Expert Review by Milan Tygarlily McKinnon for Razer Kraken V4 Pro Gaming Headset [1:05]

Customer Images

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• See
  More

The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  A really good headset w/dock for gamers

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for 1 month

  I owned the original USB Razer Kraken headset from a long time ago and absolutely loved them, these I am reviewing are a whole different ballgame though. The audio quality is actually really good for a wireless headset that can be used on PC, Console, and phone. The dock this headset bundle comes with is customizable and can have a custom photo put on it or even a gif on the little OLED display. Yes the display only shows black and white, but the benefits definitely outweigh the downside at this point. This product comes with a usb-c to usb-c and a usb-a to usb-c that you can both use in multiple ways, one to charge the headset and one to use the dock with, both worth for either usage. I am able to walk while still attached and listening to audio or talking quite a decent distance from the dock which is also nice. There are also some interesting things I noticed if you are using this on PC though: you have a separate audio output set-up you can use for gaming and voice chat, so I can voice chat with someone on discord or team speak while streaming on twitch hearing both through the same headset but the stream only hearing the game. There is audio haptic feedback using ‘Sensa HD Haptics’ and some games have integrated support for it, of course not a huge amount of game currently have it but seeing how new the headset is it’s only a matter of time. It has THX Spatial Audio, which is actually a very nice feature to have especially built in like this headset does and you can customize your own audio equalizer or choose a preset such as: game, movie, and music. Multiple games support THX Spacial Audio such as: World of Warcraft, Genshin Impact, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Hogwarts Legacy, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Zenless Zone Zero, Subnautica: Below Zero, World of Tanks, Battlefiels 5, and more. Depending on what the game is it also has different options for the THX Spatial Audio, such as ‘immersive’ and ‘competitive’ and of course competitive would be competitive gaming and Counter Strike 2 (formerly Counter Strike Global Offence, or CSGO) This headset has a cool setup for its RGB lighting as well, I personally set my headset to twinkle like random stars. You have power saving settings for it so if you walk away and audio isn’t going through the headset from your computer for your specified time it will turn the headset off so your battery does die. There is audio enhancements like bass boosting, sound normalization, and voice clarity for listening, and the microphone has its own enhancements as well, volume normalization, vocal clarity, mic noise cancellation, and voice gate. The mic also has side tone with the option to disable it or leave it enabled. Of course this is also considered a cheap headset in terms of music and audio quality and of course the more you pay the more you get, that’s actually a real thing with headsets and audio. Buy cheap get cheap, these are definitely worth their price for sure though even though they don’t have noise cancellation like the AirPod Max headset and certain Beats models. I dabble in music making with products like the Vocaloid software by Yamaha and I actually really like these for music making and gaming. I also put a little Hatsune Miku on the Dock staring at me and questioning me which is funny. I would definitely recommend to avid gamers, but of course I would also recommend getting synapse if using it on PC, like how steel series recommends having their software, it adds more functionality than just having the headset plugged into your computer. Its mic can be retracted into the headset and pulled out and has a red indicator on the end of the mic to show it’s muted. Built in headset and dock software is really simple to update as well if you read and follow the instructions on their website if you want to or need to.

  ...See More
  • 
  • 

  Posted 7 months ago by SharonT

• Rated 2 out of 5 stars

  Great for music, mixed feelings on games

  • Verified Purchaser
  • Best Buy Employee
  • Incentivized
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for 1 week

  The Kraken V4 Pro comes with the mixer, a USB-A to USB-C, USB-C to USB-C, and a 3.5mm to USB-C cable. It uses Synapse 4 to operate and change its settings. The headset sounds great out of the box when it comes to music. I feel the haptics really enhances a lot of songs that aren't technically bass heavy, such as old classics from the 30s-60s. Anything with a distinct instrument, you'll be able to feel them as if it was being played next to you. The best way for me to explain this this would be with the song "It's Not Unusual", it feels like there's clapping behind you. It was a lot of fun listening to music while I had the headset and giving a listen to my large library of songs, getting a new experience from them. The headset itself is very comfortable, I could easily wear it for hours at a time. No complaints there. What I found to be a real issue was the absolutely poor mic quality. The V4 Pro uses the same poorly received mic as the base V4 Kraken, and there's a lack of actual tuning as there's only 3 pre-set modes for the mic to use (broadcast, micboost, and live conference) and they all sound terrible. This is an absurd move by Razer when they're charging $400 for a headset. At this price range, everything should be at least above average, if not premium. Especially when they have the capability of making a good gaming microphone headset (seen in the Blackshark V2), but they've opted to cheap out on a $400 headset. As for the main focus of the headset, the haptics in gaming. I found that if its not on the small list of games that are pre-tuned by Razer, it can be a huge nuisance to tune the haptic settings per game yourself as it's unlikely you'll get good haptic settings ranges carrying between game genres. My personal experience is tweaking my haptic settings for 30min while playing GoW:R, then trying to play Deadlock later that night and spending another 30min tweaking it since every bullet fired sounded atrocious with absurd haptics. My personal opinion on the product is that if you play with groups of friends often on multiplayer or many genres of games, it's not worth it. I've had multiple scenarios where it was difficult for my friends to make out what I was saying at times with this microphone. Unless you get a separate microphone (which is crazy since you're already spending $400 on the product) and have a small library of games that's your focus (like FPS mains), the headset will be a huge hassle working tweaking settings every single time you try a new game.

  ...See More
  • 
  • 

  Posted 1 year ago by Sean

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  The Kraken Pro

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • Owned for 3 weeks

  Got these on sale. Great value for what I paid. The haptics and Spatial Audio are amazing. But, the mic doesn’t fully retract anymore nor does the headset have NC. The control hub functions nicely and is very customizable. the metal construction on both the control hub and headset make me feel confident that it will last a long time. The only real issue I have is that you can only customize the headset controls and behavior on Synapse. But it doesn’t take away from the ability of the headset. Overall, am satisfied and would recommend.

  ...See More
  • 

  Posted 3 weeks ago by DavidC