In these days of online gaming, it’s important to have the best headset that you can get. It’s no good jumping feet-first into anything from Lethal Company to Fortnite without a decent way of communicating with your team/squad, at least not unless you mind having minimal success. As such, it behooves the prepared gamer to get their hands on the best-in-show gaming headset that they can buy, and the Corsair VOID Wireless v2 headset aims to be the best. It’s our job to figure out if they have the tech to pull it off.
What Is the Corsair VOID Wireless v2 Headset?
If you’re not already familiar with the line, Corsair’s VOID headset was a stunning bit of gaming kit that brought 7.1 Virtual Surround Sound to the table, making everyone’s visits to the virtual barber shop that little bit more immersive. The new V2 line of the product aims to refine all of the previously introduced features and even introduces a few new ones that help to give it a bit of an edge over the competition, as well as providing even more support for everyone from hardcore gamers to long-time streamers.
One of the biggest new features is probably the inclusion of both Bluetooth and a 2.4 GHz wireless dongle connection, as well as the introduction of support for some new platforms. Previously, the VOID sets were confirmed to work on PC, MAC, and PlayStation, but now you can add both mobile and Nintendo Switch compatibility to that particular list. You’ve also got a microphone powered by NVIDIA Broadcast technology, which makes it one of the clearest, omnidirectional microphones you’re liable to find on a headset in today’s market.
Sound Quality and Spatial Audio
When it comes to any headset, the true major player in the quality of the headset is the quality of the audio itself. While there are certainly high-end professional-level headphones that can produce higher quality audio, the Corsair VOID Pro v2 provides both excellent dynamic range and frequency response. Slapping these things on makes you feel like you’re in a cinema, with the booming bass tones and the crystal clear reproduction. Audiophiles should be pretty happy with these things.
Another major attraction behind these things is the 7.1 Virtual Surround Sound, a much-touted Spatial Audio feature powered via Dolby Atmos. This service effectively provides excellent immersive audio, with sounds surrounding the user to mimic the direction of in-game sounds. While this effect is great in lots of games, it really comes to its own in first-person games. Online on games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, you can hear precisely where shots are coming from with relative ease, and you can even enable the feature in many other games, like Fallout: New Vegas, if you use special mods like DSOAL.
Usability
While the superlative audio quality and immersive spatial sounds are nice, it doesn’t mean much if your user experience isn’t up to the scratch, and for the most part, the VOID PRO v2 are pretty simple to pick up and use. Attach the dongle to a USB port and the headset will connect to it automatically, as long as you’re in 2.4 GHz mode. You can also use the set in Bluetooth mode by tapping the power button once while they’re already turned on and once again to switch back.
Using this feature, it’s possible to connect your headset to a computer and a phone or tablet at the same time and seamlessly switch between the two options. This makes it pretty easy to swap between gaming on your PC and taking a call on your phone, or to swap between listening to music on your phone and then having to take a Zoom or Discord call on your computer. It’s a great feature for flexibility, though I can imagine productivity might take a hit if you keep swapping out of Zoom calls to listen to podcasts.
Extra Features
When it comes to tertiary features, the Corsair VOID Pro v2 offers a few interesting extras. You’ve got the mandatory gamer RGB in the form of two RGB strips down either side of the headset. Like pretty much all Corsair hardware that supports the feature, you can use iCUE to control what the RGB is doing, including some fun reactive modes and rain-like effects. Of course, it’s up to you whether or not you should bother with these settings since the RGB strips are completely invisible to you while you’re actually wearing the headset, and the two little lights on each side only work with the less dynamic and interesting effects.
Another feature of note is the NVIDIA Broadcast-powered microphone. It’s not 100% clear what NVIDIA Broadcast technology does for the microphone, other than helping to make your audio clearer by isolating your voice specifically over other background noises. NVIDIA Broadcast is an AI-driven service mostly aimed at making things easier for streamers. I’m going to assume that this has some similar level of AI-backed tech behind it, but if so, I can’t honestly see why it was used. The microphone quality is good, but there’s nothing particularly special about how much background noise the mic filters when compared with another headset I have. It’s possible that there’s some extra settings that I missed, but so far, I’ve not been able to find them.
Final Thoughts
The Corsair VOID Pro v2 is a great headset that combines great audio quality with awesome features and a very comfortable user experience. While the RGB is minimal, to say the least, it’s still the sort of stuff that many PC gamers crave, and with immersive audio this good, you’ll be too engrossed in the game/film you’re playing/watching that you’ll hardly notice anyway. Just make sure you don’t lose the dongle and get stuck having to use them in Bluetooth mode for the rest of your life.
