welcome to my unboxing and review of the Razer Kraken now when you look at the
build quality of these headphones alone
you'll sit there and go wow really it only cost $300 yes $300 is extremely
expensive but what Razer sought to make with these headphones was their first
truly audio file grade headphones so
when we open it up we find a nice little letter welcoming you to the cult of
Razer and no driver disc because unlike
many high-end headphones from gaming companies these are not USB which I've
always felt is a real problem with high-end headphones from gaming
companies is that USB sound cards just really aren't very good and most audio
files are going to have better Solutions on their own so Razer has gone ahead and
implemented a fully pure analog high-end
$300 headphone here it comes with an awesome card carrying case that has kind
of a a leure leather outer material to
it the individual headphones are hand assembled you can see that they're not
forgetting their gaming Roots here they do fold up to make them a little bit
more compact in the case and they open up with a nice little satisfying snap
there they are made out of machined aircraft grade aluminum with animal
friendly leatherette which which is actually among the best leatherette that
I've encountered there's leatherette that feels like plastic stretched over
foam and then there's leatherette that actually feels like oh yeah okay if you
weren't telling me that this is leathered I'd have had a much harder time figuring out that it is there's a
super soft thick cushion of foam on both
of the earpads as well as on the headband this is something that just
gets overlooked too much on headphones look at that nice wide headband because
distribution of weight is important and nice padding on the underside of it now
with that said when I say distribution of weight I am not talking about a
trivial amount of weight here folks because of the aluminum construction
they are not particularly lightweight they've got 40 mm neodium drivers in
each ear cup and only 32 oh impedance so that means that they'll be usable not
only on your gaming PC with your more advanced audio solution but also on
something like a smartphone or whatever else and for that reason Razer includes
two cables one that's just a straight uh
there well it's okay it's a smaller I think this is a 2 and 1/2 mil to 3 and
1/2 mil it's a detachable cable and then the other one which is replaceable with
the other one now this is getting confusing two cables one that just goes
to 3 and2 mil for just headphones and a second that's a four pole so it supports
both headphones and microphone and then finally racer also includes a nice
little uh 3 and2 mil to/ qu in adapter
but I mean if I just told you what they look like then I wouldn't really be
doing my job here would I so first I adjusted them to my head which has a
very satisfying metal adjustment mechanism like I said Guys these are
built like headphones that cost several times as much they're extremely
comfortable look at this I'm going to show you guys a quick demo here so I'm going to push these in and you're going
to see how much plushness there is before the things even touch my ears
then I burned them in for about 36 hours just putting them on the back of a chair
and running my music library on medium to high volume continuously once they'd
been broken in a little bit I fired them up using an OB 2 Amp SL odac combo unit
so that I have a nice reference audio source and then for my comparison
testing I used my AKG K 701s My Den ahd
600s my be dynamic dt770 Pro 80 ohms and
my Sennheiser momentums which all cost between $200 to $320 on Amazon as of
today now guys to be clear I'm a top 40 listener so let's get this out of the
way uh flax MP3s some obscure format you
rip all your music to if you listen to pop or that style of music with upper
range male vocalists or female vocalists and there's any bass in the song
honestly the clarity is not really there in the mid-range and is masked by base
that I just don't feel is tight enough to call Punchy but feels more like what
I would describe as Boomie all of this is especially problematic for me when I
compare them to other sort of Bas head approved products like these Sennheiser
ie80s that I've been listening to a lot lately if you don't like IMS of course
you don't like IEM so those are are completely off the table but it's just
something I have to think about when I go well these are also available for
about $300 okay but Razer knew all of this
when they created the product so just like Hammerhead which I did not find to
my tastes this is not aimed at my tastes
when I handed my Hammerheads off to a friend of mine who loves beets and Skull
Candy products and loves lots of Basse he was like yeah these are awesome
because it was a step in the right direction towards better audio
reproduction but with a sound signature that he enjoyed so what I did was I
changed gears and asked the audio sub Forum online tech tips.com for some
playlists to hopefully let these things shine I ended up with some electronic
music with heavy baselines lots of drums and the like and they definitely sounded
better but anytime vocals came into play they really did feel like they were
being overwhelmed somewhat enough music though how do they perform for gaming if
you're going to test a product from a gaming Centric company like Razer I
guess you'd better play some games you know what the game G experience actually
gave me some significant additional insight into the way that these
headphones were tuned of course a gamer Centric company like Razer if you're
buying $300 headphones from them wants you to have a great music listening
experience but they also want you to have a great gaming experience and
explosions sound great gunfire sounds
great the gaming experience on them is great I guess I if I had a complaint
about these headphones at this point it would be that I wish Razer had created
them from the get-go as a gaming headset and put a proper microphone on them
rather than just giving us an inline that would have added for me to the
value proposition of a $300 pair of headphones that really handles only uh a
certain genre of music well but handles gaming extremely well I mean you could
make the argument that most folks spending $300 on headphones might just
be willing to Pony up for a better microphone solution such as a Blue
Snowball anyway and you would be able to make a very solid case for that but with
their closed design so that means that sound doesn't really leak in from the
outside and doesn't really go out from the inside as well as their great
performance in gaming and great performance in Bassy music I just wish
they were being marketed as more of a gaming headset okay so this is the
conclusion part normally I don't really talk about pricing much because I you
know it can fluctuate but these are expensive headphones and headphones
don't really tend to change much so we're going to factor in that these are $300 headphones so let's start with the
build quality these are the best look and feeling headphones that I have laid
my hands on in anything close to this kind of a price range I would go as far
as to say that they are the best you can get for $300 they justify the premium
that razer's commanding for them with that said they're a little bit too heavy
to call the Comfort the best but the
comfort is still a very strong point of this headset and the reality of it is
while the materials are nice and plush and soft and they're very comfortable to wear for an extended period of time
they're made of aluminum so there's nothing you can do about the additional weight they definitely sound better than
anything else from razer's lineup so if you like the Razer sound signature and
you just want more of the same these are going to be a fantastic choice for you
but on the other hand if you're you know a Discerning audio snob that seeks flat
frequency response curves then I really think you're going to be sorely
disappointed by these headphones but the reality of it is you guys knew that
already Razer has a a characteristic
sound to them so I don't really know why you're even still watching this video at
this point so guys go ahead like this video if you liked it dislike it if you
disliked it leave a comment if you think that you know if you're a Discerning
audio snob or if you prefer a more Bassy
experience and let us know how you feel about it so I'll know what to tell you
guys in future videos about these sorts of products and as always don't forget
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