Corsair HS60 Haptic review

The Corsair HS60 Haptic is one of the only gaming headsets I’ve ever reviewed with excellent bass. I don’t mean it has “excellent bass for a gaming headset” — I mean this that it gives comparably priced audiophile headphones a run for their money. Combined with good gaming performance, a comfortable fit and a solid mic, the HS60 Haptic is an easy recommendation, at least if you’re willing to spend more than you normally would on a USB gaming headset.

At $130, there’s no denying that the HS60 Haptic is expensive, particularly since the basic HS60 Surround costs only $70. The HS60 Haptic’s color pattern is also a bit of an eyesore, and if you’re very sensitive to vibrations, you may not like how the bass comes across. But if you’ve been waiting for a peripheral that doesn’t neglect the lower frequencies, the Corsair HS60 Haptic is probably one of the best gaming headsets for you. Read our full HS60 Haptic review for more details.

Corsair HS60 review: Design

If you’ve used the Corsair HS60 Surround, then you’ll find the Corsair HS60 Haptic extremely familiar. This wired USB headset features a gray metal chassis with a padded headband and two large, oval earcups.

The only major difference is that the HS60 has a gray camo design rather than the Surround’s statelier black. It’s a good thing that you can’t see the HS60 when it’s on your head, because the color scheme is, charitably, not very pretty.

The right earcup houses a haptic control dial (more on this later). The left earcup contains a mic mute button, a volume dial and a detachable, flexible mic. While it’s a small touch, I appreciate that the volume dial has tactile clicks as you roll it up and down. It makes it much easier to find a comfortable volume level and stick with it.

Corsair HS60 review: Comfort

For the most part, the HS60 is a very comfortable piece of headgear. The leatherette earcups run a little hot, and made my ears sweat a little after long sessions. But they’re also very comfortable, making a tight seal while exerting very little pressure, even while I was wearing glasses. The padding on top of the headband helps the headset sit lightly, even though it weighs almost a pound.

Whether you find the HS60 comfortable actually has less to do with its physical design and more to do with its haptic feedback, which I’ll discuss in the “features” section.

Corsair HS60 Haptic review: Performance

The Corsair HS60 Haptic is an excellent accessory for any game genre. I tested the headset with Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, Doom Eternal, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy XIV, and the sound quality was excellent across the board. The bass was particularly impactful in Age of Empires and Doom, where gunfire and explosions are constant refrains. With the haptic feedback, I could feel vibrations for something as simple as a villager shooting a deer — to say nothing of firing a rocket at a giant, gun-toting demon.

Thanks to the enhanced bass, the HS60 Haptic is also a surprisingly good accessory for listening to music. I tested the HS60 Haptic with tracks from Flogging Molly, Old Crow Medicine Show, The Rolling Stones and G.F. Handel, and I was both pleased and relieved that, at long last, there was a sub-$200 gaming headset that made music sound good, not just passable.

Corsair HS60 Haptic review: Features

Like most other Corsair gear, the Corsair HS60 Haptic runs on the Corsair Utility Engine (iCUE) software. While the software has a bit of a learning curve, it lets you switch among different presets, set up your own equalization profiles, adjust mic options and so forth. You can also toggle surround sound, but only via the built-in Windows Sonic protocol. I don’t have strong feelings about this, since the vast majority of games, music and TV shows are still optimized for stereo sound, but bear in mind that you won’t get Dolby or DTS, if that’s important to you.

The defining feature of the HS60 Haptic is, as the name suggests, its haptic bass. Using a dial on the right earcup, you can turn the bass vibrations up from nonexistent to buzzing that will make your teeth chatter. I’m generally in favor of how the feature works, as any bass aficionado will tell you that lower frequencies are something you feel as much as you hear.

Still, in my experience, I could turn the haptics up only a little bit before the vibrations started getting uncomfortable. Even a slight buzz can be distracting during a game; turn it up all the way, and you’re just asking for a constant, low-grade headache.

The mic on the Corsair HS60 Haptic is an unqualified success, with a gentle, round sound pickup, a suitable volume and a handy windscreen to muffle most consonant pops. It’s not quite good enough to record a podcast, but your teammates (or officemates) will have no trouble parsing what you have to say.

Corsair HS60 Haptic review: Verdict

Our Corsair HS60 Haptic review highlighted the headset’s excellent bass sound, as well as its overall comfort and gaming performance. While it’s true that the device isn’t very pretty, it also solves a longstanding gaming headset problem, and does so without compromising any of the features that Corsair fans have come to expect from the company’s headsets.

The HS60 Haptic’s price is admittedly a bit of a sticking point, particularly since the very-similar Corsair HS60 Surround costs a full $60 less. Furthermore, the bass haptics have the potential to get uncomfortable, even at relatively low levels — a feature that’s nearly impossible to test before you buy a unit for yourself.

If you want to play it safe, the SteelSeries Arctis 5 and Razer Blackshark V2 are $100 USB gaming headsets that offer great performance and good sound — but also not a ton of bass, particularly for music. The Corsair HS60 Haptic may very well be worth its premium price, if you want music and games to really resonate.