Corsair H2100 Review (my opinions on it)

Imakuni · August 26, 2015

WARNING: HUGE WALL OF TEXT, IN-DEPTH REVIEW COMING

So, I wanted to grab myself a great phone, as my cheap 5$ solution was so bad that some of the instruments in music were actually being cut out! Given my local availability (or lack of), as well as prices and a an oportunity to buy a headset on a trip to the US, I decided to try out that Corsair H2100. But, is it good?

Here's my review of the Corsair H2100 Gaming Wireless Headset.

Specs, cuz we are all techs

Here's the manufacturer page: http://www.corsair.com/en-us/corsair-gaming-h2100-wireless-dolby-7-1-gaming-headset

No kidding, I understand NOTHING about sound specs. If you do, good. I just don't, and thus I can't really say anything about it.

Let's start of with the visuals and build quality

I know this is a subjective matter, but oh boy, do these look gorgeous! Both the packaging and the headset look better in person than they do on the photos. I may be biased here, as I love the black-yellow combination, but I really like the looks of the product. For the lack of a camera to take decent pictures (mine is away right now, will update this later when I get it back), I'll just update this post later. Still very nice product, it really looks premium and causes an impression.

The build quality, well, this one is kind of a mixed bag for me. On one hand, everything (with one exception I'll mention in a second) seems to have good quality. The earcups, the mic, the volume adjuster, the head rest, they all seem good to me. The materials, the paint, the texture, everything feels nice...

.....however, the plastic handles, er.... Now, don't get me wrong, I have no problem with plastic, but the height adjustment is a bit loose and changes more easily than I'd like; more importantly, though, the swag that happens when I pick the phone by the sides is real. It gives me the impression that it will just break if do that. I constantly find myself trying to grab it with one hand, feel the swag, then let it back on, to then properly get it with both hands. I'm not saying that it'll actually break with time, but it certaintly feels so, given the wieght.

To compliment the product, the accessories

Aside for the headset itself, you get a wireless usb dongle. Yup, no bluetooth, this is PC exclusive. And if you lose the thing, good luck.

It also comes with a USB-micro USB cable for charging; it has a very good size. Also USB end of it is a sort of transparent plastic. That, combined with the batterry led that shines over it, gives a nice visual touch to something as unmemorable as a chargin cable.

And last, but not least, it comes with a HUGE Usb extender. If your PC is on a corner of a room, and you'd like the dongle to stay more in the middle of it (for the sake of range), this will do the trick very nicely, as the other end of the cable has a little base, so it can lie flat in any place you want. Naturally, you can also use it for something else. In my case, my PC stays in the very middle of a super small apartment, so I can just put the dongle on the back of the computer and use the extender as a way to access the motherboard USB for things such as a pendrive, for my case USBs are dead.

It also comes with a bunch of paper, including a user manual that you MUST throw away. It's not as if you can make do without the manual, it just literally contains wrong information, which I'll go over in "the bads" section. But ignoring that, it has your warranty and other stuff in it.

Next up, the hardware feats.

Now, obvious feature #1: It's wireless.

I'll go over sound quality later, I think it deserves it's own section.
As far as range goes.. it's good. I can walk around my room no problem, as well as going into the bathroom without a hitch. Well, maybe a small hicup after closing the door, but it "get's used" to it and never fails again (I guess it increases signal strenght?). Just don't expect it to go TOO far away, or across multiple walls. Still range is good.
Battery life is also satisfatory: if I use the headphone non-stop from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bad then yes, I have to charge it at the beginning of the night, but that's unlikely to happen often. Although having to charge middle use DOES happen eventually. At least it gives an indicator, the phone beeps at you once battery starts to get low, so you know you'll have to charge soon. It's not like an old phone I had that just died in the middle of a gaming section without any warning.

It has a huge scrolling volume button on the side, with a very distintive texture to it. It makes it very easy to just change the volume in a flash, as you just can't miss the buton, and the scrolling makes it much more smooth than just pressing a down/up button a lot of times. Just don't scroll too hard, or you risk blowing your ears with high volume.

Speaking of huge buttons, it has a huge power button as well. Again, so big that you just can't miss it, and it's also textured. It's a bit hard to press, so you shouldn't accidentaly bump into the thing - and even if you did, you have to hold it down for a bit (around 2s?) for the phone to turn on/off, so you are just NOT miss powering the thing. A nice touch is that, when it is off and you try turning it on, it gives off a little beep to warn you that you are pressing the button, so you know the phone is still working... I guess.

The mic (again, sound quality goes later) is a discrete one: no plush on the end. Some people may prefer it, some may not - I just know I do. Having that black dot in my peropheral vision sometimes bugs me, so that slick design is very appealing. It can spin just about enough, not spetacular (like a few over 180º phones), but it get's the job perfectly done. The only thing it lacks is a mute bu... OH. That. When you turn the mic up, it automatically mutes. Nice one Corsair! No more "is it muted or not, where's the red light?" or "wtf guyz, why u no hear me... oh, I accidentally muted the mic, sry!" stupidity, no, it's super easy to both mute / unmute and know which one you are currently using.

The earcups have height adjust, as well as up/down and axial rotation, so it should fit your head nicely. The axial rotation also helps you make the H2100 lie flat on a surface, so it's easier to store in a backpack for transportation (which I do a lot). Unfortunatelly, no folding, but I can live with that. Last, the seal on the lower part isn't great, but I suppose it's good enough.

Is it a pillow or a brick - how confortable it is?

Needless to say, the wireless is just SO GOOD! Man, wish I did this before.... Here's a quick list of daily reasons as to why its great, in no particular order:

I can just type as much as you see in this review and not have to worry about cables hitting my arms.... in fact, I'll go even further: I can finnaly be "the shirtless man of the house" and not have my chest itch due to a cable constantly banging on it.
I can just make a looong stretch, no wire is ever going to hold me anymore - I'll put all my faith in the chair's ability to hold my weight and hope for the best...
Speaking of chair, I can just abandon it at any point I wish. I can go grab some water or something to eat, maybe go to an emergency bathroom, perhaps lay down on the bed while I wait for a game to find a match or relax along with some music (hearing the WAN show?).

And the best of it: can do all of those things in a flash, while still listening to music or chatting with friends. And I can change volume / mute mic too, as it's all on the headphone. Wireless is awesome; when mobile phones (the bricky ones) first launched, people were like "why would I need a mobile telephone, I can just use mine at home or a street phone". Now we can't live without our smartphones anymore. People should really adopt wireless in everything (*cue wireless charging phones and electric cars) including headphones!

But enough of wireless, let's go over something else.

On the earcup side of things, it's great! It's very confortable, and even after an entire DAY on non-stop use (well, I took it off for dinner and lunch), my ears didn't feel a thing! It didn't feel hot or sweaty, I didn't feel it itching due to pressure, it was awesome. My ears could just let me use this forever, if only I didn't have to hear my mom's blablling about how I didn't listen to hear when she called, as I was with the phone. Anyway, earcups check: aproved with flying colors.

Now, that was all great so far... but not anymore. While the ears didn't give me any problems, the top of my head would start to itch if I just use the phone that long. Maybe I'm just not used to it, but even though it IS confortable and doesn't get hot / sweaty either, I do feel itching after wearing it for extremely long periods of time. Which we can all agree that it shouldn't be done anyway, it's bad for your health. But regardless, it's a point to be made.

ENOUGH OF BABBLING HOW'S THE SOUND OF IT??

Okay, fine. I GET IT, I'll tell how it performs now. Just let me tell a bit about my audio tastes, so you can have a baseline as to what I use my headphones for.

First, I'm no audio expert, and while I do enjoy some music, I'm not crazy for it either. I prefer instrumental music; I'm a piano player, and I just love hearing the sounds of each instrument (a singer kinda ruins that). In particular, piano (duh) and violin.. BUT don't mistake it with classical music, though. I said instrumental, not classic. Also, no yolo low frequency stuff; I'm drunk.... er, I prefer the highs over lows. Oh, and a bit of otaku stuff too, so if you are not onto that sort of music, your mileage should vary. Last, for comparison, I used my Microsoft Headset that served me well over the years, and, as mentioned in the beginning, a 5$ speakers that I'll just call "cheapos" from now on.

So let's start with the naked sound quality, no virtual surround here (will talk about that later):

My cheapos suck: some of the instruments in a few tracks were being cut away, the sound quality was horrible, no noise isolation... it was only ever usefull when I had friends at home, or didn't feel like using the microsoft headset.
Speaking of which, this one does a lot better than the cheapos. It has a bit of passive noise isolation (it is an over design afterall), but it isn't really any good. I could hear all the instruments, and I always thought that was good...
But then, enter the H2100. It's sound is... good. I mean, very good, better than before, but it isn't GREAT either.

That is, AT DEFAULT. Once I opened the Corsair software and fine tuned the mixer for my needs... oh boy, THEN it became great. I could hear every whisper, all the instruments, everything was perfectly clear to me. Using a few drops of brain power, I could very clearly isolate each and every instrument in my head, hearing each note as it struck, no distortion, no muffle. I could even hear the singer's breath in a few files, a thing that my Microsoft failed to achieve. Oh, and I almost forgot: the passive isolation. It's better, as my ears will fit entirely within the earcups (as opposed to the Mycrosoft), but still not stellar (remember that comment about the average ear seal?). At least it is there...

Now, virtual surround. Er... well, when I look at my cheapos while playing music through the H2100, it certainly feels as if the sound was coming from them, so I guess it works. Unfortunately, it REALLY feels as if it was coming form them: the sound get's a bit robotic, and while it is "okay" to listen to music, when hearing someone speak, it's just "URGH, GET IT OFF ME!". Now, I don't know a thing about surround, but at the very least with the Corsair's software, it's crap. I don't know if using another software to emulate virtual 7.1 would be better, but I'm just an average Joe, I just used the thing, and didn't like it, so I'm stoping there.

Oh, and mic. Hm.. not very good. I don't know if there is a problem with it, but it seems that there is a little "hssss" sound when recording. Now, the voice itself is very good, very clear, but that noise bugs me too much. Oh, and you have to boost volume to the max, as it is really low. In fact, if you put the mic at a low level, you can't hear a thing (not even the noise). If you boost it up to max, you can hear yourself talking, it's a bit low, but you can clearly hear that.... and the hsss sound is very present. I'm really disapointed with that one. The surround was crap, but at least you can disable it and have a great experience - the mic, however, you are stuck with it being bad, or you buying a better device. In fact, Mycrosoft's mic was better. Yay for 20$ headset, you won this one! Poor cheapos couldn't even compete here, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that the H2100 is better

Okay, so everything you said about the H2100 is awesome (barring the mic), I'll go buy one right now...

NO. Don't do it yet! I didn't talk about the drawbacks. And trust me, there are many:

First of all, Win 10 users: prepare for headaches. I've spent a pretty long time on 7 and 8.1 and never encountered the problem that I'm about to say. But once both devices were upgraded to 10, sometimes the audio just cuts off. It may be listening to music (uncommon), or watching video on youtube / stream on twitch (common), the audio just dies. You look at the default device, and it still says the H2100 is the default, yet no sound is produced. The only way to fix it is to go to device manager, uninstall the USB thing, unplug the dongle, and plug it again. THEN the audio comes back. It may happend twice in 5 mins, or none in 5h, it's random. But when it does, it annoys the crap out of me. Many users have reported this on the Corsair forums, and not only with this headset. They said they were working on a fix, but at the time of the last edit, issue is present on windows 10 only.

Next, remember that I said:

a user manual that you MUST throw away

Well, about that. It says something about charging and led indicators. Suposedly, it has a green (full charge), yellow/ambar color for medium charge and red for 10% or lower battery. But nope, doesn't work like that. Instead, there's just a red light that stays lit for around 3s after plugging the charge, and the it stays off, flashing for a brief moment every 3-4s. And then fully lit green once charged. That's it. So outside of being plugged with 100% charge, the battery indicator just flashes red every feel seconds. You just have no way of actually knowing how much battery you have left. I asked the Corsair Forums, and they said this was normal behaviour. So from this, we get: A- bad manual; B- no battery indicator, it can really let you down when you most need it....

And why do I say that? Well, here comes the next problem. I said the mic was bad. But I didn't say everything. It's bad as it is, but when you use it WHILE charging, it SUCKS. Along with the hsss, there's also low pitched noise: if you've ever seen an amplifier when it's turned on, that's the noise. It fades away if you hold the chassis and serve as a ground wire - aka, electrical problems. According to Corsair, this is an actual defect, and you can file RMA for it. I only don't do it because I bought it on the US and I live in Brazil now - you can bet crazy shipping, as well as 2 months of wait for a new product to correct a problem that only happens when I'm charging and skyping, which isn't that often. Oh, and one more thing: this seems to occur with many of the H2100s, and there's even a report of a dude that got back another headset that had THE SAME PROBLEM. If my constraints weren't enough, I ain't RMAing for that! Still getting pissed, though. I paid 100$ for it, I'd expect to get a good product out of that money.

Last, there's a "hsss" sound (not as bad as the mic, though) that happens during dead silent music parts. It's a bit hard to explain, but when there's supposed to be no sound in a music (say, a little before it starts, or right after it ends), there's a "hsss". It DOES go away when playing music, even if there's a very VERY low sound being played, but when it's supposed to have no sound at all, it happens. You could view it as a good thing to indicate that at least the thing is turned on and working, but I see it as being bad. Interpret it as you wish.

Conclusion and final thoughts (for those of you that just skiped all the other sections, or just want a summary to quote for other members)

I like this headphone. I really do. All of the strong points I mentioned (especially the wireless), along with my limited options in terms of budget and availability really make me proud of my purchase - I don't regret it.

But, would I recommend it for someone else? No. Definitely no. The problem with windows 10 REALLY drives me nuts: the Murhpy's Law strikes pretty hard here, making it happend during a critical moment on a live stream, or when a big plot twist is just about to happen in an anime. It just kills me inside.

And even if you are using it (or Corsair fixes the crappy driver), there's still the mic problems. It's not really so much of a problem for ME as a user, but since I have a 100$ product, I'd expect my friends to have a nice chat with me, my viewers on twitch to enjoy hearing my "BIG PLAYS!" shouts, my gameplay mates being able to clearly understand my english... And to think that it get's even worse when charging, it almost feels like getting a wireless headPHONE + desk decent mic. Even ignoring the Win 10 problem, this also makes it hard to recommend. If you don't care aobut the mic, what's the point of getting the H2100 VS a wireless headphone + cheap mic; if you care, you want something better.

Still, as I said, what it does good, it REALLY does. If you can get past all the drawbacks I just mentioned, then yes, it's a great product, and you should buy one.

asim1999 · September 12, 2015

The virtual surround is designed for FPS gaming and is horrible for music regardless, so could you test tha out please?

Imakuni · September 12, 2015

The virtual surround is designed for FPS gaming and is horrible for music regardless, so could you test tha out please?

I forgot to mention: I'm not into FPS. I rarely play them. Last time I played one was Crysis 2. And CoD with my friend's Xbox. So....

Nav1tech · September 14, 2015

Mine work perfectly with windows 10, but id be pissed if i had your same issues. My led lights work the same as yours. I guess i didnt even bother to read that it should work as a indicator with different colors.

Aslo the "Hsss" sound happens on every wireless headset i have tried. I probably got use to it since i dont even notice it anymore.