Cougar Immersa Essentials Headset

Cougar Immersa Essential Headset: Introduction

Another day, another headset review. Today's gambit is the Cougar Immersa Essentials headset. This one appears to be targeted for consoles and mobile electronics at the low MSRP of 49.99.
 

Cougar Immersa Essential Headset: Technical Specs

The specs sheet below comes straight from Cougar. Let's take a look at what we're working with here before we continue.

Cougar Immersa Essential Headset: Closer Look

The first thing we're greeted with of course is the box. The outside of the box is aesthetically pleasing. I like Cougar's color scheme. I feel like it makes their products pop on the box. The orange coupled with the graphite color and white looks clean. Anyway, let's talk about the inside of the box and the headset's packaging.
 

The inside of the box just contains this piece of plastic that holds the headset and the mic cable. The little bundle of cables you see below is tucked into the back behind the plastic. It's a relatively flimsy piece of plastic, but it works I suppose. I don't think anything would happen to the product unless the UPS guy played hockey with your package all Ace Ventura style. It isn't pretty, but you're throwing it all away when you remove the headset anyway. Also, this headset is light, like crazy light. The headset is a band of thin metal and that's pretty much it. The cushioning on the earcups is pretty soft, and they fit nicely on my head though. The biggest and most immediate flaw in this headset though is that if you touch this thing, you hear it. Even if you softly tap it, or move the headset cable, you can loudly hear it in your ear. I think it is because the headset is so light that there's no real sound dampening at all. There is no material for the vibration to meet resistance from. It's jarring and immersion-breaking. Ironic, seeing how this headset is called the "Immersa Essential."

The headset sounds okay though, which is good. I mean for the price of 49.99, I guess you can't complain too much. I had the best experience when connecting the Immersa Essential to my PS4 controller. Sitting on the couch with a controller in my hand was the place I had the least chance of hitting the cable or the headset on anything. There is absolutely no noise cancellation in the headset audio itself. You can hear everything in the room. However, the microphone is clear enough. The noise cancellation through the microphone works as well. The microphone uses a cardioid pattern, which attempts to block out noise on the opposite side of the microphone. While it doesn't block the noise out completely or anything, it makes a decent attempt.

As for the connectivity of the headset, there is a singular 3.5mm connector for your consoles and things like that. You can also connect the included splitter which will provide you with dual-channel connections for your computer. One is for your headset, and one is for your microphone. There is also an in-line volume and mute button attached above the splitter connector. None of the cables attached to this headset are removable though. The microphone itself is also not removable. Speaking of the microphone connection, it is kinda rigid towards the part where it connects to the headset frame. That just means you can't move it much, so even if you aren't using the microphone, it's kinda in your face.

Cougar Immersa Essential Headset: Software

There is no software currently provided by Cougar for the Immersa Essential. There are no configurable elements on this headset.

Cougar Immersa Essential Headset: Conclusion

The Immersa Essentials sounds good enough, and the microphone does as well. The headset looks nice and includes enough connectors to be viable. The glaring problem with this headset is that it is FAR too thin. As I mentioned before, you can hear every tap and every movement of the cable through the ear cups. Vibration travels easily through this thing. It can break your immersion if you are playing a story-driven game or trying to use these to study while listening to music. The headset MSRP is only 49.99 though. If you don't mind the vibrations, this headset will be far better than many of the other offerings on the market at this price range. My personal opinion here, but this is a console headset for sure.

Pros

• Comfortable ear cups
• Looks pretty stylish
• Decent microphone noise cancellation

Cons

• Substandard audio quality
• Incredibly thin build frame, to a big fault.