Corsair Void V2 Wireless

Corsair's wireless ecosystem works quite brilliantly, and for some reason the Void series needed to be upgraded with a new member, the Void V2 Wireless. But I'll give them that the usability design is great, with a spring resistance system in the volume switches, power button, and a mode selector, and nothing else taking up space besides a charging port. Thank you for that. There's support for PC, PlayStation, Switch, and most everything else.

The headset's "switch between radio waves and Bluetooth" button is by far the best implementation of dual connectivity I've tried, and it couldn't be much easier. This particular way of doing it should be the market standard.

Microfibre fabric and memory foam have been used, and overall they fit well - even over time. Long-term comfort is an underrated feature of headphones, and overheating at the ear in particular can only be described as spawn of the devil. The weight is relatively high at just over 300 grams, but it by no means feels heavy. On the other hand, it feels a bit cheap as part of the construction is made of plastic, but this is not something you notice in everyday use.

The units are 50 mm and made of... well... yes. You don't get much information - just like with all other manufacturers. However, I seem to have read somewhere that neodymium magnets were used for the motor system, but I haven't been able to find that from Corsair. The ear pads are made to be replaced if something goes wrong. On the other hand, the microphone is certified for Nvidia's broadcast platform, which improves sound and image through AI. I didn't realise this was necessary for it to work, and I don't think Nvidia requires it either. The quality of the microphone is OK for the price range, but nothing that will impress anyone. There's a bit of a tinny sound, but the call quality is fine.

The battery life at 2.4 GHz isn't too shabby, and it's rated at 70 hours, but I got 68. How loud you turn it up and how much you play makes a big difference. It can be fast-charged in 15 minutes, which should be enough for six hours. There is RGB, but it's done relatively tastefully. However, you can see that it's not the world's most expensive diodes that have been used. Some might miss a wired connection, but then you shouldn't buy a product that actually has "wireless" in the title. Personally, my only complaint is that, as always, if you want to avoid three different dongles in your computer at the same time, you have to commit to a particular brand's ecosystem, even if it's probably just a matter of time before EU regulation forces all companies to use the same standard, even if that prevents proprietary technology from minimising latency, so a common standard wouldn't necessarily be good either.

The price is around £100, but in return it fully supports Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio. Not all games still support it, but the vast majority of recent AAA titles do. It's one of the formats that actually works as real artificial 7.1 sound. Unfortunately, it's not something that is integrated and requires downloading from The Dead Marshes, better known as the Microsoft Store. I find it very hard to understand why it can't be made into a plug-in in the various pieces of driver software, which at Corsair is called iCUE.

To call iCUE a driver is a bit of an understatement - it's a suite and it takes up a lot of space, but I actually commend Corsair for getting it all down to "only" 650 MB. But it's definitely on the light side - unfortunately.

On the other hand, it's easy to compensate for the "gamer" tuning they come with out of the box. There's something about the upper bass/lower midrange that doesn't work optimally - it's missing - and then the upper midrange is given extra punch in the transition to the treble instead. But this can be easily corrected - though without being able to compensate for the intrinsic sound. Corsair aren't the only ones as there seems to be a whole trend for headphones to come in a "gaming" setting instead of neutral.

The bass is actually fine as such. It's round and rich, maybe a little too rounded, and it's missing that final transient control that is quite characteristic of almost all wireless headsets that are not based on planar magnetic devices. The midrange is more laid-back than the rest, so music isn't exactly a forte - but then again, this is a gaming headset and I would have preferred a bit more midrange. The treble does a decent job, but it's a bit overexposed, but that actually makes it easier to hear things, especially in shooters.

All in all, for the price, it's a pretty good headset with decent battery life and admirable comfort over time.