Razer Barracuda Pro overview: A gaming headset with outstanding encompass seem

Most effective Selling prices Right now: Razer Barracuda Pro

The Razer Barracuda Professional provides good audio in a modest, light-weight and comfy structure. It backs all this up with solid connectivity selections, together with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-A and USB-C (wired), allowing for you to link to nearly all your units in an instantaneous.

Players will love the Barracuda Pro’s THX Spatial Audio assistance, which elevates gaming audio to a abundant and enjoyable surround-sound working experience. And, even though the absence of a boom mic does not do wonders for voice chats and recordings, it does mean the Barracuda Pro can go for a convincing premium headphone set—a awesome silver lining that adds to the device’s too much to handle charm.

Barracuda Pro design and construct

Like its predecessor, the Razer Barracuda X, the Barracuda Pro’s total aesthetic is modest, consisting of rounded black cups and a plastic headband. There is a apparent absence of RGB lighting like you see in Razer’s Kraken line-up, or in rivals like the flashy Logitech G733. As an alternative, two shiny black Razer snake logos look on the outside of each ear-cup, and the term “Razer” sits atop the headset’s band at the best position.

The controls are stealthily finished in black, other than for the mute mic button, which reveals up eco-friendly when in the off posture. The modest style and hidden detailing suggests the Barracuda Pro scrubs up remarkably perfectly as a traditional large-close headphone set when you are not gaming.

The Barracuda Pro provides a bevy of functions that keep your ears and head snug and at ease. The most apparent is its lightweight entire body, which eschews steel for plastic, minimizing complete body weight. This might invite toughness worries for some gamers, but on the upside it virtually eradicates any horizontal and vertical force.

Dominic Bayley

The earpads are in the same way developed for come to feel-excellent comfort. They are each incredibly tender and protected in a tactile pretend leatherette product that’s neither much too coarse nor also slippery in opposition to your ears. The foam underneath is particularly mild and squishes down easily, allowing the cups to all but melt into the sides of your head, therefore diminishing any distress to your ears.

Razer’s most significant modify relative to the Barracuda X structure is the absence of a protruding microphone on the Professional design. In its place are two innocuous slots that sit on the base entrance edges of the cups. Apart from this major transform, the rest of the Barracuda Pro’s controls are related to what you’d discover in any other quality gaming headset. Below the mute button on the left ear-cup you are going to obtain a volume wheel and power button as nicely as a electric power port for charging.

The Barracuda Professional arrives with a massive hardtop carrying situation with perfectly-outlined headphone grooves. This does a respectable work in halting the telephones from bumping about inside of your satchel or backpack.

Razer

In the heart of the circumstance is a pouch with a magnetic clasp that homes all the supporting paraphernalia: the USB-C-to-USB-A charging cable and USB-A-to-USB-C extender. A miniscule second pouch inside of the greater a single retains the Barracuda Pro’s USB-C dongle—a nice touch that will make getting rid of it a tiny additional difficult.

Barracuda Professional connectivity selections

Regrettably, the Barracuda Professional lacks a 3.5mm jack for wired connectivity. This denies it the versatility of the Barracuda X or rivals like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Professional Wi-fi. Nonetheless, these headphones do provide rapid 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, as effectively as the latest Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, and you can change involving these modes in an instantaneous.

The headset is also appropriate with just about all your gadgets, which includes your Computer, Nintendo Change, PlayStation consoles, and Android devices, preserving you the trouble and price tag of buying many headsets. Switching involving my Laptop and Nintendo Change was a cinch with the supplied USB-C-to USB-A adapter. I by no means experienced to go by means of the rigmarole of checking ports.

Environment up the Barracuda Professional on my Pc in Wi-Fi Manner was also entirely easy. After you plug in the dongle, you just transform on the headset and your Computer system does the rest. Pairing by using Bluetooth was similarly easy, with the total approach getting much less than just just one moment.

The moment linked, two faucets of the button on the appropriate ear-cup switched the gadget among the Razer Hyperspeed Wi-Fi and Bluetooth sign, and this modify was declared by a handy voice affirmation, so I was in no way still left questioning.

Dominic Bayley

Razer’s Synapse software

The Barracuda Professional gains from Razer’s nicely-polished and easy-to-navigate Synapse app that gives you awesome command of your headset’s audio output via presets. You can also personalize EQ presets, spatial audio profiles, quantity, and mic options, and change the Energetic Sound Cancellation on or off.

Major gamers and audiophiles have four EQ presets to participate in with, every just one optimized for many amusement situations. There’s a single for game titles, films and songs, additionally a default that does a good occupation in all categories. A fifth possibility allows you tweak up to 10 EQ bands to create tailor made profiles for specific video games, tracks or videos.

No pro-quality headset is entire with out audio improvement settings, which Synapse also features. Under the “Enhancement” sub-menu, you can increase the bass, tweak voice clarity, and normalize the audio by employing handy slider bars.

Dominic Bayley

The device’s surround audio comes courtesy of THX Spatial Audio. In Synapse you have two possibilities: an Vehicle Manner enabling the application to choose the ideal profile for your media, or a Manual Manner wherever you can individually assign your personal profiles. The finest detail about these profiles is they appear visually represented as circular diagrams in which you transfer dots all-around to choose on the directionality of seem.

Razer’s Audio app for Android and iOS puts you in command of the exact EQ presets as the Razer Synapse application, but provides a minimal-latency Gaming Mode and Do-not-disturb Manner that blocks phone calls so that you can preserve taking part in no make any difference what. It’s also equally easy to use.

Barracuda Professional audio general performance

The Barracuda X’s 40mm drivers have been changed by bigger 50mm Triforce Bio-cellulose drivers, and they truly pack a punch. Tones at frequencies down below 400Hz sounded deep and commanding, primarily in pitch transitions ended up the thump of a bass drum kicked in or the defeat dropped specially low.

The headset also sent outstanding mids and highs. These tones were being obvious and described, filling up my eardrums with a smooth timbre, in particular in online games with expressive vocals or guitar, this sort of as Diablo II: Resurrected or Valheim.

Actively playing all over with the generic media presets proved them to be nicely optimized for just about every media style. The Game EQ preset cranks up amplitudes in the 250Hz to 8Khz assortment so the mids and highs are not drowned out by significant bass notes. The Tunes EQ preset delivers amplitude peaks for mids and highs as effectively as the bass, therefore offering a richer audio.

Enthusiasts of very first-particular person shooters will revel in the THX Spatial Audio Activity Mode preset, which works exceptionally effectively, delivering strong directionality in FPS titles like Fortnite, Get in touch with of Responsibility: International Offensive and Battlefield I. This preset emphasizes seems positioned in the front and sides of your participant character, as indicated by dots in an accompanying graphic.

Feeling adventurous in my playtesting, I moved two of the dots to the base of the spatial diagram to see (nicely, to hear) what transpired. Again in sport with my new profile active, the directionality of the match audio coming from behind my player character was enhanced so that I could greater listen to footfalls and be much more easily alerted when I was being outflanked.

Dominic Bayley

All in all, THX Spatial Audio was extraordinary, but the Barracuda Pros’s sounds-cancellation was considerably much less amazing. That’s not to say it does not work—on the entire it does a acceptable job in trying to keep out distractions like website traffic sounds. However, it struggled to prevent increased-pitched seems like voices and birds chirps from leaking in.

Thinking of the Barracuda Pro’s $249.99 cost issue, its ANC isolation should really have been much better. Still, unless of course you’re truly tests for these seems, it is very likely you will not observe as well much ambient home sound when the gaming gets frantic.

Barracuda Pro microphone effectiveness

The Barracuda Pro will make a daring assertion with two beamforming auditory slots as an alternative of an about-the-mouth increase mic, which is a defining attribute in most gaming headsets these days. From one particular point of watch, this unconventional style would make some perception in that it decreases visible distraction and tends to make for a compact, ergonomic device to pack down.

Nonetheless, the mics’ sound top quality did not very reside up to anticipations in recordings, sounding a very little faint and a bit muffled. That’s not to say they will not do a respectable task on clarity. They are just not as superior as the Barracuda Pro’s predecessor, the Razer Barracuda X.

The base line

Razer’s $249.99 Barracuda Pro gaming headset sounds fantastic in video games and delivers a spatial audio expertise second to none. It also arrives with dual wi-fi and wired connectivity and a hassle-free USB adapter so you are in no way left struggling to connect. Nonetheless, the absence of a growth mic feels a little bit odd in game titles and compromises the mics’ seem, and its ANC does not fairly have the stopping electricity of some rivals.