If you’re willing to spend $400 for a gaming headset, you’re probably not just in it for sound quality alone. “So, what gaming headset could possibly warrant such a price tag?” you may ask – well, the Kraken V4 Pro and every possible feature Razer could cram into a package. It’s Razer’s top-line enthusiast option that comes with all the bells and whistles you could want while nailing the core tenets of a proper gaming headset.
Its superb comfort, well-rounded audio performance, and deep software customization are noteworthy, for sure. Then you throw in a robust base station, multi-device connectivity, and you have the makings of a state-of-the-art headset. Oh, and there’s haptic feedback and RGB lighting to top it all off. Despite all that, it’s tough to recommend at its normal price if you’re looking for greatness in the essentials, like straight sound quality, since there are more cost-effective options that perform at least on par with this headset (like Razer’s own Blackshark V2 Pro that’s tuned more for competition). What you’re paying for is having all of these fancy features packed into a solidly built headset, and the Kraken V4 Pro does that well.
Razer Kraken V4 Pro – Design, Comfort, and Features
This updated Razer Kraken made a great first impression out of the box with its build quality. Its aluminum frame is super flexible and durable, and the chunky earcups can swivel inward to let it rest around your neck easily. Along with the leatherette upholstery, the earcups create a solid seal around your ears and form to your head’s shape, which helps with audio delivery (which I dig into more later). The Kraken V4 Pro’s plushy earpads are quite dense without feeling too firm, and the padded headband wrapped in sports mesh alleviates pressure from the top of your head. Although the leatherette earcups naturally get a bit muggy, I could comfortably wear this headset throughout the day.
The earcups themselves rock a flashy aesthetic with tiny dotted holes to let the RGB lighting flourish around the glossy Razer logo at the center. It’s rather nice as far as RGB for headsets, but since the headset itself isn’t often in sight (since it’s, well, on my head), I prefer to turn it off and squeeze out a bit more battery life.
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You’ll see a bunch of buttons along the side of each earcup and it’ll take some time to remember what each one does and their exact placement to use them without having to look at them. On the right earcup, a single press on the top-most button cycles through EQ presets, a double-tap swaps connectivity between devices, and a three-second hold enables pairing mode. The lower button controls Razer’s Sensa haptic feedback built into the headset; a single press cycles through haptics intensity (off, low, medium, and high) and a double-top changes the haptics profile (changing what sound cues it reacts to). The left earcup contains all the standard features – mic mute, volume wheel, power button, USB-C port, and the retractable microphone.
The real star of the package is the base station, however. This is how the Kraken V4 Pro connects to various devices (outside of Bluetooth), using Hyperspeed wireless connectivity to essentially act as your 2.4GHz wireless dongle. You get two USB-C ports on the back of it – one to connect to PC and another for consoles (although this won’t work with Xbox), and you get two six-foot USB cables (C to A and C to C). Plus, there’s a 3.5mm combo jack acting as a passthrough for additional audio devices, giving the overall package a little more versatility.
The base station is also for managing the Kraken V4 Pro’s features on a more granular level. You get six options to control – volume, EQ profile, haptics profile, haptics intensity, input source, and sidetone level for the mic. The Razer Synapse app gives you access to even more options so you can tweak the base station’s functionality to your liking; it’s essentially the Command Dial that’s on the BlackWidow V4 Pro 75, but bigger and for the headset. It’s very easy to use with a clicky button to switch between settings and a large tactile dial to make adjustments, in addition to being a hub to seamlessly connect to multiple platforms.
Razer Kraken V4 Pro – Customization and Battery Life
I don’t think I’ve seen a headset with as many options for customization as the Kraken V4 Pro, and that’s by virtue of its roster of features you can tinker with. It all starts with Razer’s comprehensive Synapse software, where you can do typical things like adjust frequency response with the 10-band EQ settings, microphone sensitivity, and RGB lighting patterns. The little OLED screen on the base station has a few different idle animations to choose from, or it can display system information like CPU/GPU temperature and usage or the battery life and current volume of the headset.
The audio presets marked for movies, games, and music don’t sound quite right (although the music preset is the better of the bunch), so I’d suggest finding your own EQ balance to really get the most out of the Kraken V4 Pro’s potential. Audio enhancements to boost bass or vocal clarity, or even out spikes and drops in volume are available, although I prefer to go with as natural a sound profile as possible. In addition to sidetone feedback, Synapse lets you control the microphone’s EQ settings and use presets that emphasize vocal clarity, noise gating or cancellation, and volume normalization.
While you’re able to set the Sensa haptics to low, medium, or high intensity, you can further control how it responds to audio cues and tie a specific range of low-end frequencies along with intensity levels. There are also Sensa profiles for certain games, but you’ll have to use the separate Razer Chroma app to do so. Haptics on a headset isn’t really my thing, but the level of customization makes it feel less like a tacked-on feature.
With so many features available, battery life can vary drastically depending on what’s enabled. After two days of continuous use, having RGB set to the max, using the microphone with enhancements, and testing haptics for a few hours, I got through two-plus days (or about 30 hours total) from a full charge. Of course, with these features off, which I would typically do if this was my daily headset, you can get between 60 to 70 hours from the battery, which isn’t bad at all even if we’ve seen headsets in this tier offer a bit more juice.
Razer Kraken V4 Pro – Sound Quality and Performance
It’s no surprise (and actually expected) that a headset of this caliber would sound solid out of the box, and even better sound when you make some necessary tweaks. The Kraken V4 Pro can match some of the best at the higher end, as it should at this price point. It’s a headset that sounds full and clean across frequencies at higher volumes whether you’re listening to music, watching movies, or gaming competitively or otherwise.
Counter-Strike 2 is always my go-to competitive shooter, especially when testing headsets and it’s one that showed the positional audio performance of the Kraken V4 Pro. Gunfire and footsteps had a distinct distance and direction, which is important for competitive scenarios like the handful of ranked matches I played while using the headset. As always, I test new headsets as I do my weekly and daily activities in Final Fantasy XIV, and the chaos of raids with sound effects going off while music is blasting is a great way to test how a headset handles a busy workload. The Kraken V4 Pro held up with a sound profile that sounded spacious so as to not cram so much of the game’s audio into your ears.
One slight gripe is that by default, the Kraken V4 Pro sounds a bit muffled, and a little tinkering with the EQ settings helped get the headset closer to its full potential. Synapse includes presets, but I would not recommend the “game” preset since it eliminates bass, which is important for sound effects to come through clearly. The “movie” works well for TV and movies, and “music” is closest to how I’d want the headset to sound. It can deliver good bass, so increasing the low-end and slightly boosting treble helps express a more natural audio profile. Once I found this balance, the Kraken V4 Pro shined across games and music.
Spatial audio is important, but I find that virtual 7.1 applications tend to sound a little too artificial. However, the Kraken V4 Pro is one of the few headsets that can shine with THX Spatial Audio. It makes the most of that cinematic audio experience – I don’t necessarily recommend them for all games, especially of the competitive variety, but if you want that kind of immersion (and for other types of media), it’s worth trying out. You get a free trial with the Kraken V4 Pro and activate it in Synapse, but eventually have to shell out $20 to purchase a license to get access to its full suite of features.
I must say, the microphone is quite disappointing at this tier considering how muffled it sounds when speaking over Discord of in-game. It’s comparable to a phone call, and that’s good enough to at least be heard in voice chat, but when you look at headsets with great mics like the HyperX Cloud III (which is $150 at MSRP), I can’t help wondering why the Kraken V4 Pro couldn’t live up to a standard set by much cheaper options from its competitors.
I’ll be the first to say that I do not like the idea of haptics on a headset. It’s one thing to have a strong subwoofer rattling your floor and walls, it’s another to have that kind of rattling directly on your head. If it is something you’re interested in, the Kraken V4 Pro does do it well, supported by the granular adjustments you can make in how it reacts to low-end frequencies to simulate the physical force of explosive bass. Razer’s Sensa haptics have been a pretty neat feature on its Freyja add-on for chairs, but as far as headsets go, it certainly seems like a “just because you could, it doesn’t mean you should” situation.
