The Best Gaming Headset

Razer BlackShark V2 Gaming Headset

 Is the razer black shark v2 so we're going to go over a few things namely design and comfort sound quality mic quality and the extra features that razer peppered in and of course my overall conclusion first up the design now if you didn't know the original black shark came out back in 2012 2013 and it was basically modeled to mimic an aviator's headset like those used in a helicopter i remember there was one they did with a calibration battlefield 3 yeah it looks really cool well the v2 in 2020 follows that same trend but of course it looks much more modern and cleaner overall like most razer products it's almost entirely black and the ear cups themselves have this smooth but matte finish with a green razor logo right smack in the middle while the left ear cup also spots a volume down this makes it simple and easy for you to adjust volume quickly in the head of battle and it does also have a slight tension lock at the midpoint when you reach 50 volume it's a really small but neat feature i actually really appreciate it of course the left ear cup is also where you have the microphone that's on a flexible arm and it's also removable along with a mute mic switch on the rear of the same ear cup the main cable is of course not removable but razer does use the speedflex cable which should reduce cable noise as for the year cushions themselves razer makes use of a memory foam that's similar in feel to something like a sponge but in any case it's not your usual leather wrap with plush linings and honestly i do like this quite a bit putting the headphones on it feels really comfortable and although the clamping force is still a little too strong for my taste the memory foam helps alleviate that quite a bit i can leave the headset on for long periods of time no issues the same cushion can also be found on the underside of the headband and just like the ear cups it's comfortable with it resting on top of my head one of the most important thing though for headset is weight at 260 grams the blackshot v2 is one of the lighter headsets around coupled that with the comfort it really makes it a joy to use but that's not to say that it's perfect i don't really like the mechanism in which the ear cups extend they extend via these thin metal rails and it's pretty finicky to get the right ength of fit not to mention that the tension will vary from headset to headset or even just the left ear cup to the right how much rather razor included some notches for visual indication or perhaps some tension locks at different lengths the other thing about it is that there's not a lot of side to side movement it's almost fixed parallel to one another so depending on the shape of your head you might actually find it tough to get a good seal in addition if you fully extend it and move it to the most extreme angle possible it's putting tension on the cable so that might be a cause for concern so that's design and comfort so now let's talk about sound quality now i've not tested gaming headsets so if you take those two and put them on extreme ends of the scale the black shark v will end up right around the middle compared to the kraken it's not as bassy but definitely much clearer and balanced sounding like that of the mdr but of course not that extreme that's why it's right around the middle the blackshell v2 does boast the use of razer's new triforce 50 millimeter drivers and on the v2 it further augmented with the use of titanium now i don't have the v2x to compare it with but honestly as far as the other reviews go they should sound pretty similar and honestly i do quite like it i did enjoy using this headset to play competitive esports titles like apex legends or even games like escape from tarkov where audio is really really important on that note we have to talk about usb soundcard that comes with the v2 that also gives you support for thx spatial audio and it's honestly not too bad now it's not a game changer or anything nor is it going to give you a true surround sound experience but it does expand the sound stage a little and makes directional audio a little more prominent by splitting the spears of audio into several more segments making it slightly more accurate but like i said it's not a game changer and you do have to play games that fully support this feature in order to make use of it in the first place so if you play those games i would say leave it on you'll surely get a better experience in my opinion but if you don't play those games it's perfectly fine without it but now let's talk about something that's arguably most important the microphone so this is the microphone on the blackjack v2 and you're hearing it right now it's plugged straight into the usb sound card we've done all the features turned on so just a plain raw audio you can tell there's a little bit of compression in overall it's not that bad it will do fine for any of the gaming sessions discord and whatnot now with that said there are other reviewers out there who did a test of this microphon plugged directly into the motherboard and the microphone does arguably sound better now i can't test that at the moment because for some reason or another i couldn't get it to work but perhaps it's my splitter or my motherboard in any case i do have to point out that the quality of the microphone would then be dependent on the quality of the audio solution on your motherboard so your mileage might vary now of course that's not all you get with the microphone for with that usb sound card you do get quite a bit of customization as well using synapse under the mic tab you can of course change the volume of your mic via the slider decrease as you will increase as you will up to you and right below that is a toggle for mic boost which basically adds additional gain on top of the level that you have already set for the mic volume next is something called voice gate which is basically noise gate so with it you can just set a threshold and any noise in your environment that does not exceed that threshold will not get picked up for your mic so this is pretty great for removing things like let's say you're clicking away of keyboar keyboard noises when you're not speaking that's where you would want to use noise gate now right below there is a few options for enhancements the first being volume normalization and what this does is basically tries to keep your volume level no matter how long you're speaking or how soft you're speaking it tries to keep it all the way level so this might be useful if let's say you don't want your sudden outburst to accidentally pick your microphone but in any case i'll just say most of you wouldn't use this next is something called vocal clarity and this is where the system or the ai tries to sift out your voice and tries to augment the speech the clarity of your speech as it says um whether this works or not up to you and i would say it also varies depending on your voice but in general i would say just keep it off lastly is something called ambient noise reduction so as it says it reduces the ambient noise so it's great for removing things like your fan noise in the background or perhaps the hum from your ac um it would definitely do a decent job at it but it will also affect the quality of your voice it was soft quote unquote downgrade your voice so use it sparingly i would say if you are in a somewhat quiet environment especially if at home you don't really have to use it but if you're in somewhat noisy environment perhaps this might be useful in any case though i feel that might sounds the best if you just leave everything off on the right you get a few options for the my equalizer so you can play with it as you will you do get some presets like mic boost basically i guess it boosts a lot of stuff broadcast kind of me making a broadcast microphone in that sense a conference perhaps this is better if you want your voice to be clearer when talking to a group of people things like that or you can just go all menu and change it as you will and to actually monitor what you are changing you can turn on the toggle for the mic monitoring and then you can hear yourself via the headset itself now if you want to do anything with regards to the headset audio itself you have to head over to the mixer tab and this is where you can then change the settings for thx spatial audio by default it's turned on and it's set to automatic automatically just basically means that cnames will decide for you which applications should use which mode but you can of course go all menu so say you want your music applications to be in stereo instead or your video to be in game mode instead up to you below that you can also see that it would automatically detect all the games that you have in your system and as you can see i do have apex black desert and war thunder one nifty feature you've yet to notice is that it will actually tell you which application does support the use of thx spatial audio in this case you can tell that apex legends does support the use of thx and even within that you can change it to either be competitive mode or environmental mode you have to try it out for yourself and see which suits your fancy all in all though it's spatial audio is definitely not perfect but i do feel that it does enhance the gaming experience so overall i really did enjoy the blackshot v2.

Buy Now>  Razer BlackShark V2