Wireless Performance

The supplied wireless dongle uses Corsair's own Slipstream Wireless technology. It establishes a 2.4 GHz radio connection with the headset and uses Intelligent Frequency Shift to detect and dynamically switch between the cleanest currently available channels. The total wireless range is around 15 meters (50 feet). In my tests, the wireless connection behaved flawlessly—it was rock stable and there were no traces of lag in sound reproduction or microphone broadcasting. The wireless dongle has a built-in pairing status LED that blinks red when waiting for the connection or glows white when the connection with the headset is active.


I didn't experience any issues with the Bluetooth connectivity. Only the basic SBC codec is supported, but the Bluetooth connection is stable and has an acceptable latency for mobile gaming. There's no Bluetooth Multipoint support, so you can only have a single Bluetooth source connected to the HS80 MAX at a time. This is somewhat disappointing, as nowadays more and more wireless gaming headsets offer Bluetooth Multipoint.

Battery Life

Corsair claims that the HS80 MAX can offer up to 65 hours of usage in wireless mode, which is a huge step up from the HS80 RGB Wireless, which capped out at 20 hours. In practice, the actual battery life depends on whether you're using the RGB lighting system or not, the ratio of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, as well as listening volume. With RGB LEDs off, you can expect around 60 hours of playback in Wi-Fi mode. This can be almost doubled in Bluetooth mode. Activating the RGB lighting system cuts battery life roughly in half.

There's a small LED underneath the volume wheel, which serves as an indicator of the remaining battery life. Corsair is vague about the status of the battery, as it only uses a descriptive nomenclature. The battery can be High, Medium, or Low, without any exact numbers attached to these "values." A high battery is marked with a green LED, orange LED amounts to medium battery life, and red LED means that the battery is low. Although the iCUE software driver can display a battery gauge in the system tray, it too uses the same High-Medium-Low nomenclature. The same is true for the "Device Settings" submenu in the iCUE software driver.