More Razer Peripherals

posted May 13, 2021, by Andrew Biedron

I previously did a review on my Razer mouse and keyboard, the Basilisk and Huntsman. I love them a lot and at the end of that blog post mentioned that I had recently gotten a Razer mouse pad and headset, too, and that I would review them if I felt I could. I now feel like I’ve had them for long enough that I can give a good review of these Razer products.

The next thing I got after my mouse and keyboard was my mouse pad, the Razer Gigantus v2 XXL. Because it is just a mousepad, there’s not much to say about it, but so far I’ve really enjoyed using it. It has a squishy foam base about an eighth of an inch thick with a layer of polyester-like cloth on top for a nice surface for your mouse. The foam is green and the cloth is black to fit the Razer colors, which doesn’t do anything for performance but is nice for the aesthetic of my gaming setup.

As well as looking nice, the Gigantus also works very well. It’s a full 16 tall by 37 inches wide, which may seem huge, but is actually the perfect size for me. If I put my keyboard on it right against the edge, it leaves the perfect amount of space for me to use my mouse in the full range of motion that I want. If I really need more space, I can also move my keyboard up, down, or angle it, to give my mouse more space. The surface itself is also very nice. It’s extremely smooth, so there’s very low resistance to any mouse movement, and it’s solid black color makes it very easy to see any dirt on it that I need to clean off. The cloth makes it somewhat hard to clean, however, but that’s the only issue I have with the Gigantus.

I got the Razer Kraken Ultimate headset around the same time, and I’ve been liking that just as much as the rest of my Razer gear. It’s a pretty standard headset in terms of function, but has its fair share of fancy features as well. It’s built just like a normal headset; it has two speakers, a headband so that you can actually wear it, and a built in bendable mic. The headband is also adjustable for whatever size head you have. The mic is retractable, too; you can push it into the headset and it will just wind up inside the speaker part.

I like pretty much everything about the headset. It works almost flawlessly all the time with nothing uncomfortable or unwieldy about it. It has very deep pockets for your ears, which I like because I hate having my headsets touch my ears, and also has very squishy cushions around the speakers and on the bottom of the headset. I wear my headset for upwards of 10 hours a day sometimes, so having it be so comfortable is very nice for me. The mic also has a mute button on it, which is much more convenient than muting in whatever app I’m in.

Two of my favorite features are the RGB lights and the Spatial Synapse Surround Sound. The headset has RGB lights on the outsides of the speakers. They are compatible with my mouse and keyboard through Razer Synapse, so I can make my setup look very coordinated and cool with that. You can turn them off and set them to whatever you want independent of your other gear too, but why would you not want to coordinate everything? The headset also has a surround sound setting that you can turn on and off with a button on the side. It toggles a very high quality and accurate surround sound in the headset designed for gaming, and it’s really amazing how good the feature is. I use it for everything, including games, just because it makes the quality so much better even without the surround sound.

I’ve only found two small issues so far. If you push the mic too hard into the headset when retracting it, it creates a horrible feedback sound. Maybe this is only an issue on my headset specifically, but if it happens to you, all you have to do is pull it out a tiny bit and it stops. I’ve also found that the toggle button for the surround sound is pretty finicky and doesn’t work a lot of the time, but since I always have it on anyway, it’s not really an issue for me.

Overall, the Razer Gigantus v2 XXL and the Razer Kraken Ultimate fully met my expectations of Razer gear. There’s always the costs to worry about though. The Gigantus is a mere $30, so that’s easily affordable for something this nice. The Kraken Ultimate however, is not cheap at all; it’s about $130 dollars. To be honest, the price was definitely a deterring factor in whether to buy the headset or not. After using it though, I think that it’s a worthy investment if you’re willing to spend the money. Both the Gigantus and Kraken Ultimate work great, are totally compatible with Razer’s other peripherals, and look nice too. Of course there are the few minor issues, but nothing is perfect, and it’s nothing that you can’t easily deal with. I don’t have any more Razer gear right now to review, but if I do, I will be reviewing it, so keep an eye out for part 3.