Corsair Voyager A1600 Review: A Kitchen Sink Gaming Laptop

The Corsair Voyager a1600 is a kitchen sink gaming laptop. Integrated Elgato flow? This is a feature of the a1600. A mechanical laptop keyboard made with Cherry? where the Voyager a1600 also comes with a double-sided keyboard that allows you to switch it off half or all while playing. It's everything you could want from a laptop, at least on paper.

Corsair's first gaming laptop is an example of what you can do , but there's a reason why the best laptops focus on what you need to do . While the Voyager a1600 is a gaming powerhouse with useful features, it falls short in other categories, while its eclectic feature set pushes its price tag higher than comparable notebooks.

Features Corsair Voyager a1600

Corsair Voyage a1600
Dimensions (LxWxH)	14 x 11.2 x 0.8 inches
Weight	5.3 kilograms
the author	AMD Ryzen 7 6800HS
Graphic	AMD Radeon RX 6800M 12GB
tame	126GB (2x8GB) DDR5-4800
show me	16 inches, 16:10, 2560 x 1600, 240 Hz, IPS, FreeSync Premium Pro
Storage	1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
to be	no
ports	2x USB-C, 1x Thunderbolt USB4, 1x USB 3.2, mic/headphone combo, full-size SD card
Wireless connection	Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Webcam	1080p camera with privacy protection
Operating system	Windows 11
battery	99 W.h
PRICE	Shop at Best Buy

Great design meets bad software

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The Voyager a1600 looks great and is in keeping with the more minimalistic approach Corsair has taken to its products in recent years. Despite being a 16-inch laptop, the a1600 is 0.8 inches thinner than Alienware's Alienware x17 R2. Still, the thinness doesn't match the clever thermal solution of a machine like Asus's ROG Zephyrus M16, with fans getting uncomfortably loud during gaming and even occasionally failing when the laptop is closed.

You have three fan speed options to set a more comfortable noise level. No one overheats like the aluminum-clad Razer Blade 15. However, Corsair tuned the a1600 right off the bat to offer maximum performance at any price. This includes power settings in addition to fan speed, causing the Lenovo ThinkBook 16p Gen 3 to drain the battery 25% faster than the Lenovo ThinkBook 16p Gen 3 with Ryzen 7 6800HX (and the Lenovo laptop has a smaller battery).

AMD's SmartShift Eco system, which switches to integrated graphics to save battery, is disabled by default. If you plan on keeping the Voyager a1600 away from the charger for long periods of time, you'll want to enable this.

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Normally this wouldn't be a deal breaker, but Corsair splits the a1600's settings across different applications. Some general fan and system settings are in the Corsair iCue, but features like Eco mode are in the Radeon software. Similarly, the Stream Deck color and center screen settings are in iCue, but the actual tasks are in the separate Stream Deck app (the camera also has its own app).

All of these apps are included in Voyager Hub, which only serves to communicate with other apps installed on your system. With the Voyager a1600, you'll have three or four Corsair apps running in the background at any given time.

To its credit, Corsair covers a lot of features, and it's hard to fit them all into one piece of software. Of course, you have the built-in Stream Deck, as well as the built-in Corsair Slipstream Wireless module for connecting peripherals like the Corsair Saber Pro Wireless keyless mouse, which is a great feature for freeing up USB ports.

However, to find settings that are only a few clicks away, you usually have to go into multiple programs or bypass the complicated (but very powerful) iCue.

Flow Board Innovation

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Unfortunately, the Cherry-designed keyboard doesn't live up to the hype. I've never met a Cherry laptop keyboard that I liked (read my MSI GT77 Titan review for another example), and the Voyager a1600 is no different. The journey is too long, and Cherry's mechanism may break. I'll take a quality membrane keyboard any day.

The trackpad is another story. At 3.9 inches long and 6.1 inches wide, it's large and comfortable to use. It has two capacity zones that allow you to switch off the keyboard, which is its most notable feature. Double-clicking the left button disables the entire navigation key, and double-clicking the right button disables the right part (also shows the indicator). Not having to swipe while typing or playing is great, but I'm surprised you can't disable the left wrist rest when using WASD.

Also worth noting is the integration of Corsair's Stream Deck, which is more useful than the MacBook Pro's touchpad (which breaks into pieces). It can do everything a normal floating board can do; play audio tracks, open apps, turn on sound mode - the list is endless. However, the Stream Deck is very impressive thanks to the robust plug-in ecosystem available with the Voyager a1600.

You can add custom buttons to OBS, Twitch, Discord, and many other apps through the built-in plugin browser. Stream Deck isn't just for broadcasters. This is a useful and often new feature.

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However, there is room to grow. Unlike an external broadcaster, you cannot see your main tasks on the equipment. Corsair's solution is a Stream Deck strip that takes up the bottom of the screen, which you can turn on and off with the task key. It works, but it's not the second-nature hardware and software you'll find on an open Stream deck.

Great for gamers, bad for creators

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Despite its average gaming performance in synthetic benchmarks, the Voyager a1600 can hold its own with RTX 3070 Ti-powered laptops like the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro in real-world games. With a native resolution of 1600p at maximum settings, you can hit 60 frames per second (fps) in games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla. More demanding titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 require a lower resolution. At 1200p Voyager a1600 averaged 63 in the game.

Surprisingly, Cyberpunk 2077 's resolution drop to 1200p was a big gain, with the Voyager a1600 averaging 73fps compared to a disappointing 1600p performance.

Corsair Voyager a1600 (RX 6800M)	Lenovo Legion 5i Pro (RTX 3070 Ti)	Razer Blade 15 (RTX 3070 Ti)
3DMark Fire Strike	15283	23,054	20,592
3DMark Time Spy	7528	10623	9,363
Assassin's Creed Valhalla	66 frames per second	58 frames per second	70 frames per second
Red Dead Redemption 2	47 frames per second	No	53 frames per second
Cyberpunk 2077	25 frames per second	41 frames per second	No
Cyberpunk 2077 with RT and FSR/DLSS	27 frames per second	42 frames per second	No
Civilization VI	133 frames per second	147 frames per second	127 frames per second

The RX 6800M's GPU is impressive, but it lacks features like Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) available on most other gaming laptops (most gaming laptops have Nvidia cards). AMD Advantage, the branding that indicates an AMD CPU and GPU on a laptop, only appears in a few games, such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla , and isn't compelling enough to warrant a full AMD setup on more common Intel/Nvidia configurations. .

The Voyager a1600 does well with AMD's full setup in general gaming as well as overall CPU performance. Intel processors still have a single-core advantage, but the full eight cores in the Ryzen 7 6800HS help speed up multi-core tasks like video encoding.

Corsair Voyager a1600 (Ryzen 7 6800HS)	Lenovo ThinkBook 16p 3rd Gen (Ryzen 9 6900HX)	Razer Blade 15 (Intel Core i9-12900H)
Cinebench R23 single core	1417 year	1549 year	1705 year
Cinebench R23 multi-core	12,468	12736	9527
Geekbench 5 single core	1422 year	1486 year	1684 year
Geekbench 5 is multi-core	8960	9,041	8431
Handbrake (the lower the better)	87 seconds	81 seconds	107 seconds
PCMark 10 is complete	6992	6699	No
PugetBench for Premiere Pro	388	624	703

However, the Voyager a1600 loses out in the non-gaming graphics department. The Lenovo ThinkBook 16p Gen 3 proves that AMD mobile processors are very close to Intel. It's also proof that AMD graphics cards lag far behind in creative applications like Premiere Pro, where the GPU plays an important role. Even in a Lenovo laptop, the RTX 3060, which is in a much lower class than the RX 6800M, gives almost twice the result in combination with a slightly more powerful processor.

It's a shame, because the Corsair Voyager has a screen worthy of programs like Premiere Pro. It's a 16:10 240Hz display with FreeSync Premium support, so it depends on the game. To my surprise, the screen is also tasked with creating content. It covers more than 100% of the sRGB spectrum and records less than 1 color error. You can easily see the color work on this screen. The only downside is brightness, with the panel clocking in at 339 nits on my SpyderX.

Is the Corsair Voyager a1600 worth it?

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While I appreciate Corsair's courage to do something different in a stagnant notebook market, the combination of features doesn't justify the Voyager a1600's price. It's down from $2,700 to $2,500, but $500 more than the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro with RTX 3070 Ti.

It's cheaper than alternatives like the Razer Blade 17 and Alienware x17 R2, and the Voyager also has those machines' premium features, like a 240Hz display and mechanical keyboard. Even these additions don't fill the void compared to cheaper machines like the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro and the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16, which match and sometimes surpass the Voyager a1600's performance.

Accessories like the integrated Stream Deck and Slipstream circuits are nice, but I never found them necessary in the few weeks I spent with the Voyager a1600. While the Voyager tempted me to spend $100 on a Stream outboard, you can do without them.

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