The Razer Blackshark line of headphones are geared towards Esports athletes and competitive players, providing a comfortable headset for extended gaming sessions, great positional audio, and a crystal clear microphone for communication.

The headset’s unique design features a steel-reinforced headband frame paired with metal sliders to easily adjust the height of the earcups. The earcups pivot nicely on the attached hinge, making the entire headset feel extremely sturdy and durable. Although it’s a bit heavier than previous Blackshark V2 headsets at 330 grams, it still feels fairly lightweight.

Both the headband and earcups are made from memory foam wrapped in a soft, mesh weave, which helps with breathability. I found the headset to be very comfortable during my testing, as the memory foam portion of the headband allowed it to rest lightly on top of my head without adding extra pressure. This may be attributed to how the headset distributes its weight, though, as the earcups do sit snugly against your head to keep everything in place. While this does create a tight seal around your ears to help isolate external sound, I found it placed a lot of pressure near the back of my jaw that was uncomfortable during extended sessions, but a quick repositioning of the headset around my ears helped to alleviate this issue.

It features a minimal amount of buttons and knobs on both sides of the earcups, allowing you to stay dialed in while playing and not fumbling the controls trying to adjust something. On the left earcup you’ll find the power button near the bottom with a mute toggle above it, the USB-C connector for charging, and the 3.5mm auxiliary port to connect the detachable microphone. There’s also a large multi-function audio dial on the outside of the earcup that controls volume, and you can control your game chat and audio mix when used with Xbox. The right earcup features the SmartSwitch button which allows you to toggle between various connections.

As far as connectivity goes, the Blackshark V2 Pro Xbox Edition utilizes Razer’s Hyperspeed wireless technology, which delivers high-quality audio over a 2.4GHz wireless connection with the included USB-C dongle. The 2.4GHz USB-C receiver allows it to work across all Xbox models including Xbox Series X|S and the Xbox One family, as well as PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, and mobile devices with a USB-C connector. If the device you’re using doesn’t have a USB-C port, you can utilize the included USB-C to USB-A adapter for compatibility with the included receiver.

Additionally, it features Bluetooth 5.2 which provides a low-latency wireless connection for PC, Mac, and handheld gaming and mobile devices. It also supports simultaneous connections, allowing you to seamlessly swap between the Razer Hyperspeed wireless-connected device and a Bluetooth device by double-pressing the SmartSwitch button on the right earcup. This button can be used to swap between various onboard EQ modes, including custom profiles for various games like Apex Legends, Fortnite, and Call of Duty, for example.

Unlike the vast majority of Razer headsets, the Razer Blackshark V2 Pro Console Edition doesn’t integrate with the Razer Synapse app on PC for tinkering with the audio settings. Instead, it opts for the Razer Audio Setup app on PC and Xbox.

It’s a very pared down version to what you might be accustomed to if you’ve used Razer Synapse before, as it’s missing a lot of the more in-depth audio settings. On PC, it’s very clearly just the Xbox app ported over, as it actually requires a controller to navigate some of the menus. I actually had a couple moments where I couldn’t interact with certain portions of the app using a mouse and had to plug in a controller to finish some of the configuration.

Like most modern gaming headsets, the Blackshark V2 Pro For Xbox is ready to use right out of the box. After plugging in the USB-C receiver and toggling it to “Xbox” mode, it was instantly recognized on my Xbox Series X. While I downloaded the Razer Audio Setup app, I found most of the useful features could be accessed directly from the headset itself, and found options in the app to be mostly redundant.

When it came to audio quality, everything sounded great. I spent a good chunk of time testing out the EQ profiles across different games, including Fortnite, which has its own Esports EQ profile. While I wasn’t able to discern a massive difference swapping between the custom-tuned profile and the standard gaming profile, footsteps seemed to be slightly more discernable and explosions were reduced a bit overall.

On the PC side of things, I hopped into Destiny 2 to continue my endless pursuit of gear in the aftermath of The Final Shape and found the surround sound to work exceptionally well in both PvE and PvP. I was able to identify my enemies’ locations easily as I explored the various planets, and could easily get the drop on my enemies in the Crucible as I waited for them to round a corner. I also spent some time in Valorant where I found the surround sound audio to be serviceable as it seemed a bit loud all around, even with Windows Sonic enabled.

Using the Blackshark V2 Pro as a set of standard Bluetooth headphones for audio was a surprisingly good experience using the default music EQ setting. I was pleased with how crisp each song was, and the headset produced a good amount of bass with little to no distortion at all. And, because of the noise isolating seal created by the earcups, there’s virtually no sound bleed from the headphones. I imagine those looking for a versatile headset that can work for both gaming and music will be pleased with this option.