Corsair VIRTUOSO MAX Gaming Headset Review

The highest tier of wireless gaming headsets is often reserved for units boasting the highest quality of audio, refined features that work out of the box, supreme comfort, and active noise cancellation. I’ve occasionally seen consumers compare headsets of this caliber against the likes of Bose, Sony, Apple, Sennheiser, EPOS, Jabra, and JBL. The issue with these comparisons is that these “standard” premium and audiophile-grade brands is that they don’t specifically cater to players’ needs. They might connect via Bluetooth to a console or a PC, but they don’t have tailored audio to benefit those playing first-person shooters, balancing party chat vs. gameplay audio, and hardware features like a physical mute button. They just don’t.

I’ve gotten into arguments with folks who have paid top dollar for AirPods Max and Sony’s XM lineup about how well these headphones work for users. Sure, they might have fantastic ANC, but until they incorporate the player into headphone design, the headsets are not worthy of being considered a gaming headset. They might sound great for listening to music and going on the road, but I won’t use them in Discord calls and competitive settings. I’ll take ‘em on a plane, train, or automobile (there’s my age showing, once again), but I won’t take ‘em in game.

Corsair’s Virtuoso Max gaming headset is an impressive piece of hardware. I’ve had it in hand and on head for a little over a month as to test its capabilities in hopes that a month-long review sways you as to how it functions as a daily driver.

Corsair has gone all out with putting together a gaming headset that’s equally powerful, stylish, yet sturdy. Boasting 50mm Graphene drivers, active noise cancellation, SoundID-powered personalized sound equalization, and an impressive 60-hour battery life (under certain circumstances), the Virtuoso Max is the premium-grade gaming headset that’s fit for royalty. It can connect to consoles, PCs, and mobile devices effortlessly, making it a compelling headset this coming holiday season. Move over, AirPods, this is the headset that is sure to turn heads and treat ears!

One of the first things I noticed on the headset was its LEDs. I could turn them off to save battery and get another 8 (or so) hours of battery life, but it looked so cool to have them on. I could customize them any way I liked, spanning from traditional chromatic color shifts to a solid color to another one of Corsair’s animated “Murals” via the iCue app. Some of you will think the LEDs on the headset cans are useless, since you can’t see them, but they’re especially cool to enable if you’re on camera like I am for work calls. It also told me the battery life when I took the headset off by quickly glowing green/yellow/red before returning to its original colors. At max brightness, they glow and add a unique set of accents to the headset.

Other than the LEDs, the headset rocks a sturdy aluminum build complemented by a leatherette layer at the top of the headband. The headset itself feels nice and sturdy, with much of the weight being in the cans to evenly distribute the headset’s heft throughout the unit. As such, it rarely moved once I placed it on my head. Thanks to the aluminum construction, the headset rarely creaked or squeaked when pulling it to an extreme length. Even the detachable microphone (which is encased in what feels like a carbon-fiber fabric) felt sturdy for repositioning.

Headset buttons can be hit and miss. One of my complaints regarding the Atlas Air and the 2024 Stealth series are the button placement and the sensitive volume wheel. Corsair has made it so that the Virtuoso Max has two customizable wheels on the edges of either side of the headset, and they’re not sensitive. Put simply, if you want to adjust the volume, you’ll need to apply some force to one of the wheels. No accidental volume changes here – volume adjustment is an intentional process thanks to the sturdy yet textured wheels. The rest of the buttons on the headset can swap between the onboard sound profiles, turn the headset off and on, along with fast-forwarding through music tracks. The buttons are in thoughtful positions while not being sensitive to the point of accidental inputs. No complaints from me!

The underside of the Virtuoso Max’s headband uses the same cloth material encasing the earcups’ memory foam. The headset properly gripped my head, only budging when I vigorously shook my head back and forth. The underside of the headband did not feel that comfortable after wearing the headset for two hours or more, but the discomfort went away. I would have preferred some additional cushion, specifically at the top of the headband, to ensure that the headset was a smidge more comfortable.

I’m not the biggest fan of the earcups’ material, and I’m hoping that a third party can manufacture something more plush and/or premium for my ears. While the cloth was breathable just fine, I would have preferred the earcups to have a leather option as to emphasize the headset’s premium aesthetic. On the other hand, the earcups paired with the strength of the headset in gripping my head meant that the earcups properly sealed with my ears. That means: no unintentional sound leakage. The Virtuoso Max contains the sound quite nicely.

Speaking of sound quality, the Virtuoso Max’s sound quality is nothing short of superb. In fact, it has some of the best audio quality of any gaming headset that I have placed on my noggin over the past two years. It even edges out Turtle Beach’s Atlas Air, albeit slightly, which I’ll discuss later in this review. The default EQ has a wide soundstage range, without overemphasizing bass or producing tinniness at louder volumes. It’s insane for a headset. I tested the headset across multiple music genres, spanning EDM, house, alternative rock, classical, along with some heavy metal. The headset produced a warm and crispy audio quality akin to being in the middle of a club. Much of the graininess that I’ve heard in lower-quality headsets was entirely absent in this headset.

The gaming audio quality, on the other hand, required a degree of adjustment to get right. I had to tune down the bass for VALORANT and Counter-Strike 2 to pick up on enemy footsteps because of how the rest of the game audio would drown everything out on the default EQ and default in-game audio settings. Here’s the thing: Not all players play FPS titles, so these quibbles might not apply to you. Just be prepared to adjust the sound EQ if you’re aiming for precision in-game sound.

Another major selling point of this headset is its active noise cancellation (ANC). When enabled, the Virtuoso Max will emit a soft white-noise that easily silences the sounds of the outside world. When playing music, the ANC worked so well that my partner had to yell to get my attention while I was listening to music at the 20% level (nowhere near a “loud” setting, for what it’s worth). I was able to take the headset on the road (train) and had no issue focusing thanks to how well it functioned. You could definitely get ANC for cheaper from the likes of Sony, but in no way would a Sony OEM/IEM be a gaming headset. The Virtuoso Max has a transparency mode that can be activated to make it so that some of the outside world’s sounds filtered through the headset, so there’s that if you need it. I tested it out and it worked just fine, but I preferred to disable transparency to get the most out of ANC.

Prior to posting this review, I was encouraged to test out SoundID, a sound equalization service that calibrated my headset to improve the reference sound. I was admittedly hesitant to use SoundID only because of how I prefer to granularly adjust my headset’s levels. After the quick five-minute test, the headset’s audio became far warmer and pleasant to my ears. Layered with Dolby Atmos’ EQ customization, I was able to reach the headset’s maximum potential of supreme gaming audio.

Don’t miss out on the SoundID, folks. Trust me, it makes the headset truly shine.

It would be worth noting that the Virtuoso Max’s audio quality does not compare to a higher-end OEM or IEM from the likes of Sennheiser, Sony, or B&O. Then again, they’re not meant to. This is a gaming headset first and foremost, meaning that some compromises have to be made in order to meet the needs of players wanting things like wirelessness, compatibility with consoles/mobile devices, a detachable microphone with a physical mute button, and more. That said, it sounds far better than any other gaming headset I’ve tested from the likes of Steelseries, Turtle Beach/ROCCAT, and NACON.

Onto the Virtuoso Max’s detachable microphone, which can be easily attached and unattached on the left earcup via a dedicated USB-C port. The microphone handle is easily adjustable and moved, all the while having a button on the base where it connects to the headset on the left earcup. Despite the headset having a separate USB-C port on the right-hand side, the microphone can only be attached on the left-hand side’s USB port. For the sake of being uniform, it would have been nice for the microphone to be attached on either side, but I’m not going to complain too much about the mic being left-hand only. The microphone itself worked fine, not needing too much adjustment out of the box. I tested the microphone in Zoom, Teams, Discord, and some in-game calls – my friends could hear me just fine without needing to adjust the levels. It doesn’t have the noise cancellation features found on the likes of Turtle Beach’s lineup, but I’m going to be honest: Most calling platforms have voice isolation baked in, so I don’t consider the lack of filtering to be a drawback of this headset. It would have been nice to have some additional microphone EQ settings, though.

In my testing, I was very easily able to hit the 45-60 hour mark of use before needing to recharge the headset. My runtime was dependent on the power settings I had enabled, most specifically the headset’s LEDs. When the lights were on, I was lucky to get 45 hours of use at most, but when I turned them off I could hit the 60-hour mark that Corsair advertises. What was more impressive was how the headset would enter “sleep” mode when I set it down and there was no sound and, upon lifting it up to place it on my head, would emit a “power on” sound and resume transmitting sound. The first time the headset turned itself on from sleep surprised me to no end – I thought it functioned magically. Regardless, the headset quickly recharged when I plugged it in via USB in the instances where I was out of juice.

This headset lasted me more than a full work week, meaning that I could use it for work calls, listening to music, and gaming before needing to recharge. It effortlessly lasted the week while meeting my work and play needs.

Most gaming headsets can be managed via their manufacturer’s software suite. The Virtuoso Max can be adjusted with iCUE 5.0, the newest update to Corsair’s software. I could also set the Virtuoso Max to retain its settings thanks to its onboard memory in case I wanted to free up some of my computer’s RAM. The software itself was easy to use, but it had some minor issues related to adjusting the sidetone. Regardless, it was cool to adjust the headset’s LEDs using the iCUE Murals settings along with adjusting the headset’s EQ.

At time of writing, there is one consistent issue I have encountered along with other early adopters who’ve shared their experiences on Reddit: The Virtuoso Max has a sidetone issue. Sidetone works half the time, often behaving inconsistently. I was able to hear from one earcup while not hearing it at all in the other. I have been informed that an imminent fix will have the issue resolved. I don’t consider the sidetone bug to be a major issue, though – I disabled the sidetone (as I typically don’t desire it to be active on a headset) and the headset worked perfectly fine otherwise. Time will tell as to its support, though.

And now comes the question of comparing the Virtuoso Max with the Atlas Air, Turtle Beach’s audiophile-focused headset that is priced at $179 ($150 less!), weighs quite a bit less, and features “lesser” 40mm drivers compared to the Max’s 50mm Graphene drivers. Which should you buy as an audio-focused player in 2024? Prior to this review period, the Atlas Air was my daily driver of 2024 since to how comfortable yet powerful the headset was in making music and gaming so dang good. Now…I’m torn. The Atlas Air is far more comfortable than the Virtuoso Max, but it lacks the isolation and “improved drivers” of the Max. It also lacks SoundID. I’ve gone back and forth switching between these headsets to compare audio, and there’s a part of me that prefers the natural acoustics of the Atlas Air over the Virtuoso Max without SoundID; once that SoundID is on, though, the Virtuoso Max reigns supreme. The Atlas Air is also easier to wear for long periods of time, even if the microphone quality is far better on the Virtuoso Max.

At the end of the day, I’m willing to look past the slight discomfort of the Virtuoso Max when compared to the Atlas Air. I’m also willing to look past the miniscule differences in audio quality between the two headsets. What I’m unwilling to look past is the price: If I was on the market for a high-end audio-forward headset, I would settle for the Atlas Air even though it didn’t have the active noise cancelling or SoundID. The $179.99 base MSRP for the Atlas Air is a compelling offer compared to the $329.99 of the Max.

Now that I have the Corsair Virtuoso Max in hand, and I’ve used it for the past several weeks…there’s no doubt that this headset has earned its place as a daily driver for my gaming, music, and work-related needs. It has rightfully become my favorite gaming headset to use every day, as it makes everything sound good while blocking out the distractions of the world around me. If price is of no issue for you for a premium and audiophile-grade gaming headset, the Virtuoso Max is the (not A, but THE) headset for you.