Corsair Vengeance 1400 Gaming Headset Review

Conclusion

Sound quality is, as always, everything when reviewing a headset. The most comfortable, well-designed one in the world is meaningless when it sounds like a mono tape-recording, and equally if the sound is good enough then you’re willing to tolerate some slight design quirks.

The Vengeance 1400 fall into the category of good. Which in this world of endless hyperbole and superlatives sounds like damning with faint praise. It isn’t at all. Testing music with everything from the soft stylings of Mozart’s K482 through the progressive sounds of Pink Floyd’s PULSE and on to both ends of the loud spectrum with hard house and even harder rock the 1400’s very very good with some tight bass and clear highs, but the majority of the focus was on the midrange as one would expect to find from a gaming-based headset. Indeed gaming is where the Vengeance 1400s shine with team audio and gunfire proving an aural pleasure. When using a stereo headset quickly identifying where the enemy is has always been the acid test and the 1400s in combination with the Phoebus work very well to allow you to pinpoint the next frag.

The design is nice too, and the headset is very light and comfortable to wear for long periods. The person who designed the packaging needs a bit of a slap though, as there is no excuse for a brand new product to come out of the box with a seemingly permanent dent in the headband. It doesn’t affect comfort but it looks poor. The non-retracting and non-flexible microphone can be a bit of a pain when you’re not using it as such designs always are. We can see the benefits in allowing Corsair to tune the microphone knowing that the placement is pretty much guaranteed, but it does make us long for the choice afforded by such designs as the ASUS Echelon and SteelSeries 5H. Indeed those two particular headsets are the big challengers for the Vengeance 1400, especially at this price.

Good though the Corsair is the sound quality and general design of those two headsets just shade things in our opinion, and when the market is this close then such fine margins can be the difference. It’s a shame the packaging problem and fixed microphone slightly spoil an otherwise good sounding and well built product. You certainly wont be disappointed with the Corsair Vengeance 1400 for £56, and the 3.5mm jack connections are a boon for those with a good soundcard and it’s worthy of our OC3D Silver Award.

    

Thanks to Corsair for supplying the Vengeance 1400 for review. Discuss your thoughts in the OC3D forums.