- Ooooooooooo Barracuda.
- [David] No, no, no, no, no, no.
- Razer's back with another one of their
hostile fish headphones.
This time it's named Barracuda.
I do have history with Razer.
I bought their 7.1 Megalodon headset
that used military grade sound simulation
to get 7.1 surround sound.
And it blew 14-year-old mes noggin.
(confetti pops)
Let's look at the box for a second.
So, one thing that I've always found kind of funny
about Razer, is that they've always seemed
like a marketing company that decided to make technology.
Which is why like, every single thing they have
is just like, it's branded to the tits.
Like we have THX achromatic audio amplifier.
We have, Razer TriForce bio-cellulose 50 millimeter drivers.
Triforce?
Razer smart switch dual wireless.
So basically what smart switch dual wireless is
is that you should be able to switch between
2.4 gigahertz or Bluetooth.
That's cool. It just doesn't need a brand name.
You know, it just
it doesn't have to be called Razer TM smart switch
just call it smart switching or whatever.
So this is the flagship of Razer's
whole Barracuda family refresh.
They have the Barracuda X, which is the lowest here
at a hundred US.
Barracuda at $160
it's weird to have Barracuda X be cheaper, but whatever.
And then the Barracuda Pros all the way up at 250 big ones
which I know you're pushing into some pretty
ambitious territory at that price.
They do have hybrid ANC, which is good
because I feel like if you're going,
if you're a wireless headphone
and you're anywhere in the $200 range
and you don't, even probably $150 range or up,
and you don't have ANC, it's unacceptable now
because like you just should have it.
It's kinda not that hard to do.
it's hard to do really well
but it's an easy feature to add.
I like the classic presentation.
Though, one thing that's kind of a disappointment is
that this is big.
Here's my laptop.
- [Jono] No, no, no. You're not doing it right.
- I know, but the bananas a less useful
- [Crowd] Whoa
- [David] What the f--
- So for context in your backpack full of bananas
it's gonna take up a lot of space for your bananas
cause that's three and then like we're too tall.
So that's one, two, three
that's six whole bananas worth of volume.
That's insane.
Lttstore.com
In here we have a
USB-A to USB-C braided cable with cable tie.
What's the point of these?
I hate this. I hate this.
I just get tired of this.
They sell 'em with like graphics cards and HDMI cables.
Maybe they're really, really helpful for shipping.
I find them annoying.
This is another extension cable for USB-A.
Quite a lot of reach, but that's great.
Yeah, because if you're gonna use these plugged in
with your computer, this might not be quite long enough.
If you're trying to reach all the way around
to the back of it, this probably will be.
(chord whips)
That's everything that's in here.
Oh, there, no, there's a little, there's a little guy.
Oh, this is their wireless USB-C adapter.
You can use this with your Android phone.
This would be for when that you're using the smart switch.
So instead of using Bluetooth
you can use their smart switch to use their high speed
2.4 gigahertz connection.
So like what you--
- [Jono] Or on your laptop.
- Or on your laptop or on your PlayStation, PC PlayStation.
It says so right there.
- [David] What about Xbox?
- (beep) Xbox
(laughter)
So here are the headphones.
I like the way they look.
I know Razer's known for being pretty gaudy
and very aggressive with their branding.
These are pretty subdued.
I do actually like the green accents.
Build quality, it is all plastic.
It's neither here nor there
when it comes to headphones, you can get
more expensive headphones that are also all plastic.
You can get cheaper headphones with metal.
We got our power button.
This is like a volume control wheel.
We have our mute switch for the microphone.
Is there no boom microphone with this?
I guess not. We didn't see one.
And then this is, I believe their smart switch button
which is on the left ear cup.
Are these on?
Oh now they're on, they weren't on.
So they actually have really good sealing.
I took them off thinking that maybe the ANC was on,
but these actually have a really good seal.
I can barely hear anything.
This headband doesn't, it seems a little,
the curves a little harsh.
It felt a little weird on the top of my head.
Sometimes that's just getting used to stuff.
These are very soft and they're leatherette.
These aren't, they're fake leather they're pleather.
And memory foam, it's a lot of empty space.
It's pretty soft memory foam.
I'm not very impressed so far for $250.
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Let's connect it.
This is the worst.
Do you see why?
Look at my choice. You're blocking other ports.
- [David] That's dumb.
- Yeah, that sucks.
You could use yet another dongle
or you would just use this, I guess but like
it's nice having your adapter because sometimes
you know, you go and you're like, you're in between a game.
You just got downed and you go, oh, you know what?
I'd like a little snicky snack
and you just get up and leave your headphones on
so you haven't missed anything.
- [Jono] What is a snicky snack?
- A snicky snack,
sometimes you get hungry playing your games.
So these have hybrid ANC, which use both
feed forward and feedback ANC.
Basically it listens to both,
what you're hearing on the outside, as well as
what it's hearing on the inside to get a more
accurate representation of the audio that's surrounding you.
This is the same kind of tech that Apple uses
in AirPods pros.
And it's kind of the gold standard for ANC at the moment.
So they have three modes.
They have ANC off, ambient which is a listen through mode,
and they have ANC on.
I appreciate that because ANC can shift the sound
of what you're listening to.
And I don't wanna have to choose between
ambient mode and ANC like some headphones do that.
I just, sometimes I just want the ANC off.
So a press to turn, you just press this button on the right,
the quick switch button to turn it on and off.
(upbeat music)
That sounds really (beep) bad.
That sounds really atrocious.
I'm gonna turn the ANC off.
(upbeat music)
Literally the ANC just killed it.
The ANC like made it sound just so much worse.
It's literally, it's literally canceling out
its own base response.
Like the ANC just makes it sound like a tinny mess.
It sounds like you listen to like a phone speaker.
Yeah. So that's good to know
that the feed forward is working.
It's just blocking off my, the sound I want to hear.
Okay. I can't be dunking on 'em too hard
because I do have to download their software
to assess anything that they make.
Oh and if you couldn't tell that I wasn't stoked
about having to use software,
I'm not stoked about having to use software.
Oh, this is so annoying because what you do is
that they give you a list of like
here's all the things you can download or to install
from the synapse software.
There's five things.
And if you don't select one of the things,
an ad pops up asking you to install it.
I don't want game booster, system booster and game rewards.
I don't want Razer cortex.
I want synapse and THX spatial audio.
Razer, Razer, what are you doing?
The issue is that they try hard at the wrong things.
They try really hard to maintain this great image.
And then they have mediocre software,
annoying implementation, lackluster hardware
and like, they still haven't really resolved their issues
with reliability and longevity on their peripherals.
It sucks because I think that what Razer does
a lot of the time is cool, but it feels like they just
do it to put another label on the box.
It's taking a really, really long time to download.
Oh, it's updating the headset.
Yeah. So we spent about 15 minutes just waiting around
for the headphones to update.
And it said factory reset, powered off.
And now it's telling me to unplug and then re plug
the wireless dongle.
But here's what doesn't make sense.
Why did I waste all that time waiting for it
to wirelessly transmit, when I have a cable?
There's USB-C in for the headphones
it could have happened so much faster.
My dongle's been updated.
We're still installing Razer Synapse.
- [David] What?
- It's still installing Razer Synapse, were only at 20%.
- [David] Wait, only 20%?
- We updated the headphones.
- [David] It couldn't do it at the same time?
- No, of course not. It's Razer.
It's not supposed to be good it's supposed to be cool.
We'll see if the updates fix any of those ANC issues
I said where it was canceling out its own audio.
(upbeat music)
It seems like the ANC sounds a little bit less aggressive
and is having less of an effect on my music.
Yeah. So either the update fixed the problem
cause the ANC is not cutting out the bottom end
nearly as badly.
I do kind of wanna just like, traffic noises
cause I want to get some better,
cause it's kind of quiet down here,
I wanna get some better semblance of how good the ANC is.
And so we're just gonna blast traffic noise.
Ambient is working as intended, let's go to ANC.
It's not amazing.
It's not incredible, but it's not terrible either.
When you have the music playing
it cancels out noise well enough.
Sign in with my Razer ID.
Could I just end this painful existence instead?
I have to log in to use THX spatial audio.
Razer, it's so frustrating.
I don't need an account to use headphones with my computer.
Stop telling me to sign up for stuff.
Hello there! You're clearly using a guest account
where all settings are anonymous to us
by using our software.
That's the point.
This is the fifth time they've asked me to log in
to my account and I'm just trying to open the software.
Just waiting for DOOM Eternal to load up.
Again, the ANC, I don't know.
It is through this wireless thing.
The ANC is like, maybe it's something
that can be fixed in Windows, maybe it's another setting.
But the fact that it's like a gaming headset
is having such a profoundly bad experience
on a PC platform is really disappointing.
I play with a pair of AKG K7XX's
which are open-back headphones that have
a really, really good sound stage.
These are not doing anything special to me.
DOOM has a pretty decent audio engine,
like for spatial audio, I usually test it with stuff
like Left 4 Dead, cause I always loved
the positional audio in that game.
It's not special, these aren't special.
Razer has done it again.
They've released a product that's too expensive
and pretty bad.
Razer I wanted to love you.
I continue to want to love you, but you continue to be,
yeah, you continue to be you.
(laughter)
Like if they don't start focusing on delivering
quality products, then I do think that they're
actually just gonna fall out of favor
and no one's gonna ever care about them.
If you're spending $250 on headphones
you deserve better than this.
Don't buy, don't buy these.
Thanks for watching this video.
If you're thinking, hey, I want some mediocre sound quality.
Well, how about you save your money
and spend one sixth the price on like
some Nord Buds or something.
You can check out my coverage of the OnePlus Nord Buds
just down here-ish in the video ending boxes.
(mumbles)
Yeah.