- [Man In Background] David?
Where's David?
- Yeah, this sounds pretty good.
It doesn't sound like,
what's that?
Looks like Razer's finally making stuff I might wanna use.
Today we're looking at the Razer Barracuda X.
A back to basics headset.
None of the frills, none of the nonsense,
just all the features that I think are kind of great
in a under $100 wireless pair of headphones.
There's no RGB, which is fine.
Some people want RGB.
But on my headphones,
when I don't get to see it,
no thanks.
If I don't get to see the RGB,
does it even exist?
Regular Razer box, green and black.
Little instruction foldout.
You can see where some of the corners are cuts.
Often Razer boxes are really nice.
Like you'll pull out a thing and it'll lift the box out.
Lift the headphones out.
Here, it's more like an Amazon Basics box,
which is totally okay.
A little bit of padding to protect the headphones.
And then it comes in this little protective baggy.
So these are the headphones.
I like their kind of more subdued look.
So sometimes razor does stuff where I'm like,
"Oh, that's almost good looking",
but then like the, ear cups will be lime green
or there'll be a big RGB thing
or there'll be cat ears or something.
This is just like a basic pair of black headphones.
And that's great.
- [Andy] Less is more.
- Yeah exactly Andy, less is more.
We're gonna come back to these
and kind of evaluate the build qua-
Ooh, I almost drop them.
Okay. Razor stickers.
There we go.
Here's the mic.
It's like most gaming headsets.
You have an optional mic that you can attach,
which is great.
This is a pretty decent length.
We'll see exactly where it gets to on my mouth.
How much spit I'm gonna get on it.
But build quality is okay on that.
(aggressive grunting)
Oh, perfect.
Okay. Here's the actual dongle.
It's pretty cool actually.
I think it's a smart choice to do a USB-C dongle.
That means that's compatibility with everything,
including Switch,
which is kind of a big pain right now.
Most headsets just don't have compatibility with Switch
'cause they can't do Bluetooth.
It needs a proprietary dongle.
So you can plug this right into your Switch.
It also goes right into a PS5,
but there's also a A to C adapter or an extender
that you can use to use on Xbox or on your PC
if you don't have a USB-C slot.
In fact, here it is.
Trademark Razer green.
It's pretty long.
That's pretty nice.
I actually like for wireless stuff,
having them above my desk,
my desk is fairly thick
and there's lots of computers
and a lot of wires.
And so sometimes wireless has trouble
if I have it plugged in below.
So it's nice to have an extender that I can put on the desk,
not worry about that.
This is a charging cable.
It's A to C.
That phone's charged through C.
You can't use them as just like a wired pair of headphones
like some of the wireless ones I've seen.
But that's all right,
this cable is decently long.
You could have an under your desk into your headset,
if you were running out of battery, it'd be okay.
I'm gonna be honest with you guys.
I'm not a huge
wireless headset guy
when it comes to PC gaming.
You're in your chair,
your PC's right there.
I prefer just having the consistency of wired headsets.
If you spend the same amount of money on a wired headset,
you're going to get better sound.
So to me, that's more important
than the convenience of being able to move around.
That being said, I do have wireless headphones,
but mostly for streaming and like console gaming.
And I really do like that
when I like get up to go grab water or something.
I can get up and I don't like pull everything with me
and try and destroy my entire life around me.
So I'm considering switching you know?
Oh yeah, I was wrong,
apparently you can plug them in wired.
Today, we are testing the wireless.
At home, my wireless headphones
are the Sony WHL600s,
which aren't quite comparable.
They're $200 more expensive.
They come with a base station,
but I choose them because the connectivity.
I can connect them through ARC to my TV,
as well as to my PC
and to another source.
And it all just works, it's great.
But this has a similar look to that.
I like this look.
I don't wanna be a walking advertisement for companies
and it's okay if you have like Razer branding on your thing,
but I don't want people from a hundred meters away
to be able to be like, "Oh, he's wearing Razer (beep)."
And so I like the look of this.
It feels a little bit cheaper,
but the build quality isn't bad.
It's got memory foam padding for the ears,
and it's not like a leather,
it looks pretty breathable, which is nice.
That can be definitely a big problem.
Especially in the summer man,
headphones get so warm
and I prefer playing competitive games with headphones,
even if I'm playing on like console or something.
But man I get so sweaty.
There's padding at the top.
It feels a little bit inadequate
considering there's no other support.
But it's a really light pair of headphones.
I believe this is Razer's,
they say it's their lightest headset ever.
250 grams, which is great.
So you have all the buttons and controls on this side.
I believe that's the left ear cup.
There's your mic.
There's your charging.
There's your audio in.
There's your power button.
This looks like a volume knocker.
And then there's your mute button.
Man if you're doing,
a wireless gaming headset,
and you don't have a mute button for your mic,
what are you doing?
There's so many times I like,
don't want to talk to people for a second
and just like mute and have a sip of water
or a handful of chips you know?
So this is great.
That's a good set of features.
Decent build quality.
It feels light.
And sometimes things that feel like feel cheap,
but it doesn't feel cheap.
This feels pretty darn adequate.
So the drivers are 40 millimeters.
They're branded as Razer Triforce,
as in like base mid and high.
As if they invented drivers
that can do base mids and hi.
Oh my goodness.
I'm excited to get into it
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Let's try these.
There's not much more to it.
I can comment on aesthetics but you guys can see them.
You can shut, decide for yourself.
Build quality I've already talked about.
Now it's time for the most important thing,
how does it sound?
All right.
I kind of want to try using it on a Switch first.
'Cause I know that's been for me,
someone that's only like a occasional Switch user,
a big pain when I'm traveling
is like needing wired headphones.
So let's see how easy the pairing process is.
So I plugged in the dongle,
and I turn on the headphones.
I think it already is connected.
That was,
that was really easy.
Oh, it feels pretty comfortable.
Pretty secure.
Like if I really tried like,
(headphones clattering on the floor)
Off they come.
Realistically, when I'm on a bus
or on a plane or something,
walking,
yeah it'd be fine.
The weight of the dongle is so light too
that it doesn't feel like it's like pulling in any way,
it's just there.
If you wanted to put it in tabletop mode,
you're gonna have a bit of trouble.
Yeah it's not gonna work.
- [Jono] That's Nintendo's fault.
- Yeah. Yeah.
I mean the sound isolation is pretty good.
'Cause I can't hear what Jono was saying.
I had to take the headphones off.
So that's pretty good.
- [Andy] David?
Where's David?
- Yeah. That sounds pretty good.
It doesn't sound like.
- What's that?
- [Andy] We were yelling at you.
- Oh yeah. The sound isolation is excellent.
I have the sound turned up pretty high,
but it was like 60-65%.
Honestly, I didn't really want to mess around
too much with the Switch.
I just wanted to see how well it worked.
It worked.
It connected really well.
It sounds pretty good.
Sound isolation is excellent.
I mean it's way too cheap of a headset
to expect noise cancellation,
but in terms of just like blocking out sound,
it's clearly really good.
I can already tell this sounds like a little bit thin
on the low end,
but it sounds good.
And it's a $100 pair of headphones.
Man, that's good.
Let's try it on something I know a bit better.
I really like the shape of this dongle,
but I could see in some builds,
some cases,
maybe some other boards,
usually there's an extra gap around the type C,
this could be a problem
where it starts blocking another port
or kind of gets in the way,
not a huge deal.
And it works perfect for the Switch.
I wouldn't want it to be longer.
But it's definitely a consideration
is how big this thing is gonna be on your setup.
But before we get into gaming,
we're actually gonna do a little microphone test.
So it's a Razer proprietary mic.
It's cardioid,
so they say that it's better for directional audio.
We'll see how it sounds.
I don't have super high expectations.
Usually cheap headsets come with cheap microphones.
It should be adequate.
And like a lot of people use, like,
I remember the day
when you got that free plugin headset for the 360.
A lot of people use the mics of that quality,
like those $15 Best Buy Insignia ones.
So, this is probably a little bit better than that
but we're about to find out.
It's a little less seamless on PC.
It seems like it's connected.
So let's see if it's picked it up in Windows.
I guess I'd probably have to get the Razer drivers.
Razor.
Why?
Razer I don't want to use your proprietary software.
I don't want it installed.
I just want, like almost every other device on the planet,
for it to plug in and work,
and then maybe unlock some extra features
with your software.
Big downer for me, big bummer.
Let's see.
Oh my God it is.
Oh no.
We had the dongle plugged in as we restarted it.
And then we would get no display to our monitor.
And so it seems like it's competing
with whatever's going on to like, be the display.
So we're gonna try it with the 'stender,
which is USB A to C and see if that helps.
Plugging into the 'stender seems to work.
So if you are buying this,
I would recommend using the 'stender to start.
There might be a firmware update that becomes available
that will fix this,
but I will remember this.
My mic is recording.
That seems like an appropriate volume.
I wonder how it sounds.
you guys can be the judge for yourself.
Bit of bobble bipping boops the bag of blah, blah, blah.
Jono's gonna speak in the background.
Let's see how the noise cancellation is.
(Jono indistinctly speaks in the background)
It's not bad.
It's definitely like a cheap mic.
But it's clear and that's what's important.
If someone was speaking to me using this mic,
I'd be able to hear,
I think that usually the compression they use in game
is so crappy anyway,
that that would be the bigger bottleneck.
In discord, if you get this quality,
I'd be fine with that.
If someone was speaking to me with this on my team,
I'd be like, "This is totally okay."
I don't know how advanced their noise cancellation is.
They don't even talk about noise cancellation
in their promo materials.
So I'm guessing it's just counting on the cardioid pattern.
As soon as you're talking,
that's gonna take precedence.
It's fine.
It's an okay mic.
And it's totally serviceable.
On the Switch I felt like the, like lows was lacking,
but here, it's like really boom-y bass.
So maybe it's just a Switch thing.
That's what I would expect.
Usually cheap headphones,
to make up for their lack in clarity,
they kind of add a bunch of oomph on the low end.
Honestly, I'm having a hard time, like hearing like the,
like the little high ends
and the mids are like kind of low.
It's kind of an uncomfortable hearing experience.
And I don't really want to turn it down
because I want to like hear the speaking and stuff.
In game it kind of feels like
I'm getting a pretty decent amount of the audio scape.
When I'm listening with higher end headphones,
when I've walked through the map,
I can kind of feel that I'm close to places.
I can feel that I'm close to the lava
or that I'm close to a vent.
And I can hear all these little details
that help kind of add texture to it.
I just can't hear them.
They're just not there.
Which is kind of a bummer.
Yeah like these would be good for like EDM music,
not for games
where you need kind of a broader sound spectrum.
Maybe I'm giving you an unfair comparison
to the headphones that I have.
Overall, I'd say the Razer headsets' fine.
If you're okay with like aggressive bass.
They kind of do everything else I'd want otherwise.
They're $100.
That's pretty good.
And there's a bunch of other options at that low end
that maybe we'll unbox.
So if you want us to see us unbox
other budget headphones,
let us know,
give us a subscribe,
a like,
maybe leave a comment below
with a device you want us to unbox.
But for now,
thank you for watching the ShortCircuit
and I will see you on the long circuit of life.