Corsair Gaming H1500 Dolby 7.1 Gaming Headset

Pros: Solid construction – won’t fall apart by pulling them on and off many times over

Cord has a bit of nylon lacing on the outside which makes them somewhat easier to untangle

Not heavy – foam around the ears don’t make your head sweat

Can stay on for many hours without too much discomfort

Good for music (might need to do a bit of EQing to fit your taste) and of course, gaming

Volume controller on the cord – the volume can go quite loud!.. (but see con section - changing the volume is drastic)

Nice, lengthy, 10ft cord – can plug into a desktop on the floor or a decent distance away

Quality microphone – when using recording programs you easily get a full wave form and when gaming, people can easily hear you - you can set the mic levels in the software or from Windows

Software is pretty good – can save EQ presets for FPS, different types of games, or different types of music

Cons: The mic isn’t retractable or removable – some of the higher end headsets do this. The best you can do here is flip it up. Some people will probably love the boom mic that actually makes it to your mouth over a more flexible, shorter mic

Not the best fit for people with smaller heads – although the headset is adjustable

7.1 ‘surround sound’ is kind of gimmicky for any headset – this is simply a way of splitting the sound between the TWO speakers to create an effect that your brain interprets as coming from a location in between. I think any good modern game (especially FPS) will do this without extra software

Volume changes rapidly when using the cord to adjust – would have preferred a dial over a click button

The headphones sometimes act up when you plug them into USB 3.0 port – go for 2.0 if you have one available

Overall Review: Good headset for the price point. Some headsets are much more expensive and come with external sound cards which are just not worth the money in my opinion

Any headset takes some time to get used to the fitting of the earphones

Software had no problems on Windows 8.1

Pros: Overall construction of the headset is great! Probably one of the best designed cables I've seen on a headset. Just makes it more disappointing that they fall short on performance.

Cons: There is apparently some software/driver bug that Corsair has been working on fixing for months that's impacting a large number of their headsets. The volume is extremely loud even at the lowest volume setting (2%)! There is also a ton of white noise. The only known fix is to download a third party piece of software but that only solves the volume issue leaving the white noise problem. In fact, I think the fix made the white noise issue worse. When I called technical support they immediately recognized the issue I was having and confirmed their only fix at the moment was to use that third party software work around. Also, to my shock the technician advised me to exchange them for a different brand! While I appreciate Corsairs shockingly honest customer support I'm very disappointed they'd continue to sell a defective product! I would hope they would temporarily stop selling these headphones until the software problem got resolved. From poking around their forums their customers have been waiting since March 2013 for them to fix it and there is no ETA on when a fix might come if ever. AVOID THESE HEADPHONES UNTIL CORSAIR CONFIRMS THEY'VE SOLVED THE ISSUE!

Overall Review: http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=117083