Razer Barracuda Professional evaluate: A gaming headset with outstanding surround audio

Most effective Costs Nowadays: Razer Barracuda Pro

The Razer Barracuda Professional provides terrific audio in a modest, light-weight and snug design. It backs all this up with solid connectivity possibilities, together with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-A and USB-C (wired), permitting you to hook up to just about all your gadgets in an instantaneous.

Avid gamers will enjoy the Barracuda Pro’s THX Spatial Audio assist, which elevates gaming audio to a loaded and satisfying encompass-sound expertise. And, while the absence of a increase mic does not do wonders for voice chats and recordings, it does signify the Barracuda Professional can move for a convincing top quality headphone set—a great silver lining that provides to the device’s mind-boggling attraction.

Barracuda Professional layout and make

Like its predecessor, the Razer Barracuda X, the Barracuda Pro’s all round aesthetic is modest, consisting of rounded black cups and a plastic headband. There’s a noticeable absence of RGB lights like you see in Razer’s Kraken line-up, or in rivals like the flashy Logitech G733. Rather, two shiny black Razer snake logos surface on the outdoors of each and every ear-cup, and the phrase “Razer” sits atop the headset’s band at the optimum position.

The controls are stealthily concluded in black, apart from for the mute mic button, which exhibits up environmentally friendly when in the off placement. The modest style and design and hidden detailing usually means the Barracuda Professional scrubs up remarkably well as a traditional high-stop headphone established when you are not gaming.

The Barracuda Pro delivers a bevy of options that maintain your ears and head comfortable and relaxed. The most noticeable is its lightweight entire body, which eschews steel for plastic, minimizing full excess weight. This could possibly invite longevity concerns for some avid gamers, but on the upside it nearly gets rid of any horizontal and vertical stress.

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The earpads are likewise made for truly feel-excellent ease and comfort. They’re both of those really tender and included in a tactile fake leatherette product that’s neither way too coarse nor way too slippery versus your ears. The foam beneath is particularly light and squishes down easily, making it possible for the cups to all but melt into the sides of your head, thus diminishing any distress to your ears.

Razer’s most significant change relative to the Barracuda X structure is the absence of a protruding microphone on the Professional design. In its position are two innocuous slots that sit on the bottom front edges of the cups. Apart from this huge change, the rest of the Barracuda Pro’s controls are related to what you’d discover in any other high quality gaming headset. Underneath the mute button on the left ear-cup you’ll uncover a quantity wheel and electricity button as nicely as a energy port for charging.

The Barracuda Pro will come with a substantial hardtop carrying circumstance with properly-defined headphone grooves. This does a respectable position in stopping the phones from bumping close to within your satchel or backpack.

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In the centre of the case is a pouch with a magnetic clasp that properties 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 even bigger just one holds the Barracuda Pro’s USB-C dongle—a good touch that can make losing it a very little extra hard.

Barracuda Pro connectivity options

Regrettably, the Barracuda Professional lacks a 3.5mm jack for wired connectivity. This denies it the flexibility of the Barracuda X or rivals like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless. Nonetheless, these headphones do offer quickly 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, as very well as the latest Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, and you can switch among these modes in an instantaneous.

The headset is also appropriate with just about all your products, which includes your Computer system, Nintendo Swap, PlayStation consoles, and Android products, conserving you the stress and price of buying several headsets. Switching in between my Computer and Nintendo Switch was a cinch with the supplied USB-C-to USB-A adapter. I in no way experienced to go by means of the rigmarole of checking ports.

Placing up the Barracuda Professional on my Computer system in Wi-Fi Method was also absolutely easy. After you plug in the dongle, you just change on the headset and your Laptop does the rest. Pairing by means of Bluetooth was in the same way effortless, with the entire process getting significantly less than just a single minute.

After related, two faucets of the button on the correct ear-cup switched the product concerning the Razer Hyperspeed Wi-Fi and Bluetooth sign, and this transform was announced by a beneficial voice affirmation, so I was in no way remaining wondering.

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Razer’s Synapse software

The Barracuda Pro rewards from Razer’s properly-polished and uncomplicated-to-navigate Synapse app that provides you good command of your headset’s audio output via presets. You can also personalize EQ presets, spatial audio profiles, quantity, and mic configurations, and change the Active Noise Cancellation on or off.

Serious gamers and audiophiles have four EQ presets to engage in with, every single just one optimized for various leisure situations. There is a person for game titles, movies and songs, additionally a default that does a decent position in all categories. A fifth alternative allows you tweak up to 10 EQ bands to make custom made profiles for particular games, tracks or films.

No professional-grade headset is full with no audio improvement settings, which Synapse also delivers. Less than the “Enhancement” sub-menu, you can improve the bass, tweak voice clarity, and normalize the audio by utilizing practical slider bars.

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The device’s encompass audio arrives courtesy of THX Spatial Audio. In Synapse you have two selections: an Automobile Method enabling the application to pick out the best profile for your media, or a Handbook Manner where you can personally assign your individual profiles. The greatest point about these profiles is they appear visually represented as circular diagrams in which you shift dots all-around to come to a decision on the directionality of sound.

Razer’s Audio application for Android and iOS puts you in handle of the similar EQ presets as the Razer Synapse application, but adds a lower-latency Gaming Method and Do-not-disturb Manner that blocks calls so that you can retain taking part in no make a difference what. It’s also similarly easy to use.

Barracuda Pro audio general performance

The Barracuda X’s 40mm drivers have been changed by much larger 50mm Triforce Bio-cellulose drivers, and they really pack a punch. Tones at frequencies beneath 400Hz sounded deep and commanding, in particular in pitch transitions were being the thump of a bass drum kicked in or the defeat dropped specifically minimal.

The headset also sent impressive mids and highs. These tones had been crystal clear and defined, filling up my eardrums with a easy timbre, specifically in games with expressive vocals or guitar, this sort of as Diablo II: Resurrected or Valheim.

Playing all over with the generic media presets proved them to be nicely optimized for every media type. The Video game EQ preset cranks up amplitudes in the 250Hz to 8Khz array so the mids and highs aren’t drowned out by large bass notes. The Music EQ preset provides amplitude peaks for mids and highs as nicely as the bass, thereby delivering a richer sound.

Fans of first-individual shooters will revel in the THX Spatial Audio Activity Mode preset, which is effective extremely very well, offering powerful directionality in FPS titles like Fortnite, Contact of Responsibility: World wide Offensive and Battlefield I. This preset emphasizes sounds situated in the entrance and sides of your participant character, as indicated by dots in an accompanying graphic.

Experience adventurous in my playtesting, I moved two of the dots to the base of the spatial diagram to see (properly, to hear) what occurred. Back again in activity with my new profile energetic, the directionality of the game seem coming from behind my player character was increased so that I could superior listen to footfalls and be much more effortlessly alerted when I was remaining outflanked.

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All in all, THX Spatial Audio was amazing, but the Barracuda Pros’s sounds-cancellation was rather significantly less amazing. Which is not to say it does not work—on the entire it does a affordable position in holding out distractions like targeted visitors sound. Nonetheless, it struggled to avert better-pitched sounds like voices and birds chirps from leaking in.

Taking into consideration the Barracuda Pro’s $249.99 cost position, its ANC isolation must have been better. Continue to, except if you are essentially tests for these seems, it’s very likely you won’t recognize also much ambient room sound when the gaming gets frantic.

Barracuda Professional microphone functionality

The Barracuda Pro would make a bold statement with two beamforming auditory slots as an alternative of an more than-the-mouth growth mic, which is a defining element in most gaming headsets these times. From one particular issue of see, this uncommon style makes some perception in that it decreases visible distraction and will make for a compact, ergonomic device to pack down.

Having said that, the mics’ sound top quality did not pretty 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 good work on clarity. They’re just not as excellent as the Barracuda Pro’s predecessor, the Razer Barracuda X.

The bottom line

Razer’s $249.99 Barracuda Professional gaming headset appears marvelous in games and delivers a spatial audio practical experience next to none. It also will come with twin wireless and wired connectivity and a hassle-free USB adapter so you’re in no way still left having difficulties to join. However, the absence of a growth mic feels a little bit odd in video games and compromises the mics’ seem, and its ANC does not fairly have the halting ability of some rivals.