Introduction

Earlier this year, I wrote about the Cougar Immersa, a longtime favorite headset in the $50 price bracket, universally acclaimed as one of the best choices for anyone whose budget won't stretch any further. It is well made and comfortable, looks nice and has a fun, explosive, although not particularly accurate sound.



Now, Cougar is upping their game with the Immersa Pro, a gaming headset that's more ambitious in every conceivable way - it has bigger sound drivers (50 mm, compared to 40 mm of the "regular" Immersa), comes with its own USB sound card, supports 7.1 virtual surround sound, offers interesting RGB effects, and costs more too. Luckily, Cougar stayed true to their habit of not going overboard with the price. The Immersa Pro can be bought for $85, while, feature-wise, competing with $100 headsets.

The design and microphone implementation haven't changed from the original Immersa at all, so it will be interesting to find out what the Immersa Pro has to offer in other ways to justify the price bump.

Specifications

• 50 mm dynamic driver (neodymium magnet)
• 32 Ω impedance
• 20-20,000 Hz frequency response (specified by the manufacturer)
• Closed-back, over-ear design
• Retractable boom microphone
• 2 m braided cable
• Weight: 360 g

The Package

The Cougar Immersa Pro comes in a fairly bulky, well-made box. The front of it depicts the headset and lists a few key features, such as the 7.1 virtual surround sound, 50-mm drivers, 16.8 million color RGB lighting system, and software support through the so-called Cougar UIX System. On the rear, there's an in-depth breakdown of various aspects of the Immersa Pro. There's plenty of stuff to read and examine, and you'll get a good idea of the headset's various features by taking a look at these here.


The sides of the box inform us about the ability to retract the microphone and show us a bit of the headset's RGB action. Don't worry, if RGB effects aren't to your taste, you can easily turn them off.


The front part of the box is actually a huge flap that can be opened to reveal the headset in all of its glory. Cougar came up with a nice way to present its product while keeping it perfectly safe during transportation as well.


Here's everything you get inside the box. Aside from the headset, you get a USB sound card, a cable that allows you to plug the headset into a 3.5-mm TRRS plug, and the user manual. The dual TRS support is obviously missing, so you won't be able to plug the headset into a sound card that uses separate microphone input and sound output, at least not before buying an appropriate adapter. On the other hand, that's not really an issue as the headset comes with its own sound card, so that's what you'll use when connecting it to your PC.