It’s very easy to pair with both your PC and Xbox console of choice, as it follows exactly the same method you use for pairing controllers. It took me just a couple of minutes to get up and running on either machine, and from there it was pretty plain sailing. The headset has a 30ft wireless range, giving you plenty of flexibility at your desk and down in your living room, and while its 20 hour battery life isn’t the best I’ve seen - the Steelseries Arctis 7 can go for 24 hours, for example, while the Logitech G733 Wireless runs even longer at 29 hours if you disable its RGB lighting, and then there’s the EPOS Sennheiser GSP 370 with its massive 100 hour battery life - it’s also certainly not the worst. It is merely average, but in any case, it should still be enough to get you through even the heaviest of weekend gaming sessions, or a good handful of evenings depending on your play time. Like other Corsair headsets I’ve tested in the past, the HS75 XB Wireless is a little on the large side in terms of overall fit, but it’s still very comfortable to wear for long periods of time. Its thickly padded headband didn’t bring on any bouts of the dreaded headpinch I often get with a lot of gaming headsets, and its oversized ear cups never stuck to my face or made my cheeks and ears feel too hot, either. Instead, I was able to wear the HS75 XB Wireless quite happily for hours without issue, and I never once felt the need to shuffle it about on top of my head to readjust it. The HS75 XB Wireless is very easy to use, too. It has all the controls you need right there on the headset, including a lovely clicky volume dial and a microphone mute button on the left, and a chatmix filter on the right. The latter is a great feature for filtering out online chat if you just want to listen to the music without every soaring melody being punctuated by screaming teenagers, but equally you can also dial down the music completely so you can focus entirely on comms if you prefer (you monster). You won’t get much use out of it if you don’t play a lot of online games, but it’s a great feature to have all the same, and certainly one I’d expect to see given the HS75 XB Wireless’ price. Indeed, at £170 / $150, you’d also expect top notch audio above all else and the HS75 XB Wireless doesn’t disappoint here, either - although I had to do a little bit of fiddling with its Dolby Atmos support before it really sang. On Xbox, this involved downloading the Dolby Access app (as you’re instructed to do in the manual that comes in the box) and disabling the default Performance mode in favour of its much better-sounding Balanced mode, and on PC I turned off the Spatial Sound option in the task bar. Once I’d done this, the HS75 XB Wireless sounded wonderful, offering a rich, bassy bed of sound in Doom and Doom Eternal while still giving all my guns (including my beloved Super Shotgun) the oomph and power they needed to rip and tear through swathes of squelchy demon flesh. Its positional audio still worked a treat, too, letting me find all the wayward stragglers with ease, and creating a fully immersive soundscape that really made me feel like I was in the thick of the action. Similarly in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, the voices inside Senua’s head whipped and whirled around my skull in full 360 degrees - something that simply didn’t happen when all of its Dolby stuff was enabled. There, all the voices sounded like they were definitely coming out of each ear rather than all around my head, which isn’t what you want from a binaural soundtrack. Fortunately, the tweaks I made quickly had Hellblade back to its haunting, brilliant self, and I was able to appreciate the full effect of its unsettling sound mix with all the warmth and detail I’d normally expect from a top-notch headset. Finally, Final Fantasy XV sounded brilliant, too. Its warm orchestral score soared on the HS75 XB Wireless, allowing me to pick out all the individual instruments in its busy battle themes and melodious overworld music. The soundtrack felt well-balanced against the zips and zaps of Noctis’ teleporting sword swipes, too, as well as the team’s mid-fight battle cries. In short, the HS75 XB Wireless sounded brilliant in all situations in Final Fantasy XV, and it made listening to the radio in those long car rides a real joy. The HS75 XB Wireless’ microphone put in a good performance, too, offering clear voice chat without descending into a breathy, plosive-filled mess when I recorded myself talking in Audacity. It’s detachable, too, so you needn’t sit with it hovering in front of your face if you’re not playing online. Is it worth spending £170 / $150 on, though? Even by PC standards, that’s a lot of cash for a gaming headset, especially when us poor suckers in the UK seem to have got a raw deal on the old exchange rate. After all, my current favourite wireless gaming headset, the Steelseries Arctis 7 (and by extension its Xbox-flavoured counterpart, the Arctis 7X), is both slightly cheaper at £160 in the UK (and an identical $150 in the US) and has a longer battery life than the HS75 XB Wireless, and it also comes with the same chatmix filter and easy pairing options (not to mention the added ability to use it with other devices as well, including the Switch, thanks to its bundled USB-C adapter). Similarly, if you’re not fussed about the console side of things, or having a headset that can pair with your Xbox without the need for an adapter, then there are plenty of cheaper wireless gaming headsets available as well - including Corsair’s own HS70 Wireless. At £90 / $100, it’s not quite as sophisticated as the HS75 XB Wireless in terms of features, but it still produces great audio and is just as comfortable to wear for long periods of time, too - which is why it’s still my number one recommendation for those after a budget wireless gaming headset that doesn’t break the bank. There’s also the equally brilliant Logitech G733 Wireless, too, which is just a bit more at £130 / $120. It doesn’t have a chatmix filter, admittedly, but it does come with Logitech’s brilliant Blue Voice microphone technology for even clearer voice chat, and an even longer battery life of 29 hours. The Corsair HS75 XB Wireless is still a great headset for PC and Xbox owners alike, but if you’re looking to save a bit of money, the Arctis 7X will likely do just as good a job for a fraction less if you’re determined to get a headset for both machines. Alternatively, if all you want is a great wireless headset for PC, then the HS75 XB Wireless is just too expensive to justify over its cheaper competition.
