Bass, bass, buttery biscuit bass
What is it with Razer and just not doing so great lately? If there was ever a time for it to shine, you’d think it would be now. After years of research and development, it should be winning hearts and minds with its LED-encompassing peripherals of power. However, that’s simply not the case. That’s not the way the cookie crumbles, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the Razer Kraken Pro.
Headsets have come a long way over the last decade. And even though this variant of Razer’s prestigious Kraken series is priced competitively, at around £65, it just doesn’t hold its own when compared to solutions from competitors such as QPad, Steelseries or Asus. It suffers from ‘gamer’s syndrome’. What do we mean by that? Simply put, too much bass.
For some reason, many peripheral manufacturers have a tendency to lean too heavily on the bass production side with their headsets. And although this is great if you’re looking to have dubstep playing at max volume constantly, it just doesn’t cut it if you’re looking for high-quality audio fidelity. This may be news to Razer, but a well-rounded headset consists of mastering not only the lows, but also the mids and the highs. The treble and the mids are just as important as the bass.
Even in gaming, you need to hear the crunch of the explosions, the gun shots, the clash of swords, not just the dull thud of the bomb going off as it reverberates around your ear lobes, slowly caressing them into heart-attack oblivion. If you’re looking to get these headphones for well-rounded sound reproduction, don’t. Unless, of course, bass-heavy noise is your thing. In which case, these could be for you.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom for poor old Razer. The headset is a lovely fit. There’s just enough tension, meaning that even after long periods of listening to music or gaming, it’s still exceedingly comfortable. The earcups are a little small, though they do entirely surround your ears (as long as they’re fairly small). Razer also provides an extension cable to ensure you have enough room to manoeuvre.
The headset looks pretty stylish too. The white finish for this particular special edition makes it a solid-looking piece of kit. But unfortunately, you still wouldn’t want to wear these things in public. Even with the retractable microphone, the garish Razer typeface littered across the top of the headband makes you feel like a bit of a pillock – not a design choice we’re fans of here, but ho hum. The retractable mic is a fantastic addition, and has extensive noise-cancelling features, so much so that in some cases we couldn’t get it to register sound at all. You might need to fiddle around to actually get it to pick up your own voice, but all in all, it’s quite the challenge just to register any noise on the poor thing, even in a busy office environment.
Ultimately, these headphones just don’t provide a compelling offer to anyone who’s looking at Razer for more than brand worship. They don’t provide good sound reproduction, the microphone is flakey at best, and, if you have ears even slightly more than average-sized, you’re going to struggle to fit them comfortably around your lugs. The extension-capable, retractable mic and four-pole adaptor for mobile usage are nice additions, but they’re just not enough to redeem the Kraken of its prior sins. When there are better, cheaper alternatives out there, such as the Kingston HyperX Cloud Gaming or QPad’s QH-85, we’re genuinely confused as to what Razer is playing at here. – ZAK STOREY
SPECIFICATIONS
Driver size 40mm
Frequency response 20-20,000KHz
Weight 300g
Cable length 1.3M (3.3M with splitter adaptor)
Connection type 3.5mm headphone/mic + four-pole adaptor for mobile
Mic Unidirectional