70 PCWorld JULY 2020REVIEWS RAZER KRAKEN X
off the Kraken’s price with only a few minor
changes. You couldn’t ask for much more.
The Kraken X sounds pretty good too. Like
the Cloud Stinger and A10, the Kraken X is
geared towards mid-range response. It’s a
decent bet for these entry-level headsets to
make. The mid-range is responsible for much
of what we hear day-to-day, and pushing it to
the forefront helps dialogue pop. First
impressions of the Kraken X are fairly positive.
It lacks a certain something though, at
times. Bass response is anemic, and the treble
range (especially cymbal crashes) fails to
break free from the mix the way you’d want.
It’s rarely bad enough to be distracting, but I
probably wouldn’t reach for the Kraken X first
if I had other options. You lose the depth and
power of a
well-mixed
action
sequence, and
the nuance of
the quieter
moments.
It gets the
job done
though. As an
entry-level
gaming
headset? The
Kraken X
conveys the
necessary
tacticalinformation, and sounds halfway decent
doing so. Like the Cloud Stinger and A10, it’s
“good enough,” and that’s really all we
should expect from a $50 headset.
I also mentioned up top that the Kraken X
boasts 7.1 surround sound support. Now this
was surprising. Traditionally software-driven
7.1 has been reserved for USB headsets. The
baseline Kraken X terminates in a standard
3.5mm jack though. How was Razer going to
pull off 7.1 support with a device that doesn’t
show up in its Synapse software suite?
And the answer: Razer didn’t use
Synapse. You have to download a completely
separate program instead, the aptly named
“7.1 Surround Sound.” Note that it only works
on Windows 10 PCs. You’ll also need the