[section_title title=”Performance”]Performance
Comfort
Design wise the H2100 is conventional (sans the lack of wires), with the exception of the rotating ear cups. The first thing you notice when putting them on is that the headband is too thinly padded, it bothered me on the H1500s but with the extra weight of the batteries present in the H2100s it really became the limiting factor to comfort during prolonged use which is not really acceptable on a headset costing £100.
The ear cups on the other hand are comfortable thanks to the thick padding and recessed drivers meaning my ears don’t contact the inside of the ear cup which is something I often find annoying on other headsets. The clamp pressure is good for a headset of this weight too, but yet again a limiting factor in what I would call my ability to forget they are on is the lack of pleather ear pads, I find fabric ones noticeably less pleasant to wear than pleather ones so being stuck with them is a real frustration, especially in a headset in this price point. Corsair makes and sells compatible replacement pleather ear pads. Put some in the box!
I know I’m coming across fairly negative and that may be unfair as the H2100s are not an uncomfortable headset by any means, I love the recessed drivers in the ear cups for example but the thin padding on the headband and lack of pleather ear pads ultimately mean that I don’t consider them to be as comfortable as they should be when the price tag is taken into consideration.
Audio Quality
When it came time to test the H2100’s sound quality, I was expecting them to be a wireless version of the H1500s, which to be fair would be perfectly good as that headset sounded great. I was pleasantly surprised by what I heard though, the H2100s produce a significantly richer sound than the H1500s, though they do sacrifice some of the clarity of the H1500s to do so.
Listening to a variety of music from metal to EDM I found the H2100s to be a very well-rounded set of cans, they tow the line well between clear tones and punchy bass as well as any other gaming headset I’ve tested and I was thoroughly satisfied with the listening experience.
When you combine the well-balanced yet punchy sound with absolutely deafening volume you are sure to be on to a winner for gaming and indeed whilst playing BF4 having the H2100s exploding into your cranium is certainly very immersive but I also found I could appreciate all the little sound cues of Risk of Rain too, it really is a do it all headset that offers just about the best sound quality you can ever expect from a gaming headset that costs a hundred quid.
Microphone
The microphone was great on the H2100s too, I found the noise cancellation to be fairly effective (nothing can help it when you get the ear cups going though they are simply to loud) and the clarity was great for communication in online gaming. As a general rule I like to join mumble and not mention I’m using a new headset, and if I receive no complaints from my extremely fussy chums I know there is nothing to worry about and that is exactly the case here.
Wireless Performance and Battery LifeÂ
Being a wireless headset we have a few more areas to test than a regular headset, the first of which being wireless performance (obviously). When testing the range of the H2100s I found they performed about as well as a Bluetooth speaker when it came to range from source, so if you have experience there you will know what I mean in the sense that they just about cope with one wall but past that it can get a bit patchy.
I did find they worked flawlessly in the room directly below my PC though, so if you have something like steam home streaming set up where you stream to a lounge directly below the room your rig is in you could simply leave the headphones plugged into the PC upstairs which is pretty cool. Overall they performed in line with my expectations, and considering most will be simply at arms length to their rig I can’t forsee anyone having range related problems anyway.
The main consideration for anyone looking to go wireless is of course going to be battery life, Corsair claim ten hours but what did I get out of them? Well, averaging across at least ten charges I got about nine hours (of playback) out of them, when all things considered is perfectly satisfactory in my books, if you factored in some idle time and low volume usage I could see them hitting that ten hour mark easily.
