Razer Kraken X Review – For Real?

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Budget headsets aren’t supposed to be this good. Seriously, The Kraken X is a whole new level. I’ve never known such great quality from such a meager priced headset. You’d expect a headset in this price bracket to come with some huge and numerous concessions that hamper the quality – but simply put, it doesn’t. In fact, it comes with very few.

Razer has turned one such concession on its head and used it to its own advantage. The build is pretty much entirely made from plastic.

Wait, what? I hear you cry!

This leaves the Kraken X weighing in at a featherweight 250g and it’s one of the lightest headsets I’ve ever used. ‘ULTRA-LIGHT COMFORT’ claims Razer on their website, and for once, the marketing blurb is spot on. After a prolonged (and mainly fruitless) session of Battle Royal mode on Modern Warfare I can report that at times I’d completely forgotten that I had a headset on. This is further helped by having ear cushions that have been fabricated from plush memory foam, that provides both comfort and a decent amount of sound isolation.

Now let’s get to the important bit, how does it actually sound?

With it’s 35mm jack plugged directly into my Dualshock 4 and with minimal set-up fuss I was good to go. The custom-tuned 40 mm drivers deliver a crisp and detailed soundscape that adds real weight to my aural gaming experience. Unlike my previous headset, the directional sound in the Kraken helped me pinpoint the footsteps of enemies and locate exactly where those sneaky snipers were pot-shotting me from. Whilst I found the headset fell short in the bass sections the mid ranges were completely on point. Rarely did I find any noise distortion when things got extremely loud and hectic. Yes Precision Airstrike, I’m looking at you.

Inside the box, you find a scratch card with a code that enables you to download Razers 7.1 Virtual surround app for your PC that provides a greater depth of sound paired with richer audio. Unfortunately, as a console gamer, I have no access to a PC and therefore cannot review this aspect.

The microphone, whilst being non-retractable is as solid as they come for this price range. Employing a Cardioid pattern the mic does a really good job of focusing on what you say whilst keeping a rein on background noise. I found that straight out of the box the factory settings worked perfectly with my PS4 and my friends commented on how the clarity of my dulcet Mancunian twang. The stem is a flexible and bendy affair and can easily be bent out of the way when not in use. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help but feel that it would have benefitted greatly from having the same retractable stem found on some of Razer’s other headsets.

Kraken X Variations

Overall I was tremendously impressed by the Kraken X. It’s an extremely comfortable, affordable and lightweight headset with some seriously impressive innards that put most headsets, twice the price, to shame.

I give the Razer Kraken X a Gold Award

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