Razer Opus – The cheapest alternative to the best noise-canceling headphones

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Razer Opus is the first attempt of the famous brand for gamers to enter a rather crowded market, that of wireless over-ear headphones. Whether or not it is a success, we will see in this material.

Razer is one of the most famous and best companies in terms of products dedicated to gamers. From keyboards to gaming headsets or controllers, Razer has built an excellent reputation for the quality of its products, which is hard to dispute. That’s why when I found out last year that the American brand wants to enter the wireless over-ear headphones market, one that is very crowded and has since become even more combative (with the advent of the Apple AirPods Max), I raised my eyebrows a little .

However, a few months after that, the Razer Opus arrived on my test table, and I finally had the opportunity to discover what can be the first pair of headphones from Razer for ordinary consumers.

Design

The unboxing experience is extremely similar to the one on the WH-1000XM series from Sony. In fact, the look of the Razer Opus is a bit reminiscent of the famous headphones from Sony, and I’m not at all sorry, considering that it looks premium, simple and elegant. On the outside of the cups is the THX logo, while above them is the Razer logo, nicely integrated into the design.

There are two color versions available, Black and Midnight Blue. I received the first one, but the difference between them does not seem very big anyway. The cups are among the softest I’ve ever seen, being made of memory foam and very comfortable, and the band that “rests” on your head is also made of a similar material. I wore the headphones for up to 3 hours without a feeling of discomfort but I’m sure I could wear them even more, on a transoceanic flight, without problems. The only thing that bothered me a little was the fact that the skin on the cups heats up quite quickly and gathers quite a lot of perspiration – it’s good to wear them in winter, but in summer you may find them too warm.

The headphones come stored in a carrying case that seems quite durable, and inside you will find an airplane adapter, so you can connect your headphones to the entertainment screens, a jack connector and, of course, the charging cable (USB- On the USB-C).

The left cup is “clean”, all control buttons being implemented on the right, along with the charging port and headphone jack. There are four buttons on the Razer Opus: power, two volume and one multifunction, which you will use most often, because they lack the controls by touching the cups, the function we find on the more expensive headphones from Sony or Bose de example.

Be careful though, because you will find in the little manual in the box what you need to do to activate the voice command, answer calls, move on to the next song or the previous song and more. A 5-second press of the multifunction button will activate Gaming Mode, which lowers the sound of the headphones, providing faster feedback when you play.

ANC helped by an excellent passive cancellation

The Power button also hides the ANC, that background noise cancellation feature that Razer includes here in collaboration with THX. It is activated by pressing the Power button, the second pressing activating the Ambient Awareness mode, which uses the microphones on the outside of the headphones to amplify the noise around you, paying attention to cars, people shouting at you or other things that you want to hear them without taking off your headphones.

The ANC is excellent, being helped by a remarkable passive noise cancellation. Basically, once you put your headphones on your ears, without having turned them on, you will notice how well the passive cancellation handles these headphones, quickly “killing” a large part of the external noise. From there, the ANC doesn’t have much to do, but it’s still commendable.

The Ambient Awareness function doesn’t turn my back on me. It’s okay, but just okay, because I don’t think it would have a satisfying effect unless I go half the volume. Basically, anything over half sounds pretty blurry, and if you want to have a conversation with someone, that person will still have to speak louder than usual, which is quite the opposite of what you would want. to do this function.

Autonomy

Charging is another important plus of the Razer Opus, the headphones have a USB-C port reserved for this, so you won’t need another charger for them. Battery life is excellent. I received the Razer Opus almost 10 days ago, the headphones had 80% battery when I took them out of the box, and I used them on average about 2-3 hours a day, not having to charge them until the time of writing the review. Theoretically, Razer says that the autonomy reaches 25 hours with ANC (active noise cancelling) on, but I think you can get even more, somewhere around 27-28 hours.

The sound is good, whether we’re talking bass, treble or mids, but I wouldn’t say it shines in any of these chapters, so if you want something louder in a certain segment, I’d suggest you reorient yourself. The highs keep a nice clarity, the spatiality is decent, not extraordinary, and the bass feels good, strong (we’re talking about Razer, which “fills” its gaming headphones with bass).

But the main problem seems to me to be the volume. It’s quite low, and not just once did I feel compelled to turn up the phone to those red limits close to the maximum. I think one possible reason would be that passive and active cancellation are very good anyway, so Razer thought the user wouldn’t need to turn the volume up very high. Well, it’s a pretty subjective aspect, after all, everyone knows how much they like listening to music, so I can’t attack this element very much.

The headphones connect via Bluetooth, very quickly, and also have a downloadable application for a few extra control functions. The application shows the battery volume, allows you to choose how long the unused headphones can stay until it stops (the minimum is 5 minutes), and also includes an equalizer that has 5 presets to choose from, if you are not satisfied with the default (THX). Also from here you can deactivate the Auto Pause / Resume function, although I don’t understand why you would do it. It works great, with the headphones recognizing when they are taken off the ears and even faster when put back on.

Conclusion

Razer Opus launched at a price of $ 200, and because I mentioned several times during the review the similarities with Sony WH-1000XM I will allow myself to make a small comparison here, in conclusion .

These headphones are certainly not a rival to Sony or Bose, but they do not want to be, at least not in the current version. They have a lower price than the mentioned brands, and a few functions less (touch control being probably the most sensible), but nevertheless I dare say that they are the best cheap alternative to the famous WH-1000 XM3. With a noise canceling and very good sound, a simple, premium look, the first attempt by Razer to enter the over-ear ANC headphones market seems to me a success.

It is also worth mentioning that, at the time of writing, the Razer Opus has a considerable discount on the Razer website, being found at $ 150.

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