 Buy an unlocked Intel 4th Gen Core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of Rome 2 Total War. Click now to learn more. Welcome to an unboxing and review. This is part 2 of our series of wireless gaming headsets, so this will be part 3. And this one right here is part 1, the A50 from Astro. This is the Corsair Vengeance 2100. Now normally I don't review gaming headsets because frankly I don't really care about them. Generally speaking, from more of an audiophile brand, you can get something for cheaper that sounds better and will have comparable or better comfort and build quality. This is just a fact. But when we move into wireless products, that fact starts to change a little bit because audiophile grade wireless headphones are very, very expensive. So I wanted to check out the wireless options that are available out there if nothing else. So the Vengeance 2100 from Corsair comes with a USB receiver or transmitter dongle rather that can plug directly into a port or it can plug into the little base station that has an extension cable on it. And it comes with a USB to micro B connector that is for charging the headset itself. In terms of the construction and looks, I really like the idea of Corsair's headsets, the industrial design. It feels quite solid and is a big improvement in the solidity department over the previous generation Vengeance 2000. Things like the hinges have been reinforced significantly. In terms of the weight, it comes in at around 325 grams, making it almost exactly the same weight as the SteelSeries H wireless. It does feature Dolby headphone virtual surround, and that is pretty much it. You can either have stereo over USB or you can have Dolby over USB because there's no base station. There's no optical input or anything like that. So it's PC and Mac and that's it. So there are no consoles or anything like that. It has an integrated non-user replaceable battery. So you just plug that in and charge it just like that. And it does also have an integrated volume wheel, which I quite like. It's got a nice neural finish on it. In terms of comfort, the weight is a little bit further out than I would necessarily like. So I find it jiggles a little bit and unfortunately it doesn't fit me particularly well. It has okay clamping force. And in terms of the construction, I mean the phone's a little bit on the hard side, but once it breaks in, I would expect it to be nice and comfortable. For me, the problem is that at my head width, they don't angle in enough and I don't quite get a seal at the bottom so they leak, which is really important for optimal fit as well as optimal sound quality. Now with all of that said, with a longer break-in period, I would expect these to improve in a way that I wouldn't expect from the Astro A50s as well as the SteelSeries H Wireless because both of those come with softer foam out of the box, which I guess is sort of one of those, well, do you want the one that feels better out of the box or the one that might wear out slower? It's up to you. Okay. For the range test, I did my usual range test, which is from the office having the base station installed. I stayed within the same room, pass. I went to the other side of the wall about eight feet away. That was okay. I went down the hallway about 15 feet away. That was okay. And then the 2100s failed when I went down to the stair landing, so it was quite far away and a wall as well as in the bathroom in the basement. So I tried in five different locations. The max volume of the Vengeance 2100s was noticeably uncomfortable, caused discomfort. I wouldn't want to listen to them like that. I actually found that 20 to 30% was plenty for day-to-day music listening or casual gaming. But what's great about the 2100s compared to the A50s is that once I reached the maximum volume on them, there's no distortion. They seem to be capped internally so that you don't go so far that they sound bad. They always sounded good. Noise isolation was a weak point of this headset for me because they don't seal correctly on my head. But when I manually adjust them, I'd say they're about average for a closed back headphone. And that's about the best that they can do because they do use a cloth ear cup. A pleather ear cup will tend to isolate better than cloth, although the benefit of cloth is of course that there's a sweat absorption as opposed to sweat causing. The battery life is about 10 hours, but the good news is you can run while you're connected to a charger. So just like the A50s, unfortunately, unlike the H Wireless, it doesn't have a swappable battery so you can pretty much go continuously. The Vengeance 1500s are fully driverless. I was up and running in about 15 seconds, which is great. There is a rudimentary software thing that you can install. It's not fancy, but it's functional. So you can control surround as well as volume. You can set your mic listen functionality and you can control your graphical EQ from within there. And that's pretty much all there is to it. The volume wheel is well integrated into Windows and actually controls your system volume as opposed to just controlling an independent volume on here. Whether you prefer that or not is up to you. I liked that the H Wireless controlled its own volume separately because they didn't really get that loud. So being able to play around with the software and crank them a little higher would be kind of nice. But with the Vengeance 2100s, it doesn't matter because they can get as loud as you would definitely want, pretty much. Now when we move on to listening tests, they were all tested the same way. That is to say, on both of the ones that accept analog inputs, I did use digital inputs. So I used USB on a PC for all three of them, just for the best apples to apples comparison. And about the Vengeance 2100s, I'd say that bass was actually pretty tight without being overpowering. They were quite nice to listen to and they felt fairly flat. A lot of gaming headsets will tend to have pumped up bass. The A50s were guilty of this a little bit. And actually, my personal favorite example of expensive gaming headphones that amp up the bass a lot, the Razer Kraken Forged. A lot of gaming headsets tend to do that. The Vengeance 2100s didn't. I did find the highs were a bit harsh to my ears at high volume, but this is normal for me with reference flat headphones. So your mileage may vary on that one. And the mids were well controlled as well. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the 2100s, especially given that they're a $150 wireless headset. For the mic, I actually wasn't that impressed with it. This was the first one that I tried though. So once I tried the H Wireless and the Astro A50s, I consider it a strong performer now. I'll let you guys listen though and make your own judgment call here. This is my test of the Corsair Vengeance 2100 microphone. I hope that you have enjoyed it thoroughly. With a wireless headset, a replacement mic solution like a clip-on or a desktop microphone is really not much of an option. So the built-in has to be adequate. And although I hate boom mics and I really find them hard to position just right and I feel like retractable is the way to go, I got to give Corsair full marks, especially now that I've more carefully evaluated the competition for the microphone solution on the Vengeance 2100. So whether or not this guy makes sense, it's going to come down to pretty much one or two things. So number one is price. It costs half as much as the other two headsets in this roundup. Half as much at $150. It's still quite expensive, but at least it sounds good and it costs half as much as the other options, but it lacks the features of the other ones. So the H Wireless has their sexy little base station control thing with live mixing between your chat volume and your game volume. It's got better comfort, better sound quality. It has better range. It has console compatibility. The A50 also has console compatibility. It's got, I would argue, better comfort. It doesn't have as good of a mic, but it's got the included stand and stuff like that. So these I would consider the bare bones value option for the strictly PC gamer. Thank you for checking out this review of the Corsair Vengeance 2100. Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. I'd love to hear from Vengeance 2100 owners. What do you guys think of your headphone? Do you think that it'll be the big winner in this series of reviews or are you disappointed with your purchase? Let me know in the comments below and as always guys, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.