Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE vs Astro A50: Which One is Worth Buying?

1.3 feature image of astro a50

This is the review of the comparison between the headsets the Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE and the Astro A50. Both the headsets are of a popular brand. So, the confusion of which to buy and which one is worth buying increases. To know which one is worth buying for you, go to the detailed review.

1.3 corsair virtuoso rgb wireless se 11.3 astro a50 1
Corsair virtuoso RGB Wireless SEAstro A50
BUY NOWBUY NOW
PROSPROS
Powerful hi-res audio. Immaculate presentation. Excellent battery life.
ICUE software is easy to use with many options. Detachable microphone. USB-C charging.
Immersive virtual sound environment.
Pristine clarity.
Comfortable design.
Great balance.
Excellent surround effect.
Solid, comfortable form factor.
CONSCONS
Wireless range depends on house construction. Expensive but you get what you pay for, this is Corsair’s flagship device after all.
Soundscape is treble-heavy.
No Bluetooth connectivity.
Slightly bright treble.
EQ switch doesn’t deliver.
Pricey.
Not true 7.1 sound.
Slight loss of clarity and mild white noise from wireless.

SPECIFICATIONS:

MODELCORSAIR VIRTUOSO RGB WIRELESS SEASTRO A50
BrandCorsairAstro Gaming
Series
ModelVIRTUOSO RGB SEA50
HEADPHONESCORSAIR VIRTUOSO RGB WIRELESS SEASTRO A50
Headphones Form FactorFull Size
Connectivity TechnologyWirelessWireless
Sound Output ModeSurround Sound
Frequency Response20Hz-40KHz20Hz-20KHz
Sensitivity109dB S.P.L. at 1KHz109dB (+/- 3dB)
Impedance32 ohm48 ohm
Diaphragm
MICROPHONECORSAIR VIRTUOSO RGB WIRELESS SEASTRO A50
Microphone Technology
Response Bandwidth100Hz-12KHz
DIMENSIONS & WEIGHTCORSAIR VIRTUOSO RGB WIRELESS SEASTRO A50
Width
Depth
Height
Weight0.79 lb0.8 lb
FEATURESCORSAIR VIRTUOSO RGB WIRELESS SEASTRO A50
FeaturesUncompromising
Sound Quality

Comfort is King

Hyper-Fast Gaming-Grade Wireless

Broadcast-Grade Detachable Microphone

Premium Lightweight Construction

Wide Device Compatibility

High-Fidelity 24bit/96KHz USB Audio

Dynamic Dual-Zone RGB Lighting

Intelligent Control, Unlimited Possibilities

Storage Pouch Included

All-Day, All-Night Battery Life: Game for up to 20 hours at a time thanks to a custom, high-capacity lithium-ion battery and an accelerometer-based smart-sleep/wake function

Characteristic SPL: 118 db @1kHz

Distortion: THD<1%

Microphone: 6.0mm uni-directinal noise canceling

Power Supply: USB mini-B (USB 2.0 compatible)

Frequency Response: 35-20,000 Hx

Inputs: Optical In, AUX In (3.5mm)

Outputs: Optical Passthrough, USB Power & Voice, USB Charging Port

Expert Reviews of Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE:

By pcgamesn.com
One of the best-sounding Corsair headsets, with the stunning build quality, and robust wireless technology. But it just misses out on its more audiophile target with a slight lack at the low…

By Games Rader
Fantastic, full sound with strong spatial audio detailing and anesthetic to sit proudly on any PC…

By techteamgb.co.uk
When this headset launched a few months ago, it sold out, worldwide, in something like 48 hours. That’s insane. It better be worth the hype then eh? Let us take a look and see. Corsair’s Virtuoso headset is definitely in the premium category for gaming…

By PCWorld
Corsair’s new Virtuoso RGB SE doesn’t sound quite as good as it looks, but it looks really damn good. If nothing else, it’s a much-needed alternative to Corsair’s cheap Void line.

By ThinkComputers
From the start, we knew that CORSAIR had designed the VIRTUOSO RGB Wireless SE to be a premium gaming headset. By incorporating machined aluminum, comfy memory foam, and tons of attention to detail, this headset has a lot going for it. As we stated…

Expert Reviews of  Astro A50:

By Tom’s Guide 
The Astro A50 delivers excellent comfort and rich wireless surround sound for serious gamers. While many gamers prefer wired headsets that avoid issues like low battery life and interference, the Astro A50 ( $299 on Amazon ) proves that a…

By Kitguru.net
Today we will be taking a closer look at the Astro Gaming A50 Wireless Headset. ASTRO is a well-known name in gaming circles, having their A40 headset deemed the official PC headset of Major League Gaming. Boasting such features as KleerNet 5.8GHz…

By HardwareHeaven
and Rating Shown above we have the headset on its stand and overall it is a nice addition to the bundle and a good place to store the MIXAMP TX so Astro is already off to a good start on the basics and continue that by including all the cables we…

By Digital Trends
Under every testing scenario, the A50 continuously impressed. This headset nails all the feature points you’d expect from high-quality gear such as auto shutoff, hassle-free wireless connection, and long battery life. But more importantly, the A50 made…

By TechRadar AU
We heartily recommend the Astro A50 to any gamer who wants a powerful, versatile headset. It offers excellent sound fidelity and mixing, and being able to use it on a PC, Mac, Xbox 360 or PS3 makes it worth the money. While going between multiple…

Detail Review:

INTRODUCTION:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

The Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless is really a pretty good headset available in the market. The specs sheet sounds really good with high-resolution audio, premium build quality, and low latency wireless transmission.

Astro A50

The Astro A50 headsets are the wireless headset of the Astro brand and these are the ones that you most frequently see many people using with the PlayStation 4. I feel that these are a little bit more PlayStation 4 centric than the other headset.

DESIGN:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

These are solid headsets, there’s aluminum everywhere making these feels sturdy in their hands, because of that metal it’s cold to the touch, it feels ultra-premium for a headset here, and it looks really damn good too. The build quality also feels top-notch with metal ratcheting, adjusting arms, and even down to the volume adjustment knob right on the back giving you a lot of feedback when you scroll through this thing.

The accessories that they provide are all classy as well, USB to USB-C, the wireless adapter, either end of the microphone is also metal as well, and last is the three-and-a-half millimeter chord, it’s just the third 1/2 millimeter chord, but it feels really good. I have not tried to break these, but to hear if there’s any kind of creaks or cracks indicating if there’s anything underneath, that could be cheap. I didn’t hear or feel anything that would indicate that these are poorly made.

The headband and ear cups do use a synthetic leather up top in, but this is very typical of gaming headsets. You can tell Corsair attempted to use a supple and softer version and I’m sure using genuine leather would maybe be a little too costly. It would have paired well with all this aluminum, but what is provided is really good for a gaming headset. The ear cups do have perforations micro-sized holes that let the Corsair logo shine through when the lights are off like a seamless aluminum Corsair logo on the ear cups and it’s pretty cool.

Astro A50

After you’re done unboxing, the product throwing away the manuals and hooking up all your cables you’re left with essentially three pieces. We have a stand, we have the wireless mix amp itself, and then the wireless headsets themselves. The headsets themselves are very similar to the other headsets, the A40. All the Astro headsets have the same basic design, stretchiness principles, some of the things you’ll notice right off, the A50 is made of metal no longer plastic right there and our cabling has slightly thicker wires and protection on the side.

This is adjustable if you have a small head or if you have a slightly bigger head. Branding on the top, you will also notice that the microphone is functional and bendable and normal like everything else, but it’s not detachable on the A50s. You do not have the option to take the microphone off or change the microphone sides, because most of the controls are here on the side of the headset.

1.3 astro a50 3

COMFORT:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

These were almost the best of all of the gaming headset that I reviewed so far. With gaming headsets, not many have been comfortable, to be honest. The Corsair isn’t perfect, but it is one of the better ones out there. But I still feel slight pinching at the crown of the head and slight neck fatigue here after about an hour and a half to two hours of straight wearing this.

These do feel better than the Flagship HyperX, which is definitely better than Logitech G930, but the steel series feels to distribute the weight a little bit better than these. The ear cups on these are also on the good to great side as well. They’re very comfortable with the memory foam padding and for the most part, my ears are able to breathe preventing any ear sweat during my time testing.

Astro A50

It’s reasonably stretchy should fit any head. On the inside of it, you will see that the ear cups are nice and squishy padded, a little bit of sound-canceling there it feels, pretty nice. On the underside this is where we’re coming to one of the first flaws, if you spread it apart, the squishy part right there is supposed to rest on the top of your head, but there are some indentations in it, that’s because if you leave it resting on the stand, it has a tendency to smash the foam kind of flat. It’s not a problem if you let it sit just kind of laying it down on the table, but if you leave it on to stand too long, you can kind of ruin some of your cushioning right there, which is a downside but the stand is kind of cool.

The stand is a cleverly shaped piece of plastic. What you would do is you put your stand down and then you can take your A50 mix amp, we can put the mix amp right here in the stand, it has a small cradle for it anti-slip here, and the stand itself is also anti-slip, and then it’s designed for you to be able to just hang your headsets right there on the top. So that you can keep all the cabling and stuff and one can find a little area and it’s got enough space for you to charge here for, go to the console you can put on top of the console, whatever you need and it’s a really nice convenient thing.

One downside though is that the weight of the headsets pulls down on this top pad, and the top pad loses some of its fluffiness, which I do believe is a downside. But still, I like to hang them up and make them look good.

FEATURES:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

It’s the first time for me, the lighting can be controlled through the free Corsair IQ app with different patterns and colors for you to choose from. The very last tip here about the ear cups, I wish the battery was easily accessible and definitely replaceable from a consumer standpoint. If the battery ever goes bad or if you want to basically swap them out, you can do so with Corsair at least on the back of their ear cup it appears to be sealed and this is dawn on me.

The one feature that I particularly like on the Corsair headset here is the auto-off, when you remove the headset from your head and let it sit there stationary they will conserve battery, when you move your headset again there’s an accelerometer in there, that can tell there’s movement and it will automatically power back on, that’s super convenient.

When you get a closer look on the right ear cup, there is the scroll wheel for volume, a toggle to switch between wireless and a physical connection down and the left ear cup is USB-C for charging and Corsair claims up to 20 hours worth of playtime here, and last is the three-and-a-half millimeter input for those who are still on the analog system, and the port is included for the detachable microphone.

 

Astro A50

If you want to change your volume, mid-game and you don’t want to do it through the game menus, you have options on the side. So, your mix amp is kind of built-in your headset in a way, you can move the game voice up and down ever so slightly on the sides. On the other side, we have the game volume, which is how much chat is going in your headset, you can move this up and down as well, these adjust independently, so you can set the mix however you want it.

They’ll do different things when you plug into your PC – if you want PC audio. You will also notice on the bottom of the same side we have a slider there, this is the master volume slider if you just want all volume up you do this, all volume down you do that, pretty straightforward and simple. We have a power button and when the light comes on that means they’re on and when the light is off they’re off. You’ll also see, we have settings 1 2 & 3 these are different equalizer settings, these are different sound settings you can change them to whichever ones you like our mix settings, I personally like number one so, that’s where I leave it. So, you have most of the controls that you need here on the side of the headset and you will also notice on the bottom down there on the other side, we have a port for the controller and we have a USB port.

The USB port is what will provide power to the headset. Once the batteries run out, you do have to recharge it and this one is mostly for Xbox. One of the downsides to these headsets is that since we have controls on this side and since we have settings on the other side that these speaker tags are not interchangeable. Unlike the A40s and something like the A38 and some of those you can’t pop these speaker tags off and make them decorative, when you get to A50s you get these speaker tags and these are here to stay forever.

I found the overall battery life to be very long. It was like 20 hours written down. I haven’t charged these in probably two or three weeks, and they’re still working just fine. It just depends on how much you use them.

There is a little device right there is the Astro A50 wireless mix amp, you have to have this in order to make this work with your console or computer whatever you plan to use it on. It’s kind of like the mixed amp Pro except for Corsair wireless, the headset, and a few less mixing options, it’s small, it’s very lightweight. We have a rubbery bottom so that it doesn’t slip around. Options on it are fairly limited on and then your headset mode and that’s pretty much it.

We have plugs on the back. The regular looking USB port that’s the one that will recharge the batteries on your headsets, which is on the side over there getting indications from my wi-fi as to, where things are you need that to charge your headsets. I want to make a distinction that there is a USB power for this one and then there’s a different USB power source that powers the A50. You cannot power it from that one over there. You have a completely different PWR source, that has me plugged in that powers and another one typically plugs into your console, which will be a PlayStation 4 in this case or Xbox one or your computer or whatever power is it. That is how you use voice chat with your microphone there.

You’ll also notice that we have an option for auxiliary audio. If you want to use that and we have optical in and optical out, odd those are up those are too different that’s called optical but it’s audio cable confusing labeling right there. If you want to run an alternative setup, if you want to plug the USB into your computer and you want to use the microphone here to record audio to the computer, that’s fine or get computer audio out to the headsets, that’s fine.

It can be plug into just about anything that’s USB and you can take optical all sorts of different things totally wouldn’t worry about it. I know it’s a little complicated, but once you get your setup, you’re going to totally forget about it. It’s kind of nice just the tiny little device easier to pack them the other mix amp.

I think they’re fantastic for PlayStation 4, once you get them set up they’re very easy to use, and they’re truly wireless, on that all you need is this headset on your head and you’re good to go. If you’re doing Xbox one, unfortunately, it’s a little bit less wireless, you don’t have to have all this you know connected to the headset, but you do have to connect the headset to the controller.

1.3 corsair virtuoso rgb wireless se 3

MICROPHONE:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

The mute button is located underneath the connection, which I thought would have been a kind of a ridiculous place to put this, but in practice, it works perfectly fine. The microphone itself is highly flexible here. You can see it’s indicated as green when being on and red when being off, which is pretty cool and influence. When it’s turned off, it couldn’t read your lips.

Hopefully, this microphone isolates my voice., it’s really good. Aside from the microphone test, Corsair is emphasizing audio performance first, if you use this via USB and hard-line this to your computer, you’re getting 24-bit high-resolution audio, with wireless you’re getting ultra-low latency and a wireless range of up to 60 feet. With the testing wireless, the range you can walk through every single corner, having this thing to go through all the walls and the signal stays intact.

 

Astro A50

This microphone is just ok to record audio for commentaries or to streams. I have used it for in-game chat, for in-game chat, of course, it works fine and it’s a little bit on the quieter in because it’s built for tournaments, where there’s like people all beside you and you’re all screaming so that you don’t pick up a lot of background noise. So, you might have to talk a little bit louder than normal, if you want to do commentary on this one.

The microphone goes through the USB because you plug anything in the ps4 and just use it USB and that’s kind of how that works. Xbox one is a little bit more complicated, you have to make use of these plugs in the side, and plug it directly into the controller to get the microphone audio to the controller.

1.3 corsair virtuoso rgb wireless se 2

SOUND:

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE

These are not the best depiction of audio quality. The Corsair sounds a lot more balanced and least artificial. The virtuoso has the least artificial surround sound processing, in general, the gunfire and explosion sound much more direct and kind of like that in your face kind of audio. If you can imagine the audio frequency band, it’s like a V pattern here, where the bass is strong and the highs as well, while the mid-range is a bit more neutral or at least not as pushed forward during the sample from the battlefield.

You can hear how much punch each shot provided the magazine releasing and the sharpness one bullet or fly the cursors can get loud, and with most games provides very good vocal work with the addition of detail and clarity, not to mention a modern about bass to supplement the experience. The high frequencies are near the upper end, but for me, it was still within tolerance, for some it might be a little too sharp, but keep in mind you have the equalizer on your computer to play around with.

When I’m playing Apex, I can hear footsteps distinctly in the direction of where they are time in time. Again this is the trade-off, they sounded the least artificial as I mentioned earlier but it’s much harder to hear your opponent. Because of the exaggerated move, the direct audio might not sound as accurate but you get this expansive and super-wide soundstage. The Corsair didn’t beat out my other flagship headsets from my testing.

Astro A50

I wanted to demonstrate what the sound levels are like using the sound level meter. So, I played a white noise sound through the headset at maximum volume to demonstrate this. It hit over 70 decibels. This is with the latest firmware installed and pushing at 75, 76 decibels and it’s really loud. I’ve actually found it a bit deafening at times and this is set somewhere with the audio in the middle.

The balance with a low bit towards the game, but you can obviously adjust between voice and game on the ear cup and this is probably one of the problems that you’re having. If you have balanced it towards the voice, you’ll find the volume is very low. I got about 54 decibels and that’s 10 decibels more than what I’m getting just in the background audio with my computer on.

As you push it towards the game, it goes a bit higher, and then we’re back at 70 decibels and if you push it all the way, you get even higher than that. I can guarantee you there with the firmware installed, and the volume set somewhere in the middle or push towards the game, you won’t have problems with the sound volumes on this headset. It’s a very capable and very nice sound.

1.3 astro a50 2

WHICH ONE IS WORTH BUYING?

In my opinion, if you are looking for a headset with the good best sound quality then you should go for the Astro A50. I think the audio quality is good, the overall comfort levels are good and the drawbacks are that this is not really a commentary mic, this is a voice chat mic, you cannot change the what’s with the speaker tags at all, they’re kind of stuck on what they are. Again, in my opinion, they are worth buying for their price.