Corsair Virtuoso MAX Review: Excellent Headset, Difficult Fit

The unusual thing about this headset's reviews

Reviewers almost never agree this precisely. The Virtuoso MAX has been covered by outlets with very different priorities, and on the things that usually cause arguments they landed in the same place: the aluminium frame is excellent, the battery does what Corsair claims, the noise cancelling is strong for a gaming headset.

Then they get to the ear pads, and the agreement holds there too, in the other direction.

So there is not much to referee about whether the headset is well made or whether it sounds good. The open question is whether it fits your head, and four of the five reviews we read say that for a lot of people it will not.

Where the pressure comes from

igor'sLAB was the most specific about the cause. The foam in the pads is thin, and underneath it sits a hard ring that presses into the side of the head rather than around it. Tech4Gamers described the same thing from the other end, as pressure points around the jaw and the upper ear that stayed constant through the whole test period rather than easing as the pads broke in. GamingTrend found the cups pushed against the outside of the head and heated up.

Digital Chumps had a better time of it, noticing discomfort in the headband after about two hours that then went away. That is the most positive account, and it still contains a two-hour mark.

Both igor'sLAB and Tech4Gamers noted the problem gets worse with a larger head. If that is you, the odds here are not good.

The weight is real but secondary

At about 417 grams this sits at the heavy end of wireless headsets, and reviewers noticed. It is worth separating from the pad issue though, because they are different problems with different fixes.

Several reviewers pointed out that the balance is good and the headset stays put, which is what you want from a heavy pair. A well padded heavy headset gets tiring after a few hours. An under padded one concentrates the same weight onto the two points where the ring makes contact, which is closer to what people are describing here.

Sound is good, and the tuning is a coin flip

Nobody said the headset sounds bad. The 50mm graphene drivers came in for praise in all four of the reviews.

What they disagreed on was the tuning out of the box. igor'sLAB measured a heavy bass weighting and thought it needed correcting before it was pleasant. Digital Chumps described the default as warm without overdoing the low end. Tech4Gamers called it rich and well balanced. GamingTrend split the difference: fine for games and films, short on the definition you need to place footsteps in competitive play.

Read together, that points to a tuning that suits some ears and some content and not others. Expect to spend time in the equaliser. Most of the reviewers did, whichever camp they ended up in.

Where Corsair cut corners

The microphone is the clearest one. It is a capable headset mic and it is not close to a dedicated one, which matters more than usual because of what the headset costs. GamingTrend found it peaked too easily under normal speech.

iCUE is the other. Digital Chumps ran into a sidetone bug that Corsair acknowledged, and GamingTrend called the ten-band equaliser the bare minimum, which stings on a headset whose stock tuning several reviewers wanted to change.

Neither would sink the product on its own. Both are the kind of thing you forgive on a mid-price headset and resent on a flagship, which is roughly what Digital Chumps was getting at when they noted a Turtle Beach Atlas Air delivering comparable audio for considerably less.