considered when selecting a headset and these are: sound quality, comfort, looks, price and if wireless; battery life. We will address all of these points with the Vengeance 2000.

Often enough no one headset ever ticks all five boxes The Vengeance 2000 is the latest product to be added to the Vengeance headset range, where it stands just above the Vengeance 1500 USB headset, which it even shares many similarities with. The 2000s feature Corsair’s own HRTF positional audio technology, that accurately mimics 5.1/7.1 surrounds sound – a crucial feature for those FPS games. There tends to be a divide when it comes to surround sound, some prefer virtual, as it doesn’t compromise driver size and others prefer true surround sound – that gives better direction sound, so we’ll be analysing this in closer detail in the performance section. Both the 2000s and 1500s make full use of 50mm drivers, that eliminate any distortion you often get with the smaller 40mm drivers. The full specification can be read below.

Specifications

Headphones

• Frequency Response: 20Hz to 20kHz
• Impedance: 32 Ohms @ 1kHz
• Sensitivity: 105dB (+/-3dB)
• Drivers: 50mm
• USB power consumption: 500mA
• Connector: USB Type A
• Wireless range: up to 40 feet (12m)
• Battery life: Up to 10 hours

Microphone

• Type: Unidirectional noise-cancelling condenser with adjustable, rotating boom
• Impedance: 2.2k Ohms
• Frequency Response: 100Hz to 10kHz
• Sensitivity: -37dB (+/-3dB)

The Corsair Vengeance 2000 come in red and black themed packaging that is partially windowed so you can see the wireless dongle and one side of the headset. Most boxes are like this now as many people want to see the headset before they buy.

On the back of the box there is a run down of the features to expect from the headset. Throughout the packaging Corsair state that you can get a pretty decent 10 hours battery life from them.  There are also numerous translations of the specs on the rear half of the box – typical to most peripheral packaging.

The contents of the box is kept relatively simple, headset, dongle, charging cable, extension cable and manual. You may also notice that Corsair have gone with a blue and black colour scheme for the headset, contradicting the packaging.

The Vengeance 2000s are fairly large in comparison to other headsets, this is most likely due to the large 50mm drivers and internal battery. Corsair’s Vengeance headsets are all similarly styled with the brushed aluminium and black leatherette headband.

Again, you can see just how large the headset really is. The left ear-cup features the volume control, charge port, on/off button and of course the mic.

A closer look at the power button and volume control. The power button must be held in for a couple of seconds before it actually switches on or off. You can tell the headset is on by the blue LED just below it. The volume wheel is a great touch, as it makes adjusting volume levels much easier than pressing buttons.

The headset does of course adjust easily, so even the gamers with the large heads will be able to wear them. The sides are brushed aluminium, which adds a classy look and feel to them.

The ear cups are typical material covered foam. These are fairly large like the rest of the headset, so would fit most wearers. These can also be swapped for leatherette ear cups, which offer better noise dampening (must be purchased separately from the Corsair store).

The charging port is located at the rear of the left ear cup. It is the same connection as a micro USB. When the headset needs charging this will flash orange, when fully charged, it’ll be green.

The dongle is pretty standard for a wireless device. Corsair have been kind enough to include an extension cable so you can maximise the range, with as little interference as possible.

The charging cable is just a standard USB to micro USB cable.

The software is required if you wish to use the virtual surround sound. Once selected via the bypass button you can change the settings for Studio, Cinema or Hall.

These basically tell the headset how far the “speakers” are from your ears. For the performance section, we left it on Studio, as that was the most realistic.

There is also an Equalizer that has many different preset profiles that can be selected. Alternatively, it can be manually adjusted. 

Gaming & Music

As with all our headsets, we like to run the tests over a decent length of time to see if we can discover any issues that might not be present at first. We’ll throw a multitude of different audio scenarios at the headset and see how it fairs. First up we’ll use the headset for gaming to test how well the the surround sound is. For this particular test we’ll play some Left 4 Dead 2 – as it supports 7.1 surround sound and we’ll also play our current favourite, Battlefield 3. So after launching a game of Left 4 Dead 2, the first thing we noticed was just how comfortable they were, they caress your ears, putting next to no pressure on your head. Later down the campaign, it was very clear just how good these 2000s are – every sound could be heard and placed accurately like you were actually there. If a boomer was hiding around the corner, you could hear it and tell exactly where it is hiding. Witches were no longer a problem as not only could you hear them a mile off, but you would know with reasonable accuracy, where they were.

Battlefield 3 was where the headset really rose above the rest.The experience was amazing: loud, deep bass, hammering gunfire, explosions – the lot, they really immersed you in the game with crystal clear audio and accurate positioning. We also played a variety of different audio tracks, from dance music, to hip hop and R&B, all of which the headset took in it’s stride and played back beautiful crisp tones and deep bass for those more energetic songs.

Movies

Of course this wouldn’t be a proper testing stage without playing some movies and testing out the surround sound on them, so we loaded up Transformers 3 with 7.1 surround sound and hit play. The Transformers films are renowned for their explosions and sound effects so it makes a perfect test for the headset. Straight into the movie we were impressed with the sound quality of the headset, the bass was very deep and loud, ideal for this type of film and it really immersed you within it. The audio was clear and the positioning was very accurate – it actually made us look behind us several times when a noise supposedly came from behind us!

Mic

The rotating mic was was easy to position, especially with the flexible mid section that allows you to correctly angle it for optimum performance. When testing over mumble, the sound was very clear with minimal background noise – thanks to the noise cancelling. The clarity of the audio was crystal clear when using Skype, so no one had any difficulties hearing what we had to say.

To complete the performance review phase we tested the headset out using a frequency test audio track that basically pushes out sound from 10Hz to 40KHz. When running the frequency test, we did notice that the tone was not constant across both drivers – often down to incorrect balancing. This wasn’t really noticeable during the real life tests such as gaming or watching films however.

Battery Life

Throughout the testing we found that the headset would need to be charged roughly once a day. The 2000s produced a “beep” when the battery got too low and the LED around the charging port would flash orange every few seconds. Having enough battery to last the day was ideal for the 2000s, as we could simply plug it in overnight and be ready to rock out in the morning – so A+ to Corsair for giving it so much juice.

Range

The headset has a reported range of 40 feet, which you can kiss goodbye to if you have thick walls – even if you are just next door and under 3m away! Of course this wasn’t an issue in a straight line, with no obstacles, in fact we even managed to push the reported 40 feet by about 6 foot extra before any interference or loss of audio started to kick in.

Corsair are known for their high quality products with the Vengeance 2000s being a prime example. Headsets need to be comfortable, produce top quality audio and of course have a microphone that is clear and simple to use. Being wireless, they also need to have an ample supply of power to last through the majority of the day and the Vengeance 2000s ticked all these boxes.

The ear cups were some of the most comfortable we have used, despite the headset’s large and heavy nature. The sound was pristine to our ears, with no noticeable issues during the real world tests. The positional audio aspect  of the headset allowed them to have a very respectable level of bass – with no compromise to the sound of the drivers, yet still have adequate surround sound. Whilst virtual is no replacement for a true home theatre set up, it is a very decent contender against those true surround sound headsets, even out-performing some of them. The battery life is exceptional for a wireless headset, although this does account for a heavier weight, it is still long enough to get a lot of output from the speakers and only have to charge them once a day.

That said, the Vengeance 2000s isn’t without it’s negative characteristics. As mentioned above it is a fairly large headset and subsequently does weigh a fair bit. This does result in powerful bass and a decent battery life, although the wireless range isn’t great if you have walls in the way – normally you’d expect some reception if you are next door. The slightly unbalanced drivers could be an issue for the hardcore audiophiles out there, but in the real world, we couldn’t detect any noticeable issues with them.

Overall we were thoroughly impressed with Corsair Vengeance 2000s. They are packed full of goodness, ranging from superb bass, clear low, mid and high tones, high quality design and of course, a decent battery life that will keep you gaming into the early hours of the morning. With an RRP of around $149 (£100), these can be found as cheap as $120 (£80), which is a great price for such a high quality product. Other than the size issue, we really couldn’t find anything majorly wrong with the headset – we kept on trying to find something wrong with it, but really couldn’t! So, if you are in the market looking for a reasonably priced wireless headset, look no further, the Corsair Vengeance 2000 has exceeded all expectations and is by far one of the best headsets we’ve had in to date, so for these very reasons, we are awarding the headset with the amazing: