New Razer BlackShark V2 X Review: Gaming Headset Budget King Under $100!

Hey everybody, Gus here. Welcome to the third ever video where I am going to say something nice about a gaming Razer product in audio.

This is the Razer BlackShark V2 X headset. While obviously based on the original V2, this thing is a refresh in every possible way. Absolutely everything was upgraded or changed or redone to the point that one could even ask why didn't Razer just use another name or create a new family of headsets for that?

That's because the original BlackShark had a reputation. In other words, it's a marketing thing. All right, let's stop beating around the bushes because the title of the video already pointed to this, price, because it falls under the budget category.

The BlackShark V2 X specifically is a headset that costs around $59 (prices may change) . This is aggressive pricing from Razer right here, and I am really fine with this decision. This price tag, I'm really okay with it. Just note that there are three other headsets in the BlackShark family.

This is the V2 X, the baseline model let's say, about $59 (prices may change). There is the V2, which comes with a sound card dongle USB that's THX 7.1 and can enable spatial audio and a bunch of other stuff. That costs about $99 (prices may change).

There's a special edition V2 that's exclusive to the Razer website. That's the same thing as the V2, but with extra green accents on the design, and the V2 Pro, which in theory is the exact same headset again, but wireless, and it costs about $180 (prices may change), so, almost twice the price.

All the BlackShark headsets share a name, an overall design, and the same drivers with one difference. The other three, the more expensive ones, have a titanium-coated diaphragm in the driver that's supposed to bring out extra detail in the folk, which I interpret as an added extra crispness to the mids and the high tones, while the V2 X doesn't.

The drivers are equally interestingly easy to drive. They are compatible with every console and you compare them pretty easily using your phone if you still have a 3.5mm jack in there or maybe a dongle. You're going to have plenty of volume coming out, so that you can just be chill about it.

Before we discuss how the V2 X drivers perform, we first need to talk about the design that was made so that once you put it on your head, it vanishes. It disappears.

You can feel a little bit of the clamp while it's adjusting and creating that nice, passive seal, but after a couple of minutes, it just floats away. You barely even notice that it's there. They weigh in at 240g. It's such an effortless fit.

Speaking of fit and seal, these are a closed back pair of headphones. Those little holes behind the exposed cables on each ear cup do nothing aside from actually helping with tuning, but they're not adding any sound leakage at all.

The openings on the pads are pretty big, so I don't think that you're going to have any issues with your ears actually touching the inside walls of the pads or the inside wall of the actual cup.

But in case they do, the only one thing that I would like to point out is that there is literally just a little bit of fabric between your ears and the wall of the driver inside the cups. If you are actively using them and there's sound coming out, and your ears make contact with that wall, it can be a bit uncomfortable with the vibrations and all that. Just be warned. But the pads, the left to right memory foams of the V2 X are awesome.

The branding on the headband is black on black and as minimal as Razer would go ever anyways, but the padding ,on the other hand, is more than adequate. I have zero complaints here.

The microphone on the V2 X is not detachable or retractable, which is something that many find ubiquitous to Razer's headsets. I like this method more because the retractable system breaks a lot. Since the microphone capsule is hypercardioid, it needs to be pointed at your face.

They've added a little icon on the face that's supposed to be looking at you so that you would know which way it should be pointed.

Everything, aside from the rails, is plastic. The texture on the ear cups means that this matte black design will stay fingerprint-free for a little while longer at least.

This Razer logo, being a glossy black indent, on the ear cups is such a nice design decision. It would have looked so classy on the Viper Ultimate.

The cable is a non-removable, bright Razer-green rubber cable. It's nothing fancy, but obviously not straight. Despite a lot of people saying that they had this problem, I was actually expecting to have the same issue. However, I did not detect anything with regard to cable noise from the V2 X in particular.

It actually comes with an extension cable in case your system is on the other side of the room and you still want to connect it directly to it. You can do this out of the box.

To close it off, on the left ear cup you have a volume dial with a very distinct bump when you hit 50% volume. There is a mic mute button right behind it that when it's not muted, it shows a little bit of a green accent on that button, which serves as a way for people around you to see visually if your mic is on or off, muted or not. That's a nice touch.

As for my concerns about the build of the V2 X, there are two things. First, the extension mechanism is interesting. It feels interesting and nice, but the ratings being this thin makes me wonder if it's going to be durable in the long run. Because sometimes one of the sides gets a little more stuck than the other, and maybe you put in a little extra force to get it to move.

I'm pretty sure that this thing is going to end up bending at some point in the future if you're not careful every time you're going to move it up and down.

The second point, which is kind of obvious, are these, the exposed cables. That type of thing is almost asking for something to happen especially if you consider that when the railings are completely opened up, there is barely any wiggle room for the actual cables on the V2 X to adjust to angles of the ear cups.

They're almost 100 stretched out. The good thing is that when it's completely closed, it's not being pressed against or by anything, so it's also not in immediate danger. It is still exposed, which poses a threat of something grabbing and yanking on that thing and maybe cutting off or damaging the wiring. Nobody wants that.

Moving on to sound quality, let's talk about this microphone for a minute shall we? I wish you could hear how the mic on the BlackShark V2 X sounds like because the sound is just so good.

I have praised other Razer microphones in the past for being good overall, but this headset is extremely impressive.

There's just such a natural tone to the voice. There's very little processing happening. There's a good amount of low end pickup, no distortion, nice levels of detail, and the mids and the highs are not muddied up. Everything has been kept clean. There's nothing blown out.

In terms of isolation, I'm typing on an MX Brown Switch keyboard right now just so that you guys understand how much of it is going to be picked up by this microphone, since it's not trying that hard to isolate everything. You can hear it. It's just nothing that would break the experience to begin with.

The mic on this thing is top-notch. Since it's the exact same capsule that's on the V2, the V2 Special, and the V2 Pro, you would assume that they would at least be just as good, which is a point in the V2 X's favor because it's the same microphone quality, but at a lower budget. That's a bonus right there.

What about the actual sound? Well, from what I've told you guys before about how the drivers are different, and how they're built, and the other ones having a diaphragm that's made out of titanium that enhances vocals, and all that sort of stuff, you could assume that this lacks detail in those areas, but I don't have a V2 at hand here to compare them to one another, but what I can tell you about the V2 X is that this thing slaps.

This isn't the Razer sound that I've been listening to all these years with a bunch of other headsets, which have a muddy mid-range, a shrill aggressive high-end when it's there at all, and way too much bass most of the time.

In a completely different direction, the V2 X is much more balanced than I anticipated it would be. There aren't any necessarily major issues with this thing.

It definitely doesn't lack detail and resolution in the mid and high ranges, which means that the diaphragm stuff that the other ones have isn't necessarily game-changing between the sound quality from the V2 X to the V2 for example.

However, don't expect this to perform like a $120 or $150 headset. There are limitations. I have played Overwatch and Cyberpunk 2077 to test this thing and to put it through its phases.

The sound stage, as you would expect from a gaming centric headset, is something that happens between the ear cups on both sides, in this spectrum. It's a little bit out of the borders, but that's it.

What I can say is that the imaging on this thing is on point. It's definitely on point. Also, sometimes you do feel a little bit of verticality on forwards and backwards, but it's minor to the point that I wouldn't necessarily consider it to be a characteristic of the V2 X's sound.

Most importantly, I'd say that the bass is what caught my attention the most. First, because it's sort of the v2 X's strong suit. With so many pro players saying how they love using this thing, the low end being the high point of the experience with the V2 X, is almost contradictory, but I'm not going to judge.

The second thing is how hard this punches you in the face with that low end. The amount of bass impact and the quality of the low end in the V2 X exceeds my expectations and while gaming, I never felt like the bass was getting in the way of anything.

It wasn't being a nuisance. It wasn't making me have a more difficult time trying to pinpoint enemies within a map, but it added to the immersiveness of the whole experience with that extra punchy low end that lends itself really well to explosions and that sort of stuff.

But, and for those of you who knew this "but" was coming from my "while gaming" statement, internet cookie for you, I expected the V2 X to perform the exact same way while listening to music as well, but that didn't happen.

Because as I was listening to a number of songs, every single characteristic that we've discussed so far was still there, intact, but, in a lot of songs, there was just this rumbling low end hum that would accompany and just linger a little bit too long after the low end was supposed to have faded away.

You could still feel the low end impact one after the other as stuff was progressing. But since that low end bloom lingered too long, certain sounds within that frequency range would get twisted and intertwined.

It would make it a little bit harder to experience that instrumental separation that I already know is great because I have listened to a bunch of stuff with this already.

In other scenarios, that does that, and some in some songs specifically you can still appreciate it just as much. Does this ruin the experience? No, of course not.

The V2 X is still a headset (priced at about $59, but prices may change) that does so much right. It only makes it a tad bit heavy-handed in terms of bass for music listening specifically for me. It's something that's minor and easily resolved using the equalizer just to tone it down aback, which is something that I already did, and I can say that it does help. It just makes it all okay.

So what's the verdict here? Well, this is a budget zero-issues, almost zero-compromises experience. For about $59 (prices may change), I think that this will end up being the one headset to beat below $100 in 2021.

Because if the V2, not the V2 X, the $99 one (estimated, but prices may change), is good enough to compete against other $100 options, and the only difference between this thing and the V2 is the different coating on the drivers for that extra bit of detail in the vocal area, which is something that you potentially could bring out with a bit of equalizer tweaking in the first place, and the other thing is the 7.1 sound card, which a bunch of people don't see is a valid reason to get a specific headset right now, and there are way too many titles that don't support spatial audio to begin with, maybe, just maybe, you would be better off getting the V2 X.

The estimated $40 that you would be saving can be invested towards upgrading something else on your system or just pocket the difference and be happy with it because I honestly think that you will, at the very least, also be very happy with the V2 X.

That about wraps it up. I hope you guys enjoyed the video. Please like, subscribe, hit the bell, share, and do all that sort of stuff here if you're feeling like it. It really does help the channel a lot. I appreciate you. Thanks a lot for watching. This is Gus, and I'll catch you guys later.