Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE Headphones Review

The Corsair Virtuoso have a straightforward but premium look. They're less flashy than other gamer-centric headsets, with a black and silver color scheme. While they're quite large, they aren't as bulky as many other gaming headsets. They feature a customizable RGB Corsair logo on each ear cup.

The Corsair Virtuoso are decently comfortable. While they have good padding, they're a bit heavy and may fit a bit tight on some people's heads. The cups are swappable but unfortunately don't come with other options in-the-box. That said, the cups' normal depth should be comfortable enough for most people. Overall, they should be comfortable enough for shorter gaming sessions but may cause fatigue during longer marathons.

The control scheme is sub-par. It's better suited for gaming, as there is no music control from the headphones themselves. While the controls are easy to use, they lack many options and only give you volume and microphone control. The microphone wheel is a bit stiff and has an infinite scroll with audio cues indicating min/max volume.

The Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE are passably breathable. They can trap in some heat, which can make your ears feel fairly warm and cause you to sweat more than usual, so they may not be ideal for sports or working out. They should be fine in more casual conditions, however, and should be suitable for gaming and listening to music if you take breaks from time to time.

Like most gaming headphones, the Corsair Virtuoso aren't very portable. The ear cups swivel a full 180 degrees, which allows them to lay flat, and the microphone is detachable, but they don't fold into a more compact format.

The pouch is sub-par. It may protect the headphones from some small splashes of water or dust, but it may not be able to protect your headphones from the occasional drop.

The Corsair Virtuoso have a great build quality. They're made from good-quality and dense plastic, while there's metal in the headband. The SE model also have a brushed aluminum finish on the ear cups. Both the headband and ear cups are padded with a nice feeling faux-leather that gives them an all-around premium look and feel. They should be able to withstand a few accidental drops or bumps without sustaining too much damage.

The Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless have alright stability. They're a bit tight on the head, though they can fall off from bigger head movements, which isn't ideal for sports. They should stay quite stable during gaming. They also have a wireless design, so you don’t have to worry about a cable getting hooked on something, which could yank the headphones off your head.

• Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless Gaming Headset
• Detachable boom microphone
• USB dongle
• USB-C to USB-A charging cable
• 1/8" TRRS cable
• Carrying pouch
• Manuals

The Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE have a fairly warm but uneven sound profile. They have a dip in low-mids which pushes back lead instruments and some vocals, so they sound quite dark and may not be the greatest choice for more vocal-centric audio like podcasts. It's worth noting that due to their mediocre frequency response consistency, you may experience differences in their sound profile depending on their fit. Luckily, their companion software offers a graphic EQ and presets so that you can tweak its sound to your liking.

The Corsair Virtuoso have mediocre frequency response consistency. Due to their fit, seal, and positioning, they have inconsistent bass and treble delivery, and people who have thick hair or glasses may especially notice a drop in bass. You may need to adjust their position on your head every time you put them on to ensure consistent audio reproduction.

The Corsair Virtuoso have good bass accuracy. They're underemphasized in the low-bass, so your mixes lack thump and rumble. In contrast, the high-bass is overemphasized, which adds boom.

The mid-range accuracy is decent. The dip in the low and mid-mids thins out vocals and lead instruments while also nudging them to the back of the mix. However, the high-mids are fairly neutral so vocals and instruments have adequate clarity and detail.

The Corsair Virtuoso's treble accuracy is alright. It's underemphasized across the range so vocals and lead instruments sound veiled while sibilants like cymbals are dull and lispy.

The Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE have an alright peaks/dips performance. There's a large peak in the high-bass, which adds a significant boom while the following dip in the low-mids thins out vocals and lead instruments. There's also some mismatch between the left and right driver in the high-mids, so the left driver makes vocals and lead instruments a bit honky and harsh while the right driver keeps these sounds adequately detailed and clear. However, it's important to note that driver mismatch is only valid for our pair and can vary from unit to unit.

The Corsair Virtuoso's imaging performance is great. The group delay falls just under the audibility threshold, resulting in a tight bass and transparent treble reproduction. While the L/R drivers are well-matched in amplitude and phase response, there's a small amount of frequency mismatch, which could indicate holes in the stereo image. However, these results are only valid for our test unit, so your experience may vary.

The Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless' passive soundstage is poor. Due to their closed-back design, the soundstage is perceived as small and located inside your head. It also sounds unnatural, and it may not sound as immersive as headphones with an open-back design.

These headphones have a 7.1 surround sound feature in their companion software. However, we don't currently test this feature's performance.

The Corsair Virtuoso's weighted harmonic distortion is decent. There are a couple of peaks in the treble range at normal listening volumes, but this can be hard to hear with real-life content. The frequencies also fall within good limits at higher volume levels, resulting in clear and pure audio reproduction.

These are the settings we used to test these headphones. Our results are only valid when using these settings.

The Corsair Virtuoso's noise isolation is sub-par. They do a poor job at blocking out the low rumbles of bus or plane engines and struggle to isolate ambient speech. While their treble range isolation is significantly better, this isn't generally as important. It can help cut down the hum of an AC unit.

The Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE have decent leakage performance. The significant portion of their leakage sits in the mid-range, which means that their leakage sounds fuller than that of in-ears and earbuds but not as loud and full as open-back headphones. Also, since the overall level of the leakage is not very loud, it shouldn't be a concern unless you play loud music in a very quiet environment.

The microphone's recording quality is quite impressive. Your voice sounds full-bodied, though lacking some detail. The bump in low-bass may make your voice prone to pops and rumbling noises.

The Corsair Virtuoso's microphone's noise handling is very good. It can easily separate speech from ambient noise in most loud environments and should even be able to handle extremely loud situations like subway stations and gaming competitions.

The Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE have a very good battery performance. They have over 13 hours of continuous playback time, although their performance in this regard depends on your usage. They also have a customizable standby timer that puts your headphones into sleep mode after a specified amount of inactivity. They support passive playback through an included 1/8" audio cable and can be used while charging via their USB-C port, which is good as their charge time is very long at almost 4 hours.

Update 02/17/2022: It was originally reported that the Corsair iCUE software isn't compatible with macOS. Ηowever, this has been retested, and the software does work with macOS and Windows. The results have been updated with the correct information.

The Corsair iCUE software is decent. It offers a good graphic EQ, as well as EQ presets, mic control, and a simple surround sound option. They support 7.1 surround sound, though it doesn't specify whether this is Dolby or DTS. The app also allows you to set the headphones' sleep mode timer. The settings are saved onto the wireless dongle and carry over if you plug it into different PCs or your PS4. The RGB lighting has many customization options that you can set via the software, including displaying red when your battery percentage falls below a set level.

Update 10/19/2021: These headphones have been updated to test bench 1.5. In this update, we use a click track in our software, and we measure latency three times and average the results. However, while the headphones seemed to work, the click track wasn't audible. We retested them on a couple of different computers, made sure our settings were correct, maxed out their volume controls, and retested them with another pair of headphones to compare them. Since the output click track's volume was too low for our microphone to pick up, we decided to test latency by recording the Youtube click track, rather than the one in our software, by pointing the camera to the computer monitor. As a result, we measured 73 ms of latency, which is higher than the original measurement of 10 ms. We don't expect users to encounter this issue, though, and we have updated our review to reflect these changes.

These headphones use a USB dongle to connect to your PlayStation console or PC. They have low latency, which shouldn't be noticeable, and offer a decent range, which should have no problem reaching your couch or chair.

Update 10/19/2021: These headphones have been updated to test bench 1.5. In this update, we use a click track in our software, and we measure latency three times and average the results. However, while the headphones seemed to work, the click track wasn't audible. We retested them on a couple of different computers, made sure our settings were correct, maxed out their volume controls, and retested them with another pair of headphones to compare them. Since the output click track's volume was too low for our microphone to pick up, we decided to test latency by recording the Youtube click track, rather than the one in our software, by pointing the camera to the computer monitor. As a result, we measured 'Analog/USB Audio Latency' at 59 ms, compared to the original 10 ms. We don't expect users to encounter this issue, though, and we have updated our review to reflect these changes.

These headphones can be used wired via their USB cable or 1/8" TRRS cable. You can also use them with their USB wireless dongle. The included USB cable is 6.3 feet long, and the included TRRS cable is 5.1 feet long.

These headphones are only compatible with the Xbox One when plugging in the 1/8" TRRS cable directly into the Xbox's controller.

These headphones come with a USB dongle that's compatible with PC and PS4. Unfortunately, they don't work wirelessly with the Xbox One.