Powerhouse Gaming Headset With Haptic Feedback

Summary

• Razer Kraken V4 Pro offers excellent sound quality and supports connectivity options beyond PC.
• Headphone haptic feedback can be annoying outside of select native games.
• Few games offer native support for haptics or THX Spatial Audio.

Razer, with the Kraken V4 Pro and its robust haptic feedback, intends to literally shake up the oversaturated premium gaming headphone category. Unfortunately, with little native support, its haptics prove more bust than boom.

Price and Availability

The Razer Kraken V4 Pro is available from Amazon, Best Buy, or direct from Razer for $400. In the box, you get the headset, OLED control hub, USB-A to USB-C cable, USB-C to USB-C cable, 3.5mm aux cable, and a drawstring storage bag.

Headphones That Vibrate?

The Razer Kraken V4 Pro is a wireless RGB headset with real-time audio-to-haptics conversion and a separate OLED control hub that accommodates wired connections from a variety of platforms. The headset delivers wideband, HD haptics that are meant to accurately mimic in-game distance and directionality that you can feel in and around your ears.

On the audio side of things, proprietary 40mm drivers tune high, mid, and low frequencies individually, providing excellent power and clarity. The headphones also support THX Spatial Audio to double-down on immersion.

Connectivity: PC First, Everything Else Second

The Kraken V4 Pro headset interacts with its OLED control hub through a 2.4 GHz wireless connection, dubbed “HyperSpeed Wireless” due to an ultra-low latency of 15 ms. The headset can be used with PC and Mac computers, Sony’s PlayStation 4 and 5, Nintendo’s Switch, and any other device that supports Bluetooth, 3.5mm, or USB-C audio connectivity.

Razer’s OLED control hub connects to PC and Mac computers via a USB-C port labeled “PC,” although the label is for convenience rather than a hard rule. Similarly, Sony PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch consoles can connect via the USB-C port labeled “Console,” but any device that outputs audio over USB-C, including Apple and Android mobile devices, work just as well. Any device with a headphone output can connect to the control hub’s dedicated 3.5mm port, but the OLED control hub still needs to be connected to a PC, console, or USB power source to work with the headset.

Bluetooth connectivity is controlled directly from the headset and doesn’t require the OLED control hub. A 2.4 GHz wireless connection can be used at the same time as a Bluetooth connection, allowing you, for example, to listen to music from your phone as you play a game on your Nintendo Switch.

While the OLED control hub lets you control most functions through its robust onboard menu system, you need the Razer Synapse 4 app to unlock the headset’s full potential. Unfortunately, the app only works with Windows 10 or 11 PCs, which is why this should be considered a PC-first headset, although there’s no denying it sounds good with just about device.

Configuration and Design: Hardware and Software

Without Razer Synapse 4 running, all settings must be adjusted from the OLED control hub. The front of the control hub features a monochrome OLED screen, a large control knob, and a small mode button. It’s a stable platform and relatively intuitive to use. Unfortunately, THX Spatial Audio, which provides simulated surround sound and detailed positional accuracy, is only available when Razer Synapse 4 is running, which again points to preferential use on Windows 10 or 11 PCs.

The headset features an adjustable padded headband and memory foam ear cushions. It’s comfortable, but I did find the ear cushions rather quickly trapped heat. On the sides of the headset are LED backlights that are controlled from Razer Chroma RGB, another bit of software and functionality only available to Windows 10 or 11 PC users. You can choose a variety of lighting effects like ambient awareness that reacts to events on your screen or an audio meter that reacts to sound, as well as customize your own effects. It looks good, but the light show is not for your benefit since you can’t see the sides of the headset when you’re wearing it.

A microphone button, volume control wheel, power button, USB-C charging port, and retractable microphone line the left side of the headset. The right side of the headset features a multifunction button for audio EQ, mode switching, and Bluetooth pairing, as well as a Sensa HD Haptics button.

Razer Synapse 4 provides access to Sound, Enhancement, Mic, Haptics, OLED (control hub display), Lighting (headset LED backlights), and Power options. In the Sound menu, you can choose between stereo or THX Spatial Audio, custom audio profiles, and game- or program-specific profiles. The “Enhancement “menu allows you to amplify quiet in-game sounds, such as footsteps, dialog, or bass frequencies.

In terms of battery life, the Kraken V4 Pro is quite competitive. You get up to 13 hours with haptics and lighting on the 2.4GHz connection, or up to 45 hours with haptics and lighting off using a simultaneous 2.4GHz and Bluetooth connection. The maximum battery life tops out at 50 hours with haptics and lighting disabled on 2.4GHz.

Sound and Immersion: You Really Feel It

The big selling point of the Kraken V4 Pro is its haptics, which provide varying degrees of vibration in sync with certain audio events. You can turn haptics on for general use, but even at its lowest setting, it’s not a subtle effect. There are some instances where you’ll get unpleasant pings in your ear for nearly every audio action. As such, in most cases, I preferred to turn haptic effects off completely, as it quickly became grating. Fortunately, haptics do have a saving grace, albeit with a major caveat.

Razer provides a list of Sensa Games that automatically, natively engage haptic feedback. Unfortunately, most of the 20 games listed are “Coming Soon.” I own two of the games that are presently compatible—Hogwarts Legacy and Frostpunk 2—and only the former actually worked. Further, of the several dozen games I have presently installed on my Windows 11 gaming desktop, only Hogwarts Legacy had a THX Immersive Mode game profile in Razer Synapse 4.

My experience with Hogwarts Legacy was truly transformative, and it’s an experience that Razer needs to bring to more games. The audio clarity and depth was impressive, the surround sound effect was properly positioned, and the haptics really added a unique physical dimension to every spell cast. It’s a great game in general, but one made even better when paired with the Kraken V4 Pro.

That’s not to say non-native games can’t benefit from the haptic effects on offer, as they can; it’s just that it’s hit or miss. Games that don’t natively support Sensa are difficult to tune in the Razer Synapse 4 software and tend to be annoying with haptics. One outlier that I enjoyed was the PC Game Pass version of Doom, where bass haptic effects genuinely helped up the intensity of an already visceral gaming experience. In general, though, I preferred no haptics when I gamed or did anything else with the Kraken V4 Pro headset.

Other games sounded very good, although I rarely got a truly great surround sound experience from the THX Spatial Audio like I did on Hogwarts Legacy. For instance, with a game like Fortnite, which always proves a challenge for surround sound, the Kraken V4 Pro set to the “Game” audio equalizer and THX Spatial Audio sounded good, with excellent clarity, but didn’t do much in terms of 3D audio. In that regard, the similarly-priced Logitech Astro A50 X has these beat and does more with Dolby Atmos.

THX Spatial Audio and haptics aside, I did enjoy the Kraken V4 Pro for general usage, be it on Switch, PS5, or iPhone. You really don’t need access to Razer Synapse 4 to benefit from the overall quality of the headset.

Listening to Spotify at its best bitrate on my PC, I found the music equalizer set to “Music” provided great stereo separation and an ability to hear every instrument clearly. You really can hear the difference versus something like the “Movie” setting, which sounds more hollow, especially with THX Spatial Audio disabled. Unfortunately, movies that do support spatial audio, like The Union on Netflix, still sound a bit hollow, though voices and sound effects are well-separated and clear. Turning on haptics upped the bass, but it added more background muddiness to the overall sound profile.

In any case, the Kraken V4 Pro wouldn’t be my first choice for heavy music listening or movie watching. While I’m sure I could eventually tweak the Custom profile to my liking, I really would expect better fine-tuning from the predefined profiles. There’s also no active noise-canceling option, and the earcups don’t provide an outstanding level of passive noise cancelation.

On the plus side, the Kraken V4 Pro’s microphone quality is excellent, with great clarity and voice isolation. It does pick up noisy keyboard or button clicks in the environment, however, so falls just a bit short of perfection.

Should You Buy the Razer Kraken V4 Pro?

The Razer Kraken V4 Pro remains, at its core, a premium headset with matching audio quality. The headset’s out-of-the-box clarity is excellent on all supported platforms and can handle volume levels that would likely blow out your ears without a hint of distortion.

Unfortunately, with minimal native support for major games for the haptics and THX Spatial Audio, you’re too often left to fine-tune settings on your own, which can be pretty tough to get right. As such, the Kraken V4 Pro, especially at its price point, simply doesn’t deliver on its full potential, making a touted feature like Sensa HD Haptics more marketing bullet-point than something must-own.