I’m a huge fan of headphone silence. When the cups go on, I don’t need anyone in the office disturbing my game and ruining my creep score, even if there is some important piece of work I should be working on instead. It should then come as no surprise that I was pretty happy to find the Blackshark V2 Pro, a pair of headphones that offer excellent isolation. Multiple times in the office, the team was discussing, gossiping, or just ragging on a game, and I was just there, in the corner, jamming out to my Spotify Playlist.
Razer likes positioning the Blackshark range of headphones as a no-fuss, premium esports audio peripheral. There’s no vibrating feedback, there’s no RGB, there’s just you, your game, and an excellent audio experience. And on this front, the Razer Blackshark V2 Pro certainly delivers.
It also helps that the headphones are quite comfortable, and you can spend hours with them on your head without even realising they’re there. They are light enough, at 320g, for a comfortable fit but weighty enough not to feel like there’s nothing there. The cups comprise Razers Ultra-Soft FlowKnit Memory Foam Ear Cushions, which are soft on the ear without being scratchy and provide a close, tight fit.
The headband features the same material on the outside and sits just right on your head, even with a cap on.
Inside the cup, we get Razer’s brilliant Triforce Titanium 50mm drivers. While I’m no audiophile, these drivers delivered an excellent all-round experience. When it came to listening to music, the Razer Blackshark V2 Pro delivered in all three ranges, bass, treble and mids, with great quality.
Teams calls were clear too, but most important of all, I never missed a beat when it came to in-game audio. These headphones also pack THX Spatial Audio drivers, which deliver just that extra bit of in-game immersion and help you know exactly where your enemies are coming from.
Speaking of Teams calls, the provided microphone also offers your typical Razer quality. My voice sounds clear and pretty close to reality, even if I’d have much preferred a Ron Swanson bit of base to make me sound slightly cooler. The mic is detachable should you choose not to use it, which I appreciate, considering I’m not the biggest fan of in-your-face microphones. While the microphone is omnidirectional, like Black Ops 6 new movement, I didn’t find it picked up too much background noise while gaming. If you are picking up noises, the Razer Synapse software offers some decent tweaking features to help get the perfect sound.
The Pro version of the Razer Blackshark V2 now comes with Bluetooth capabilities as well as the 2.4 GHz connection we saw in the previous model. There is a hot-swap switch on the left cup that lets you switch between the two channels, but this does mean you can’t feed both sources into the headphones at the same time, you know, to take phone calls while pwning noobs. Unfortunately, because the Razer Blackshar V2 Pro is a wireless first headset, its compatibility with Xbox consoles is limited. The 2.4 Ghz dongle works great on both PC and PS5, but there is no such luck with Xbox. Bluetooth might save you here, but you will need an adaptor for your Xbox controller to make it work, and you lose the 3D spatial sound when using the Bluetooth connectivity option.
Being wireless does have the one caveat of battery life, but the Razer Blackshark V2 Pro’s have an epic 70-hour battery life that I never found myself reaching. Some in the office may complain it’s a bit too long, and they might forget to charge their headphones, but that’s nothing a good evening charging routine can’t fix.
When it comes to build quality, I didn’t see or feel any issues. The hinge connection may look a little flimsy as it’s just two thin metal rods connecting the cups to the headband, but after a good couple stretchy-pully’s (that thing you do when you pull your headphones apart, just to check them), the Razer Balckshark V2 Pro headphones didn’t feel like they would break. I did find the giant volume knob a bit of a weird design choice, but I guess if you’re looking for the volume in a rushed panic, you’ll always find it.
Along with the before mentioned giant knob, you also get audio profile control, microphone toggling and the Bluetooth/2.4 Ghz switch on the cups.
I also like the fact that you can get a black-and-white version of the headphones. It’s not the full-colour spectrum of the rainbow, but it does help to match up with your build if you opt for something all-white.
At the end of it all, I found myself pretty impressed with the Razer Blackshark V2 Pro headphones, and considering that they come in around R1,000 cheaper than the Krakens, albeit with no RGB and fancy ear massages, I would certainly consider picking these up for their R3,499 price tag.