Thank you Corsair for sending us this headset to review!

Corsair's newest flagship noise-canceling headset, the Virtuoso Max, is simultaneously one of the best and unfortunately flawed headsets in recent memory. In my experience reviewing hardware, great products are easy to review. I can easily gush about something I love. And there is a lot to love about this headset. But at the same time, there are serious flaws that make this really hard to recommend. Some of these issues are fixable, and the most glaring issue might be fixable with a replacement part, but who can say if that will happen? It's a shame that these are such a near miss.

First, I want to say that there is a lot to love. Where these are good, they are great. First is the build quality. I have never seen any headset made to the level of quality and feel as the Virtuoso Max. These things are amazing to hold and look fantastic. I also feel like they have a very durable design, though that isn't something you can easily test without breaking it on purpose. But what I can say is that when you pick them up for the first time they seriously impress - and for good reason.

When you first open the box, you immediately notice that the included carrying and storage case is a thing of beauty. The hard carrying case is coated in leather on the outside, with a large Corsair logo prominently displayed on top. The inside has soft touch felt, with a perfect indention for the headset. Since the ear cups swivel out to flat, the sockets for the ear cups in the case fits them just right and the microphone and cable has a spot to sit right under the headband. While there is some wasted space that could have been a pouch area, overall the included case is a highlight of the package and I'm grateful it's there. The included USB-A to USB-C charging cable certainly feels premium, though I can't say it knocks my socks off or anything; it's a cable. The USB-A wireless dongle is also just that: a dongle. Nevertheless, when taken on the whole, the included accessories lend themselves to further cement that this is a truly premium headset.

The main and most impressive aspect of the build is also the most obvious: outside of the (also premium looking) leader and fabric headband, the headset is made out of aluminum and a thick plastic that is coated to appear and feel similar. This combination makes them feel super rigid with no flex at all. The flat outside of the ear cups have a neat circular finish that resolves to a circular point in the center, and looks really nice. There is a tasteful LED ring that goes around this circle, which meets up with a rough textured aluminum or plastic (it's not always clear) used on most of the rest of the ear cup as well as the headband clasp. On each side of the cup is a stippled ring of aluminum that controls the wireless volume on the left, and the Bluetooth volume on the right. The left cup has the power slider, and the right has the Custom Button and a Play/Pause/Prev/Next button slider combo I just love for listening to podcasts and things over Bluetooth. There is also a strip of metal that goes from the swivel of the ear cup up into the top of the headband. All of the aluminum in this design is nothing short of amazing both visually and to the touch. The detachable microphone uses a plastic with a similar finish that blends in perfectly. All together, the physical design looks and feels fantastic.

The headband on the headset is a bit firm, but still fairly comfortable. On the top there is a leather band with Corsair's branding on it, and underneath there is a rough to the touch fabric, and padding underneath. The padding isn't that thick, but it does rest on top of your head with the weight well distributed. I could see it feeling heavy and hard for some, and it does bother me a little depending on the position. I think if the ear pads were more comfortable, the headband would bother me more, as we all tend to focus on the worst things first, but the headband is otherwise mostly fine.

The ear cups use a unique design. At first glance, it appears that they have a lot of padding, and use a similar fabric to the headband, though perhaps slightly softer. I generally prefer fabric ear cups over leather - I hate the feeling of hot ears. These ear pads do a good job of never getting hot, even after a long time of use. However, they attach in a unique way that makes one realize that most of what looks like padding is actually not.

The ear cups connect in a way that's like no other headset I've seen before. Most earphones have a ring that an ear pad can connect to. Others have glued-on ear pads. Many gaming headsets I've seen have a plastic ring that either snaps or twists into place on the inside face of the ear cup. These are somewhat like that, except with a big cylindrical ring that you twist onto the side of the ear cup. This is why it looks like the pad is deeper than it is. Once you take the ear pad off, you can see that the plastic ring goes well into what appears to be the visible padding, and there's actually just a bit over a quarter of an inch of actual padding between that plastic ring and your ear.

What it feels like when worn is interesting. What I will say is that it's not comfy or cushy in any way. It is quite stable though. It feels like a solid plank pushing on the side of your head with some padding softening it. Some people may like how they feel, but most people I've asked their opinion on felt they were immediately very uncomfortable. In my extended testing, it's strange. They are not comfortable, really not at all. But unlike many headsets that get less comfortable or start to hurt over time, these don't really do that. They just are. They don't feel great, but if they don't bother you, they are likely to be just fine for a long time, since they don't trap heat at all and their fit is solid and well planted in place. In a sense, it's a paradox of comfort.

On the other hand, they sound quite balanced, with a bit of bass emphasis that is not really offensive. I feel this takes a bit away from what could be a bit more detail, and even when playing with the EQ, it was hard to get back the high-frequency detail that I was looking for. You can switch EQs on the headset directly by pressing the Custom Button on the right ear cup. I will say 'FPS Competition' is an EQ mode that does bring some of the bass down a bit, and sounds a bit better for some content. The default 'Pure Direct' does sound pretty decent, though, and probably good enough for most people. 'Movie Theater' and 'Bass Boost' add a bit too much bass for my tastes, but some may like them. You can create your own custom EQ settings with the 10-band EQ available in iCUE.

Strangely, while playing with iCUE, the Custom Button just stopped outputting beep tones when pressing it to select EQ modes. When using iCUE/software modes it still let me select EQs, but it didn't give me any tonal indication on what I was using. In Device Memory Mode it just stopped doing anything at all. Not my favorite behavior for sure.

I think the Virtuoso Max represents positional audio really well, and the headset includes a free license for Dolby Atmos for Headphones when paired with this headset, which is a nice touch. When testing them I felt like stereo imaging and positional audio tests work well. There is a virtual 8-channel mode offered for this headset, where it acts like a 7.1 system. Each channel is pretty easy to differentiate in this mode. I also really like how both 16 and 24-bit audio modes are available, at 48kHz and 96kHz bit rates. This is fantastic for a wireless headset, bringing out more detail in some cases.

One of the major selling points for this headset is Sonarworks SoundID support. I have a mixed relationship with SoundID. The last earphone that I used it with was the 1MORE EVO, a very resolving in-ear monitor, and it worked okay after much messing with it. The problem with SoundID is that you can't listen to music that you are already familiar with, but instead test tracks that I really didn't like any of. So, if you are aiming for a certain sound, you have to carefully listen between the two and hope you make the right pick. And since these headphones aren't as resolving, sometimes picking is quite difficult. I was able to get a decent result, but it's time consuming, and you get no graphical representation of what your preferences are, so you have no way to take the results and reuse them in other contexts. I also noticed that iCUE needs to be running for the results to upload after a power off. Even if you use your headset in Device Memory Mode it will upload, but unlike the aforementioned 1MORE EVO, I don't believe these store the result onboard. I hope this is fixable.

On the flipside, the Active Noise Canceling works really well, and it's almost imperceptible that it's on, unlike some headphones or headsets that sound a lot different with it on or off. When it's on the background gets quieter. When transparency mode is on, the background gets louder, and off is in the middle. I really can't complain, other than to say that I don't think the fabric ear pads will seal out sound as well as some leather pads would, but since these don't trap heat, that's a reasonable compromise to me.

Like most gaming headsets, you can enable RGB lighting if you want. In this case, it's the ring around the outside of the ear cups. I don't like lighting I can't see, so I set it to white and set the brightness all the way down. I appreciate that the microphone can be set to light up only when on mute, since I don't want that to glow, either. I find light in my peripheral vision distracting.

The microphone can be boosted from iCUE, which I am grateful for. There is noise-canceling offered, but honestly they might as well not have included it. It's a bundled NVIDIA Broadcast, which anyone who owns an NVIDIA GPU already has for free from their GPU vendor. If someone wants to use NVIDIA Broadcast, they can install it themselves. AMD and Intel GPU users, or users of older NVIDIA GPUs, do not have any noise canceling with this gaming headset. The microphone overall sounds decent enough, though it could be clearer in my opinion. It's well balanced, though. I used it in this game stream on YouTube, so please check it out if you want to hear how this headset's mic sounds.

I tried using this headset for around a month almost exclusively. I never had any stability issues while playing a game, nor did I have trouble during the stream above, nor did I have trouble listening to multi-hour podcasts through my phone's Bluetooth. (I love the Play/Pause and Prev/Next button and slider combo for this!) What did give me trouble is that when I was on a phone call, or on a Zoom call, the audio would start crackling randomly. Sometimes, it was right when joining a Zoom call. Other times it would be fine, then start crackling and the other side of the call sounded like robots after a random amount of time. With a recent important work call, I had to take it off mid call and go to speakerphone because this headset just wasn't working right. Another time, I was talking to my brother for over an hour (that happens, we love talking!) and this headset would just start crackling and I would have to flip between speaker and Bluetooth back and forth to get this headset to cut it out, only for it to happen again 5-10 minutes later. These firmware bugs are truly annoying and an unfortunate blemish in my time with it.

I feel like this headset is well summed up as one set of paradoxes after another. It's incredibly well-built and premium all around, but not that comfortable. The wireless connectivity is solid when listening to music or games, but at least on mine, it randomly goes robotic when on phone or Zoom calls. The microphone sounds pretty well balanced, but clarity is average at best. The iCUE software has a fair bit of functionality, but it only works with iCUE running as most of those settings don't seem to be stored onboard, and there is no mobile app to control it like there is for some of the competition. The sound quality overall is quite good, but the EQ mode button has really quiet notification tones that can't be changed. Outside of the comfort issues, I believe this headset can be largely redeemed through software and firmware updates. It has an excellent foundation: the sound is quite balanced with great bass, the noise canceling is quite good, the battery life is fantastic, and the feature set is great in Windows.

If I were to make any suggestions to Corsair, it would be to please work through any firmware issues, and to offer much more plush replacement ear pads. I believe that a mobile app that allows some control would be really helpful also, though many could live without that. I personally like being able to tweak my own EQ without being connected to a PC though, and this would allow that (hopefully). If they make these improvements, then I believe the Virtuoso Max could be a fantastic headset. I hope Corsair fixes it, because I want to love it! Just picking the thing up you would, too - that premium look and feel is amazing. As it is now, it has too many flaws in its price class, making it difficult to recommend.