Razer Messed Up Their Most Iconic Gaming Headset

Remember the Razer Kraken?

Photo taken by the author.

There was a time, around a decade ago, when “Razer Kraken” was synonymous with “mainstream gaming headset.”

The original Kraken did a ton of work to popularize the idea of a pair of headphones with a mic strapped to it for gaming. Its bulbous bright design, huge soft cushions, and bass-heavy sound connected with a big audience looking for that sort of fun style and long-term wearing comfort. Some of the later revisions of the original model even brought in folding hinges, detachable cables, and aluminum reinforcement — features that ten years ago were normally only found on audiophile products.

Sure, the Kraken also did a lot of damage to the notion that gaming headsets could sound natural (which the HyperX Cloud then repaired) but for a lot of people it didn’t matter. Bass heavy signatures can be fun for gaming sometimes, as long as they’re not totally ruinous.

2016 saw the release of the Kraken V2, an upgrade that was better in pretty much every way. It took the gamer edge off the design just a little bit, and added better sound performance, a better aluminum frame, and huge incredibly amazing ear pads. Later revisions would add cooling gel to the pads, making the Kraken V2 one of the most comfortable headsets you could buy even to this day. It was a smart update that held the Kraken’s place as the mainstream frontrunner of Razer’s audio lineup.

Then things started to go wrong.

The first Kraken V3 to hit the market in 2021 was not an update of the long-running headset family, but rather an update of its much cheaper “X” cousin. The Kraken V3 X took the earlier Kraken X and added different pads that didn’t seal as well on my head, as well as RGB lighting. All the gains in sound quality from the Kraken V2 were also thrown out the window, in favor of the worst sound signature I’ve ever heard from a Razer headset.

It was so disappointing.

Months later, the “full” Kraken V3 arrived, but rather than settling in as a new iconic product, it was instead a hacked together mess of older Razer concepts. In addition to keeping up the ideas of its predecessors, it now also had three distinct tiers and some haptics to try and replace…