Razer Kraken V4 Pro review: the latest haptic headphones

Good vibrations or a shakedown of your wallet? We put this premium gaming headset through its paces

Aaron Ritchie

PC Tech & Gaming News

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Razer is going haptic happy at the moment, with their recent release of the Razer Freyja HD Haptic gaming cushion, and to coincide with it they’ve brought out a new version of the Razer Kraken Pro that comes with the same rumble technology. Essentially an enhanced version of the standard Kraken V4, we were keen to see whether the extra features, which also includes a separate control hub with mini-screen, made it worth the additional cost; read below to find out!

Pricing

The Razer Kraken V4 Pro retails for an eye-watering $400/£400/€450 at the time of writing. By comparison, the standard Razer Kraken V4 can now be bought for around $180/£180.

Design & Features

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The Razer Kraken V4 Pro is similar to the standard Kraken V4 though it does differ in several key areas. Below we’ve made a table to allow you to better compare the two.

The V4 Pro does feel and look like a premium product, utilizing high-end protein leatherette (an improvement over the standard version) and memory foam cushioning for the earcups. The brand has also tailored the form-factor of the earcups to improve the overall ambient noise cancellation. The headset also features earcup swivel mechanics for a better resting feel.

As you’d expect, Razer has equipped the headset with plenty of RGB – specifically 9-zones that are all customizable through the brand’s Razer Chroma software suite. A flushed retractable mic can be found on the left earcup that is near-invisible when not in use.

Like its predecessor, the Pro variant comes with 40mm drivers, though these are made from a new Bio-Cellulose material rather than TriForce Titanium. The HyperClear Super Wideband microphone operates on a 32KHz sampling rate, which is around double what you’d typically find in a more budget headset.

Razer Sensa HD Haptics

At the heart of the Kraken V4 Pro headset lies Razer’s Sensa HD Haptics. The technology is custom-designed to deliver realistic haptic sensations that mimic in-game audio cues such as explosions, gunfire, or footsteps, using built-in precision motors in the earcups. The technology will work with almost any type of media right out of the box, whether that be listening to movies, music, or playing your favorite AAA game. That said, the best user experience will come when using the headset alongside a developer-supported game, of which there are plenty (with a growing list of partnerships in the pipeline for future support).

OLED Control hub

The Kraken V4 Pro headset comes with a stylish OLED Control hub that – when it isn’t displaying a cool animation – offers up quick controls for tweaking your device. Users will have access to 20 customization options for the audible experience through the control hub, including volume and haptics intensity. 

The controller features 3 separate inputs that allow users to use the Kraken V4 Pro headset with your PC, console, or handheld gaming device. You can connect all three devices at the same time and easily toggle between each using the audio input source button.

4 modes of connectivity

The Kraken V4 Pro headset offers up 4 unique modes of connectivity, allowing users to sync the headset to a PC, Switch, PlayStation, Steam Deck, or Mobile device – via HyperSpeed wireless, Bluetooth, USB, or 3.5 connection.

Synapse 4 & Chroma

Alongside the latest HD Haptic products, Razer also launched the latest Synapse software suite at RazerCon – the latest peripheral syncing tool in their arsenal. This is what allows you to perform the more detailed actions that you can’t use the control hub for, such as modifying EQs and haptic profiles. It also allows you to enable game developers custom haptic profiles that are uniquely designed for their titles.

Razer Chroma can be used to control the RGB output of the headset in a more detailed manner and installs alongside Synapse 4. We would have liked the two to be completely merged together ideally, but they sit next to each other in the same ‘hub’ in your toolbar and are pretty easy to switch between as a result.

Performance

We tested the Razer Kraken V4 Pro and the accompanying control hub over the course of a day in various gaming, multimedia, and office-based scenarios – both with the haptics on and off.

Comfort, ergonomics & general use

Overall I found the Kraken V4 Pro to be a very comfortable headset to wear. Although it’s a bit heavier than the non-Pro version it didn’t feel too heavy. The ergonomics of the controls were solid and the retractable mic was particularly good. The headset did leak quite a bit of audio once you cranked the volume up past around 70%, which was commented on several times by colleagues in the office, but below this point it performed pretty well. Additionally, my colleague Charlie Noon did find that his ears did get a little sweaty after extensive usage, but I personally did not have that problem. 

In terms of the separate control hub, it’s certainly a nice addition that we enjoyed using, and though you can’t do more detailed actions like tweaking the presets (you need to go into the Synapse software for that) you can still switch between them and do a lot of other functions from it. The input switching feature is particularly useful and a big plus point. The screen doesn’t ever display detailed information but can still give useful data points on volume/RGB brightness/track name/ the audio meter at a glance. The specific way you navigate between and in-and-out of the menus using the (pressable) dial knob and separate button takes a bit of getting used to but once you get the hang of it you can move between them fairly quickly.

Haptic performance

Having never personally tested haptic headphones before, the initial experience was quite intense, and it did add an extra level of immersion in games and when watching films. In games like Squad when artillery is raining down it was particularly intense, though it did make it even harder to communicate with my fellow squad members. Additionally, I did find the base settings were a little unrefined, and needed a fair bit of tweaking within the Synapse 4 software to get it where I wanted. This being the case, the fact you can only save one custom profile (at the time of writing) is quite frustrating, as really you need multiple haptic profiles for different game types and films. The existing presets aren’t really that great and can’t be edited either – please change this Razer!

For use in music, I wasn’t particularly impressed by the haptics, as the vibrations of the cups on your ears tend to disrupt the experience of the sound, this got better after some tweaking of the profile but was still there to an extent – basically, I’d rather hear the music better than have the vibrations, but that’s personal preference. The Freyja HD gaming cushion is better in this regard as it adds the new haptic sensation without detracting from your existing one.

In-game audio

In FPS games like CS2, Insurgency: Sandstorm, and Squad the audio experience was pretty good – audio cues were very easy to pick up on allowing for identification of directional threats and there was a nice clarity of voice audio in particular, which can often be hard to make out in Squad in particular once things start going a bit crazy. The more bombastic explosions sounded pretty good as well thanks to the solid bass replication, giving decent immersion. The ‘Gaming’ preset in Synapse was respectable though it benefited from a bit of tweaking.

Music & film audio

Although respectable by gaming headset standards, we weren’t massively impressed with the audio quality of the V4 Pros in music, given their price. In our standard Norf Norf and Manilow tests the treble sounded a bit on the crunchy side, with slight fuzziness to mids, though there was good bass replication and warmth overall.

When watching film content the experience was better, with the dialog being nice and clear and THX Spatial Audio a nice additional feature when enabled, though it wasn’t as good as a non-gaming headset (without mic) as you’d expect.

In both these cases we got more out of the headset by tweaking the standard EQ balance of the ‘Music’ and ‘Movie’ presets within Razer Synapse and applying the Bass Boost Audio Enhancement. These two standard presets were unimpressive but (unlike the haptic ones) you can at least modify them and save these modifications within the same ‘Gaming’, ‘Movie’, and ‘Music’ profiles.

Microphone performance

The retractable mic is a nice design that gives a much tidier looking profile than a conventional mic from an aesthetic point of view, and also better control over the actual position of the mic than having to bend the stem of one around until you get it to fit. It also means you’re less likely to knock it out of place during a hectic gaming session or when you’re moving around otherwise.

We were pretty impressed with the audio quality of the HyperClear pickups, even in our fairly noisy office. We tested the mic whilst playing CS2 and during video calls and in both scenarios the voice replication was nice and clear and the background noise effectively minimized.

As ever, you get more out of the mic through tweaking the settings within Synapse, though we did find the base profile to be pretty solid in this particular case.

Battery duration

We haven’t yet conducted a full-length battery test for the Kraken V4 Pro, however, we can attest that after 8 hours with both haptics and RGB lighting enabled, using the 2.4GHz WiFi connection, the headphones were still going. If you take off the headphones and don’t use them for a short while they do also automatically power down, which is a useful aid to help save battery.

Below is what Razer claims is the duration for the headphones compared to the standard Kraken V4, as you can see there has been a significant drop in the battery duration with the newer model, though how much of an issue this is for the average user is debatable.

Razer Kraken V4 Pro
Up to 50 hours (Haptics and Lighting OFF, 2.4 GHz connection)
Up to 45 hours (Haptics and Lighting OFF, Simultaneous 2.4 GHz + BT connection)
Up to 13 hours (Haptics and Lighting ON, 2.4 GHz connection)

Razer Kraken V4 (standard)
Up to 70 hours (Lighting OFF, 2.4 GHz connection)
Up to 35 hours (Lighting ON, 2.4 GHz connection)

Is the Razer Kraven V4 Pro worth it?

Given the haptic feedback is the big selling point of these headphones and accounts for a large amount of the cost, whether or not they’re worth you buying really depends on how much you value this feature.

Although we haven’t (yet) done an official review of the Razer Kraken V4 base model, we would be much more keen to recommend that: you could buy two of them for the same amount of money, enjoy the same core audio experience, and still have $20 left over. You don’t get the very nice OLED control panel, 3.5mm audio jack, or the same ‘leatherette’ finish of course, which are all great elements of the Pro variant, but they still don’t justify the additional cost in our opinion.

Razer Kraken V4 Pro Wireless haptic gaming headset

Frequency Response

20 Hz – 28 kHz

Driver diameter

40mm

Connectivity

USB-A,3.5mm, 2.4Ghz, Bluetooth 5.3

Weight

397g / 0.88lbs

Battery life

Up to 50 hours (haptics and lighting off), Up to 13 hours (haptics and lighting on)

How We Review

3.5/5

Editor’s Rating

Although the haptic feedback is a nice novelty and the increased connectivity is welcome, the Razer Kraken V4 Pro comes with the similar audio quality to the base model Kraken V4, but costs (at the time of writing) more than twice the price. Although it’s a solid headset and the separate control panel is a good addition, ultimately, this is just far too much money to make it worthwhile, particularly as the haptic tech requires fine-tuning to get the most out of it.

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