The iFi Zen series of affordable hi-fi components has proven a huge success, with the trio we’ve tested all garnering positive reviews. Now, two of the models in the range – the five-star Zen DAC/headphone amp and the Zen Can analogue-only headphone amp – have been treated to enhanced circuitry to spawn Signature versions.
The Zen DAC Signature (pictured below) and Zen Can Signature 6XX (top) were initially made in a limited-edition capacity to be sold by a US crowd-shopping site, but now that stock has sold out the British audio brand is launching a proper run of the Signature models worldwide. They both sport a deep Space Blue finish, as opposed to the dark grey colour of the standard models – but that is by no means the only adaptation justifying their existence.
(Image credit: iFi)
The Zen DAC Signature is actually positioned as a slightly different beast to the regular model, sacrificing the Zen DAC’s headphone amplifier and getting upgraded fully balanced circuitry instead – namely improved capacitors and shorter, more direct signal paths – in the name of enhanced sound quality. File support and inputs match the exhaustive tally of the original model, though: it’s compatible with PCM (up to 32-bit/384kHz), native DSD (up to DSD256), DXD and MQA tracks and boasts USB Type B and RCA sockets, plus a balanced Pentaconn 4.4mm output. For those who value headphones listening, the idea here is that the Zen DAC Signature is paired with the Can Signature 6XX headphone amplifier.
Speaking of which, the all-new Signature variant of the Zen Can also largely mirrors the versatile functionality of its legacy model (namely four gain settings and RCA, 3.5mm, 6.3mm and balanced 4.4mm connections) but too benefits from superior balanced circuit design.
iFi Zen DAC Signature (rear) (Image credit: iFi)
iFi ZEN CAN Signature 6XX (rear) (Image credit: iFi)
There’s a new custom EQ setting called ActivEQ, and in the Zen Can Signature 6XX it has been specifically tailored to the Massdrop x Sennheiser HD 6XX headphones (based on Sennheiser’s HD 650, which iFi says can also benefit from this specific EQ curve). A second Zen Can Signature model with ActivEQ tailored to another pair of headphones is on the cards, with iFi having opened a vote for which model it should be.
iFi’s Zen DAC Signature and Zen Can Signature 6XX are available now for £249 each, however two can be bought together for £499 with a 4.4mm Pentaconn cable (worth £69) chucked in, allowing the two to be connected together over their balanced connections. For a limited time, both models come with iFi’s iPower X AC/DC power adapter (normally £99), too.
MORE:
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Best headphone amplifiers 2021: budget and premium
iDSD Diablo is iFi’s new flagship portable DAC/headphone amp
HyperX delivers a headset that’s meant to roll out of the box and into service. The Cloud Revolver offers 7.1 surround sound for gaming and wide soundscape, and listening to music is a great experience. But the price tag is a stumbling block for what you get in the box.
For
Great audio clarity
Steel lends it fantastic build quality
Solid sound out-of-the-box
Against
Very few audio tweaking options
Can make ears a little warm
Expensive for the offering
The HyperX Cloud Revolver + 7.1 gets some things right in its quest to compete among the best gaming headsets. Compared to some of its other offerings, like the HyperX Cloud II Wireless, the Cloud Revolver + 7.1 offers more and higher quality memory foam, as well as firm steel. And despite the smaller drivers, HyperX promises a stronger, more robust sound scape on the Cloud Revolver 7.1 than some of its other offerings.
But at $150, this is an odd product. Although it’s wired, it’s the same price as the Cloud II Wireless, which offers similar features, like virtual 7.1 surround sound and a detachable noise-cancelling microphone.
The Cloud Revolver + 7.1 comes with an audio-boosting digital signal processor (DSP) via a handy USB sound card that also provides audio controls and virtual 7.1 surround sound. But it’s surround sound and audio in general isn’t tweak-friendly, keeping the package simple but hard to perfect.
HyperX Cloud Revolver + 7.1 Specs
Driver Type
50mm neodymium
Impedance
32 Ohms
Frequency Response
10 Hz-23.2 KHz
Microphone Type
Detachable condenser noise-cancelling
Connectivity
USB Type-A or 3.5mm
Weight
Headset-only: 0.83 pounds (375g)
Headset, mic, cable: 1 pound (452g)
Cords
6.67 feet (2.03m) USB-A cable and 7.1 dongle
3.33 feet (1m) 3.5mm
Lighting
None
Software
HyperX Ngenuity (Beta)
Design and Comfort
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The HyperX Cloud Revolver + 7.1 is an update of an older design: the original HyperX Cloud Revolver released in 2016. The general build remains the same, though HyperX has removed all the color from the overall design. While the original was black matte plastic and steel with red HyperX red highlights, the 2021 edition saps all the color. Instead, the highlights are in a simple, understated white. There’s no RGB on this headset, just crisp, clean black and white.
A single piece of steel runs across the entire headband from ear cup to ear cup. Not only is that the most striking part of the design, it also provides stability. Underneath that steel band is an adjustable smaller band that sits on top of your head. That band is made of leatherette and memory foam, providing a smooth cushion for the Cloud Revolver + 7.1 to rest upon.
The ear cups themselves are pretty hefty, with a design that looks like speakers on the outside flanked by the steel fins of the headband. On the inside of the ear cups, you’ll find more leatherette and memory foam. There’s more foam here than in some of HyperX’s cheaper headset models. There are no controls on the ear cups—no volume roller or mute button here—but there is a 3.5mm jack for the detachable microphone. The mic itself is flexible but can’t be slid into a position where it’s out of your face and lacks any indicator for when it’s muted.
All told, while it’s not the lightest headset I’ve tested, the Cloud Revolver + 7.1 feels pretty good. The headset itself is 0.83 pounds (375g), but the distribution of weight is fantastic. It sits light on the top of your head, and any clamping pressure around the ears is lessened by the memory foam pads. I have a pretty big head though, and I get the feeling it might be too roomy for those with tiny heads—the metal band is around 9 inches across, and the gap between the earcup pads is around 6-6.5 inches. There’s also not a ton of twist in ear cups, and for long sessions I could feel the insides getting a little warm.
The Cloud Revolver is a fully-wired headset. There’s a braided cable that runs from the left ear cup that cannot be detached. It’s around 3.33 feet (1m) in length, ending in a 3.5mm jack. HyperX only specs the headset to work with PC and PS4, but with the 3.5mm connection it should work with an Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4 (PS4) and PlayStation 5 (PS5).
Then there’s the USB sound card. It has a 3.5mm jack for plugging in the headset and ends in a USB Type-A connector for use with your PC. With the box, you get boosted audio via a digital signal processing sound card, as well as the ability to use virtual 7.1 surround sound. This plugs into your PC, PS4, or PS5. On the sound card dongle, you’ll find volume controls for the headset and microphone, a mute button on the side and a big button for activating the 7.1 surround sound capabilities. The mute button and 7.1 button both light up, letting you know which mode you’re in for each feature. The dongle also has a clip on the back for attaching to your shirt or pants to keep it in handy.
Cloud Revolver + 7.1 Audio Performance
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
HyperX markets the Cloud Revolver + 7.1 as a “studio-grade” headset. It has 50mm drivers, in line with most of its competition, but sports a larger frequency range than most. The can stretches from 10 Hz to 23.2 kHz, giving it an edge on both ends against some in this price range. That means a relatively wide soundscape.
There is one problem though. This headset utilizes HyperX’s own version of virtual 7.1 surround sound. There’s no tweaking and no equalizer available in HyperX’s software suite. And there’s no support for something like DTS Headphone:X or Dolby surround. HyperX’s 7.1 utilizes Windows Sonic on PC for any tweaks; the problem I have is that while Windows Sonic is great for positioning, I find the overall audio quality and available settings are far better on DTS Headphone:X or Dolby. The company did have a version of this headset that had Dolby support, the Cloud Revolver S, but that product doesn’t look like it’s being produced anymore. The headset we’re reviewing is essentially a non-Dolby rebrand of the S.
I loaded up Hitman 3; One of the new levels in this entry in the series, Berlin, is an excellent test with 7.1 on. The level takes place in an underground club hidden in a derelict power plant. Voices came through on the headset clearly, from the correct virtual channels with no distortion. The real test was below though. As you round the stairs into the club proper, there’s loud, booming techno music playing, with a good meaty bass beat to it. Even among the cacophony, Hitman 3 is still great about allowing you to hear audio dialog that may point to future assassinations. It’s a pretty chaotic scene in terms of sound, especially with the ebb and flow of the techno as you move around the environment, and the Cloud Revolver + 7.1 handled it well.
The Cloud Revolver + 7.1 is only guaranteed to work with PC and PS4, as per HyperX. But my PS5 recognized it immediately in sound devices when I plugged it in via USB. I didn’t have any sound initially, leading me to assume it didn’t work, but the trick with the Cloud Revolver + 7.1 is the audio controls on the dongle work independently of the system volume. You can have the system volume up, but the dongle volume down, and hear nothing.
Playing Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, I found the system’s 3D audio worked well with the Cloud Revolver + 7.1. Walking around the city to get a feel of the directional sound, I could walk around a running car and clearly hear the engine humming along from the correct direction.
In terms of clarity, I could hear every thwip of the web-shooters alongside the whipping winds, the low bass beat of the soundtrack and even J. Jonah Jameson’s annoying radio broadcast. However, I did notice a little loss of clarity in the highs, with strings in the ambient soundtrack blending a bit with some of the city’s sounds.
The first music track I tried on the headset was Jason Derulo’s “Lifestyle.” It works well as a test case because of the transition from the early parts of the song. You have the thrumming of the bass guitar contrasted with Derulo’s vocals, which are then joined by accompaniment and staccato claps. Once the chunky bass in the chorus comes in, the song is playing on nearly every level. It’s got a little bit of everything.
Listening to the track on the Cloud Revolver + 7.1 allowed me to test the difference in the standard stereo versus the 7.1 surround. In stereo, there was wonderful differentiation and clarity between the different parts of the song. The wider soundscape really showed up to play. Switching to surround sound, it was clear that HyperX’s solution pushes the mids back, really playing up the highs and lows.
Across few other tracks, I actually found aspects of the music that was missing in my day-to-day headset. Gfriend’s “Labyrinth” had a sort of alternating high xylophone-style sound in the background of the chorus I never noticed before. And the understated low piano in the bridge of Clean Bandit’s “Higher” was suddenly apparent. There’s just an excellent amount of separation and clarity to the overall sound on this headset. It’s probably one of the better music listening experiences at this price point.
Microphone
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The microphone on the Cloud Revolver + 7.1 is a unidirectional condenser mic that you can detach from the headset. My recordings sounded pretty good, though they came across a little warm overall. Vocal clarity was pretty good, but there was still audible popping.
Noise cancellation, meanwhile, was decent. The headset took care of a good amount of environmental sound. There was someone mowing the lawn outside of my apartment, for example, and that wasn’t in the recording much. My local television noise also didn’t come through on recordings.
The boom mic is flexible, allowing for decent placement in front of your mouth. I also actually prefer having the mic mute on the dongle because it means you’re not getting a noise in your recording trying to mute your mic.
HyperX specs the Cloud Revolver + 7.1’s mic for a frequency response of 50 Hz – 7.7 kHz.
Software
HyperX has beta software, NGenuity, that works with many of its gaming peripherals, including some headsets. The Cloud Revolver + 7.1, however, is not meant to work with any software. Instead, HyperX targets this at users who want a simple plug-and-play package. But those who like to tweak their audio or want to address any perceived weaknesses in the Cloud Revolver + 7.1’s performance is out of luck.
If you want to do any virtual speaker positioning regarding the 7.1 surround sound, you can use the standard Windows menus via Windows Sonic.
Bottom Line
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
With the Cloud Revolver + 7.1, HyperX has crafted cans with great build quality, effective virtual 7.1 surround sound support, a nice wide soundscape and versatility through its two connection options (3.5mm or USB Type-A).It also delivers one of the better music-listening experiences I’ve had in the $150 price range.
However, the virtual 7.1 surround sound here is a step down from the immersive feel and customization options premium competitors, like Dolby, offer. And HyperX’s lack of audio tweaking options means you’re essentially stuck with what you get out of the box. The company could gain some ground simply by fixing that.
There are more customizable options with advanced surround sound for less. As of writing, Logitech Pro X is about $20 cheaper than our review focus, and you get DTS Headphone X 2.0 support, an extensive audio equalizer and Blue microphone audio tweaks via Logitech software. The Razer BlackShark V2 offers THX Spatial Audio for a whopping $50 less. And that’s all before you even get into wireless headset options, which are pretty price-competitive these days.
Sure, I might love listening to music on the Cloud Revolver + 7.1, but a gaming headset is more than that. And frankly, HyperX is still behind the competition in terms of bells-and-whistles.
But if you’re not into tweaking and just want something that offers decent virtual surround sound and covers a wide range of frequencies out of the box while sitting comfortably on your noggin, the Cloud Revolver + 7.1 is worth a look.
It seems Sonos has another Bluetooth speaker up its sleeve. According to documents filed with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in the US (via The Verge), the device seems smaller than the Sonos Move (the firm’s first portable speaker), and comes with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) on board.
We says “seems”, because its dimensions aren’t given. But it uses less power than the Move, which suggests it will take a smaller form.
That would position it as a rival to the best Bluetooth speakers around, like the JBL Flip 5, Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 (2nd Gen) and Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 2.
The filing suggests the speaker will have a cylindrical design similar to the UE Boom 3. But unlike the Boom 3, it has a wireless charging dock for juicing up.
While a great-sounding device, the Sonos Move is a little bulky, so if Sonos can pack a similarly sweet sound into a much more portable – not to mention affordable – package, it should have a winner on its hands.
Sonos recently launched a replaceable battery kit for the Move, meaning that should the bundled powerpack wear out (as all lithium-ion batteries eventually do), you can swap in a new one without having to buy a whole new speaker. B&O has taken a similar tack with its recent Beosound Level speaker.
MORE:
Check out the competition: Best Bluetooth speakers for listening on the move
Get the full skinny: Which Sonos speaker should you buy?
Sonos: everything you need to know about the multi-room king
When Sunny Bonnell and her team at branding agency Motto started working with Ninjas In Pyjamas (NIP), a 20-year-old esports team in search of a new look, they did a lot of research. The team had never worked in gaming or esports before, and they wanted to understand the space. They talked to fans and people on the team, and sketched out hundreds of possible logo ideas over the course of more than a year. When NIP revealed their new visual identity last month, the reaction was immediate — and much of it was negative. “I don’t think we really knew at the time that the fans would have such a hard time with it,” says Bonnell.
NIP was founded in 2000, and the Swedish organization currently operates teams in Valorant, FIFA, and Rainbow Six, though it’s most famous for its Counter-Strike squad. Its previous logo was a gold shuriken with lots of curves and sharp points. The new iteration maintains the same concept but streamlines it, with neon yellow set against a black backdrop, and an angular shuriken that features a stylized version of the kanji for “nin” inside. It’s brighter, simpler, and more easily recognizable.
Bonnell says that the new logo was necessary for a few reasons. These include the flexibility to scale across different platforms, as well as the lack of contrast between the black-and-brown color scheme. “There were just a lot of technical issues with the existing mark,” she says. The challenge, she adds, was making a logo that not only retained the classic iconography associated with the team but also felt fresh and worked across a variety of mediums. “That mark had to do a whole lot of lifting.”
When the team started working on the project, they really zoomed in on the ninja part of the NIP name. There’s the kanji, as well as a color scheme inspired by the streets of Tokyo, and even an audio element; the designers came up with a signature blade swooshing sound for the team to use in videos and on social media. “I felt that was something they could truly own,” Bonnell says of the ninja elements. “They were lacking something to say. They had cool apparel and great teams, but they didn’t really have anything else that was giving them a story to tell.”
One of the challenges of modern logo design is creating something that can work pretty much anywhere. It’s especially tricky in esports. The NIP logo is used as a Twitter icon, a badge on jerseys, and even a virtual sticker that players can put on in-game guns. When in-person tournaments return, the logo will be blown up on big LCD displays on stage. (Bonnell is particularly excited about the last one. “It’s going to be so cool.”) To make something that works in all of these contexts, designers often resort to something flat and simple. The result is logos that tend to look the same.
“It gets trickier over time,” Bonnell says of the process. “The more you add, the more complicated it becomes.” The new NIP logo attempts to get around this in a few ways. For one, the shuriken is set on its side to create a sense of motion, as if it was being thrown. And while the logo is relatively simple, it’s imbued with meaning, like the hidden word inside the weapon. Basically, every element is meant to scream “ninja!”
Photo: Motto
Giving an existing team a new identity is a tricky proposition. Just like in traditional sports, esports fans are attached to teams and their histories. In fact, when Dignitas and Evil Geniuses, two long-running organizations, introduced dramatic redesigns, the uproar was so intense they ended up reverting back to their original logos.
Despite all of the preparation, Bonnell says she wasn’t completely ready for the amount of blowback the NIP redesign received. “There’s a lot of hate in esports that I don’t know if I was prepared for,” she says. “I had to stop reading the comments, because I was like ‘Oh my god, I want to cry in my cornflakes.’ This is really bad.”
That has mellowed over time, she says. “The first day was rough,” she admits, but says that as time passed and the logo was displayed in more contexts — on jerseys, in actual games — she started to receive positive feedback from fans who changed their minds. While other organizations may have struggled with the initial blowback, Bonnell doesn’t think that will happen with NIP.
“First they’ll be ridiculed,” she says, “then they’ll be revered.”
Over this past week, Ethereum has skyrocketed to nearly $1700 in value (at the time of writing), making Ethereum very profitable to mine once again. But due to the shortage in graphics card supplies right now, desperate Chinese miners are apparently turning to RTX 30 series laptops as a new way to mine the cryptocurrency, as shown in a series of images that depict a laptop mining farm.
It’s unclear from the images and description if the miner purchased the laptops specifically for mining ethereum or is just repurposing laptops from a company or school, like an internet cafe, while they would otherwise be idle.
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In another demonstration of how valuable Ethereum has become, a vlogger posted on Bilibili that she went to a local Starbucks in China with an RTX 3060 laptop (TDP unknown), and showcased showed her payout from mining Ethereum for just two hours. She claims that her RTX 3060 mobile with a hefty memory overclock of +1000MHz managed an average hashing rate of 46MH/s. After two hours, she claims she made $0.9 USD. That might not sound like much, but it was enough for her to buy a coffee at Starbucks.
Now stack dozens or even hundreds of these laptops together and have them mining 24/7, and you can get an idea of why Chinese miners are so eager to push any Ampere laptop they can find into mining service.
Unfortunately, if prices for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum continue to climb, miners will be back in full swing and ordering as much compute power as they can. Now that getting graphics cards is nearly impossible for your average gamer or miner, it leaves miners no choice but to look for alternative methods to mine coins.
A billion years ago last summer, people were getting antsy about vaccines. They wanted things to move faster, maybe skip a few steps in clinical trials to speed things up. This was, at the time, generally considered a bad idea that would result in less accurate data and cause people to lose trust in the vaccines. Now, exactly 1.589 trillion years later, recklessly speeding things up for speed’s sake remains a poor choice, but some people on Twitter like journalist Nate Silver, seem to think we should do it anyways.
They take particular issue with the fact that while Johnson and Johnson submitted their data from their giant clinical trial this week, the Food and Drug Administration will take until February 26th to review the data.
Three weeks can feel like an eternity during the pandemic, with hospitals crowded and deaths still climbing. It’s easy to be flip about the process and want things to Just. Go. Faster. But the 22 days is not that much longer than the 20 days the agency took to review data for Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine or the 17 days for Moderna’s candidate.
Here’s what’s going to happen during those days. Researchers at the FDA will have to review the data from the 43,783 people who participated in the trial. This will entail looking at the cases across all study sites — here in the US, in Latin America and in South Africa, where a new coronavirus variant is dominant. The typical review process for a vaccine can take months. Instead, it will happen in a few weeks.
If the process is anything like what the FDA planned for the earlier vaccine candidates, those weeks will be filled with a lot of late nights and workers doing everything that they can to reasonably speed things up. “Groups have been working in shifts, nights and weekends, looking in parallel at issues of clinical effectiveness and safety, and of levels of antibodies to confirm the way the vaccine is working.” the Wall Street Journal reported in December.
Why do all that work? Right now, the information that we have about the vaccine comes from the company. That information is promising, and shows that it will probably be a good vaccine. But there are reasons that the FDA doesn’t just take a company at its word.
Let’s turn to noted scientific historian Billy Joel, and the “children of thalidomide.”
Thalidomide was a sedative that was given to pregnant people in the 1960’s as a cure for morning sickness. It caused birth defects in thousands of children across the world. In the US, pregnant women were given the drug in clinical trials, but unlike other countries, it wasn’t approved for sale at the time, thanks to Frances Kelsey. Kelsey was a drug reviewer at the FDA who looked over data from the company trying to sell the drug and found it unconvincing. The incident led to new laws that let the FDA determine a drug’s safety and effectiveness.
Taking the time to review a vaccine during a pandemic might seem like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic — but it’s actually inspecting the lifeboats before you leave port. We have procedures and protocols for a reason. When we launch something big, like a rocket, engineers don’t just push a button and send it soaring. They go through detailed pre-flight checklists, making sure that every bit of a spaceship is sound. We’ve learned the hard way that disregarding safety procedures can cost lives.
Pushing out a third vaccine quickly might help save lives, yes. But only if people are willing to take it. Some healthcare workers are already hesitant to take the vaccine. They worry that the process is rushed. Rushing the process more isn’t likely to convince them — people who generally are not opposed to vaccines — that the process is safe and secure.
I get it. Waiting sucks. But when you’re injecting people with a new treatment and the trust of billions of people is on the line, sometimes it’s worth taking the time to double-check your work.
Here’s what else is happening this week.
Research
Scientists want to know if vaccinated people can still become COVID-19 long-haulers Data from trials has shown that COVID-19 vaccines have done a stellar job at preventing severe cases of disease. But it’s still unclear whether they can prevent chronic COVID-19 symptoms. (Nicole Wetsman/The Verge)
The Pandemic Broke the Flu The flu appears to have taken the year off. While COVID-19 has dominated the planet, our regular seasonal virus appears to have mostly stayed home. It’s not clear what will happen (Katherine J Wu/The Atlantic)
Indigenous Americans dying from Covid at twice the rate of white Americans One in every 475 Native Americans has died of COVID-19, a rate that is higher than any other community in the US. The toll is especially brutal for smaller communities, who face disproportionate losses. (Nina Lakhani/The Guardian)
Development
New Vaccine Puzzle: Who Should Get Which Shot? Some places in the world are already juggling three different vaccines — and distributing them is getting very complicated. (Benjamin Mueller and Rebecca Robbins/The New York Times)
With a seductive number, AstraZeneca study fueled hopes that eclipsed its data A study of Astra Zeneca’s vaccine found that people who were vaccinated were less likely to carry the virus. That statistic got misinterpreted as proof that the vaccine decreased transmission of the virus. It might, but that hasn’t been proven yet. (Matthew Herper and Helen Branswell/STAT)
So you got the vaccine. Can you still infect people? Pfizer is trying to find out. People are still trying to understand how vaccines affect transmission, but it’s incredibly complicated. Here’s why. (Antonio Regalado/MIT Tech Review)
After a Rocky Start, Novavax Vaccine Could Be Here by Summer Novavax’s vaccine candidate has gotten off to a slower start than many of its competitors, but it is now well on its way. (Katie Thomas/The New York Times)
Perspectives
I had my espresso with foamed milk, even though coffee is disgusting to me now. I do not enjoy the taste. But I have a cup of coffee almost every morning. It’s like ritual, right? I enjoy the process of making it, and the warmth, and the caffeine. So I keep doing it, and I keep hoping that it will taste good to me at some point. I feel like I’m using my imagination when I eat, trying to use my memory of how things smell and taste to recreate the experience, because otherwise I would not want to eat.
—Meema Spadola tells Eater’s Jenny Zhang. Zhang interviewed people whose sense of taste and smell had not recovered after contracting COVID-19
More than numbers
To the more than 105,485,261 people worldwide who have tested positive, may your road to recovery be smooth.
To the families and friends of the 2,301,169 people who have died worldwide — 459,571 of those in the US — your loved ones are not forgotten.
Thumpy, warm sound combined with very good microphone performance and lusciously soft ear cups make the MSI Immerse GH61 a winning choice.
For
Effective DAC and AMP
Immersive virtual surround sound
Quality, microphone
Super soft ear cups
Against
Ear cups get warm after a while
Bass lacking at max volume
We all like our audio a little different. Thankfully, gaming headset vendors love playing with EQ curves to create different sound profiles that can do things like boost your in-game awareness or make your music thump a little bit louder. If you like cans that are heavy on the bass, MSI has a headset for you.
The MSI Immerse GH61 may be one of the best gaming headsets for combining comfort and shameless bass. The ear cups boast baby-soft protein leather, while the drivers deliver distortion-free audio with thunderous bass worthy of my old dance club days. At $109.99 it’s a win for value seekers. The GH61is cross-platform compatible with PC, Mac, PS5, PS4, XBOX, Nintendo Switch, and you can connect either via USB or 3.5mm, coming with a DAC which boosts the audio, allows you to turn on or off the 7.1 surround sound, mute the mic and raise or lower the volume.
MSI Immerse GH61 Specs
Driver Type
40mm neodymium magnet
Impedance
32 Ohms
Frequency Response
20 Hz – 40 kHz
Microphone Type
Unidirectional, retractable
Connectivity
Dual 3.5mm (Consoles)
USB Type-A (PC)
Weight
0.6 pounds (300g)
Cord Length
USB Type-A cable: 3.9 feet (1.2m)
3.5mm cable: 3.2 feet (1m)
Lighting
None
Software
Nahimic for Headset
Design and Comfort of MSI Immerse GH61
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
With the dragon logo on the ear cups and angular plastic accents throughout, you can tell MSI designed the Immerse GH61 with gamers in mind. The sleek, angular styling of the swivel mounted ear cups brings style without going overboard. On the right side above where the ear cup and headband meet but stealthily located where no one one else will see it is the Onkyo logo, representing the company behind the Immerse GH61’s drivers. The headset’s left ear cup holds the retractable microphone that smoothly slides in and out of the unit.
Although the Immerse GH61 is mostly lightweight plastic, it doesn’t feel cheap or easily breakable. The plastic also helps keep the headset trim at 0.6 pounds. For comparison among other USB/3.5mm headsets, the Corsair HS70 Bluetooth is 0.7 pounds, and the XPG Precog is 0.8 pounds.
You get a very warm and super soft faux leather covering the memory foam ear cups. The adjustable metal headband is covered in the same memory foam and protein leather for an overall feel that’s oh so soft and lucious. The ear cups snuggle cozily against the ears and feel much better than the fabric you’ll find on some other gaming headsets. However, because the headset uses leatherette, you’ll start to feel warm after wearing them for a while. Thankfully, MSI includes cloth ear cup covers to swap in if that’s your preference, a thoughtful touch.
The Immerse GH61 can lay flat, thanks to its swivel mounted cups, but you’ll enjoy retiring them to the included tailor-made carrying pouch — another value point for MSI.
You can connect the Immerse GH61 via its integrated 3.5mm cable, which is handy for consoles but also works with PC or via USB. For a PC connection you can use either the 3.5mm cable or the USB cable, which includes an ESS Sabre-branded (digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and AMP. You’ll need the DAC (and, therefore, a USB connection) to use the headset’s virtual 7.1 surround sound feature. The DAC also provides handy controls over volume and the mic that relieve you from having to fuss around with your ear cups and, potentially, introduce noise into outgoing audio.
Audio Performance of MSI Immerse GH61
MSI used 40mm neodymium magnet drivers made and tuned by Japanese audio vendor Onkyo. In general, they produce silky smooth, warm audio with fine clarity, depth and ample volume. No matter how high I cranked the volume, there was zero distortion. Bass, on the other hand, seemed to have a healthy limit to prevent distortion when you have the volume maxed out, but the highs never get tinny.
But if you want the Immerse GH61 at its finest, you’ll want to use its DAC. The ESS Sabre DAC and AMP is said to increase the cans’ dynamic range from 90dB to 121dB using ESS’s HyperStream technology. They also boost the signal to noise ratio (SNR) from 100dB to 121dB, while total harmonic distortion and noise (THD+N) decreases, meaning less distortion, from 0.001% to 0.00017%
To test the cans’ gaming prowess, I set it to gaming mode via software. There was subtle difference compared to the out-of-box settings, and the virtual 7.1 surround sound seemed to work well in creating an immersive atmosphere with this mode.
With the DAC, I felt a heightened sense of the sounds around me in Batman: Arkham Knight. In a fight I could hear a goon’s feet shuffle to the left of me as I spun around to punch him and enjoy the audio reproduction of Batman’s jaw breaking punches.I could even tell which direction combatants were coming from, thanks to the virtual surround sound, which allowed me to turn quickly in response. Even Catwoman’s voice came through very clearly and distinctly from a distance, and I was able to tell how far she was based on the sound.
The Sabre DAC and AMP really helped make the audio experience lovely. Listening to the heavenly violin mastery of Julia Fischer playing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major was beyond exquisite. When the orchestra’s bass strings came into play, the creaminess of the bass was simply delightful. Julia’s violin strings were hauntingly melodic as the Immerse GH61 picked up every note change. The occasional wind instrument floated in to deliver gravitas and tonal changes that the DAC’s virtual 7.1 surround sound enhanced. Music often doesn’t take well to virtual surround sound, but on the Immerse GH61 pressing the 7.1 button took me into a concert hall. With the DAC, the experience was still high quality but lacked the fine-tuned concert hall feel.
The inviting, slow, melodious guitar solo that kicked off System of a Down’s “Toxicity” was reproduced harmoniously with 7.1 surround on. When the driving guitar kicked in, the Immerse GH61 handled the quick switch from sweet harmony to driving heavy metal angst with aplomb and joy. Serj Tankian’s rangy powerful voice belting out poetic political truths came through the swivel mounted, plastic ear cups. The 40mm drivers made me feel like I was in a live concert.
Without virtual surround sound, “Toxicity” still sounded fierce and powerful but, again. without that amazing inside a concert venue feel, where it felt like music was bouncing off the walls, massaging the sound and energizing the crowd.
The Immerse GH61’s drivers also support Hi-Res audio, which is audio that has a higher sampling frequency and/or bit depth than a CD, which is at 16-bit / 44.1 kHz. There isn’t much in the way of gaming that supports this audio format, but audiophiles will appreciate the inclusion, especially at this price.
I needed no more convincing that the MSI GH61’s were worth every penny of their $109.99. I will close by saying I listened to Prince’s “Purple Rain” and ended up standing and dancing fully enjoying the entire experience. MSI really made a smart move by combining the Onkyo speakers with the DAC and Nahimic software.
Microphone on MSI Immerse GH61
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
One of the Immerse GH61’s more unique features is its retractable microphones housed in its ear cup. At first I was worried that this would be a failure, either due to durability issues or by introducing noise into my audio. But I used the mic all day during many CES Zoom and Google Meets and to record a podcast and was pleasantly surprised.
I learned the hard way that retracting the microphone does not mute it, as my daughter heard me spew a choice word at an incoming news story on my screen. Then. I had to explain to my daughter that it’s not funny and not language to be repeated, to which she replied, “I’m almost 12 years old and I hear worse at the supermarket.” So please remember to mute, unless you want an unruly child picking up new, colorful imprecations.
Many attached mics do not pick up subtle tone changes very well, but the Immerse GH61’s did a nice job of doing just that when I recorded a podcast appearance. The mic caught all the bass and nuances in my voice as I bounced around from topic to topic, changing my voice levels to suit the mood. There was no distortion to report and, once again, the Nahimic software also was helpful which I will get into next.
The mic is specced for a frequency response of 100-10,000 Hz with a sensitivity of -38 dB. It’s well engineered and operated very smoothly with no hiccups. I must’ve slid it in and out 100 times in a row to see if there would be any catches, but that would never happen. Again, nice work team, Maybe next time make it able to retract and extend automatically? Ok, maybe I’m being a little lazy.
Features and Software of MSI Immerse GH61
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The Immerse GH61 works with Nahimic for Headset, which is a very user-friendly and simple application. The user interface is nicely designed with warm neon-like aqua colored tones. You can use the app to tweak the bass and treble levels, as well as select from presets for music, movie, communication and gaming modes. You can also choose to turn the effects off altogether and adjust the microphone settings.
Nahimic for Headset offers adjustments for the mic gain, and you can also minimize variations in volume by using the Voice Stabilizer section. There is also an excellent static noise suppression section, which improves communication clarity when you’re shouting commands in Call of Duty or on Zoom calls. It also removes a fair amount of background noise, including computer fans.
Bottom Line
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The MSI Immerse GH61 arrives with baby bottom soft ear cups, a simple, yet stylish, design and excellent audio and microphone capabilities. It adds value with an excellent pouch for storing the lightweight thumpers. They cans are also somewhat versatile, offering both 3.5mm and USB connection and virtual surround sound, making them great for console and PC gamers alike.
At max volume, bass takes a hit, and it’d be great if the mic would mute when retracted. But overall, there’s not a lot missing here. (Most of us can still live without RGB on our headsets, right?)
If you want a gaming headset at a good price that’s thumpy and warm and offers wonderful spatial quality, the MSI Immerse GH61 should be high on your list.
Sonos is preparing for the release of a new product that, according to FCC documentation, is likely to be the company’s second portable speaker with a rechargeable battery. The unannounced device, listed at the FCC as model number S27, is shown in testing diagrams to have a wireless charging dock and offer both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) wireless technology.
FCC diagrams reveal a wireless charging dock.Image: FCC
The mandatory FCC label reveals that this new product uses less power than existing Sonos speakers like the Sonos Move, lending more credence to a smaller overall size. The circular label design, and the fact that Sonos says the label is visible on the bottom surface of the product hints that this Sonos speaker could feature a cylindrical design similar to Bluetooth speaker mainstays like the UE Boom.
Image: FCC
The current Sonos Move’s size and weight help it to put out strong sound, but they also make it a less practical speaker for taking on the go. At a hefty 6.6 pounds, it’s something you’d bring from inside out to your porch, maybe, but Sonos still lacks a speaker portable enough for tossing into a bag and traveling with. S27 might just be the answer for that. The original Move, which was leaked soon after its own FCC filing, is model number S17.
The current Sonos Move is far larger than many portable Bluetooth speakers. Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
This would also be the first speaker from Sonos to include Wi-Fi 5; the Move supports Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n). Bluetooth would come into play more often when using the speaker outside somewhere, but improved Wi-Fi could help performance when playing it around the home as part of Sonos’ multi-room systems.
Other products that Sonos is rumored to be actively developing include a pair of premium headphones. But a line in one of the FCC documents seems to rule out that we’re looking at those. “For satisfying FCC RF exposure compliance requirements, the device must be used with a separation distance of at least 20 cm from all persons,” it says. So all signs — especially that wireless charger — point to a small, rechargeable device. As much as I’d love to see a Sonos shower head speaker or something a little unconventional, I’m banking on a Move Mini. And hopefully for a price significantly lower than the $400 Move.
In January, South Korean a cappella group Maytree wowed us with their spot-on vocal interpretations of Windows sound effects, and on Friday, the group released a video of their next impressive showcase: interpretations of sounds from iPhones.
The video is a little over a minute long, and I recommend watching the whole thing, which you can do at the top of this post. They cover a lot of ringtones, including the familiar “Opening” ringtone, the classic “Marimba” ringtone, and even the twangy “Strum” ringtone. (I should warn you that they also re-create the blaring “Alarm” ringtone, so be prepared to experience that brief moment of terror.) They even tackle some system noises, including the sounds of text messages being sent and received and a tightly choreographed version of the iPhone’s lock sound.
If you haven’t seen the video of the Windows sound effects, you should take 28 seconds out of your day to watch it, too. I think it’s even better than their iPhone video.
(Pocket-lint) – Cambridge Audio has been around for donkey’s years and has built something of a tradition in the world of home audio equipment. But in the world of headphones, it doesn’t quite draw the attention as much as the likes of Sony, Bose or Sennheiser. So when it launched a pair of true wireless earbuds, the Melomania 1, that was something of a surprise.
Even more of a surprise, perhaps, was that the Melomania 1 was both great-sounding and very affordable. So the follow-up pair had a high bar to meet. Can Cambridge Audio blow us away with great, affordable buds for a second time? Here’s how the Melomania Touch fares…
Design
Touch controls
IPX4 water resistance
Faux leather coated case
Available in black or white
3x ear fin and 3x ear tip sizes for fit
Cambridge Audio launched its first pair of true wireless earbuds in 2018, and stood out from the market for a couple reasons. One of those was the design, which reminded us of little foam-tipped bullets. Of course, this shape wasn’t necessarily the most ergonomic or practical for in-ear fit, but the lightweight and easy-to-wear finish helped counter that.
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The Melomania Touch looks nothing like the first-gen model and doesn’t feel the same in the ears either. It’s a huge change in direction, and one that has its benefits and its drawbacks.
The new warped teardrop-shape design of the Melomania Touch means these ‘buds are designed to fit and almost fill the inner part of your year, holding onto the middle ridge with an in-ear fin. That means, by their very nature, the individual ‘buds are a much more secure fit than the looser-fitting predecessors.
Because of the various sizes of fin and ear tips, we did find it took a couple of tries to get the right fit for us. Trying out a couple of different combinations we eventually settled on one that was comfortable but with a decent seal and with minimal pressure. Essentially just stepping down a size from the default fit. As we talk about in the sound section later on, getting this right fit is essential for good audio.
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Even with a better fit for this generation you can still tell those tips are in your ear. As the tips are the standard shape and size for earbuds, you can always feel them in there and don’t quite get to that almost undetectable level you’ll find with wider cone-shaped tips. The Touch’s feel isn’t uncomfortable though, so you’ll be fine for a couple of hours at a time – too much longer and you will start to feel some sensitivity.
As we’re sure you gathered from the name ‘Touch’, these in-ears outer surface is touch-sensitive but of course, so you can use it to control various features, such as playing and pausing music or skipping tracks. Like most earbuds that feature this, it’s useful when you’re needing to use it on purpose. Most of the time we interacted with the Touch, however, it was accidentally.
The problem with such a large area being touch-sensitive is that if you try to adjust the fit, reach to remove the buds, or frankly do anything that involves touching them, it’s quite finicky trying to avoid that touch-sensitive area and inadvertently playing or pausing music.
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The charging case is a nice upgrade for this second-gen model. Rather than looking like a small pack of dental floss made from the beige plastic cast-off from a 1990s desktop PC, this cases is pill-shaped and coated in a soft faux leather. It’s a lovely looking and lovely feeling case, although we found the docks for each earbud could do with having stronger feeling magnet, to ensure that each ‘bud was absolutely in the right position to charge.
Performance, features and voice calls
Bluetooth 5.0 and AAC
Qualcomm aptX, TrueWireless Stereo Plus
7 hours music playback (33 hrs in case)
50 hours total maximum battery life (in low power mode)
Cambridge Audio has equipped the Melomania Touch with a lot of the modern tech you’d hope to find in true wireless earbuds. There’s aptX for lag-free connection with most Android phones. In addition there’s Qualcomm’s other tech: TrueWireless Stereo Plus. This connects each earbud to the Android phone independently and to each other, rather than use one ‘bud as the primary and have the other feed from it.
There’s also Bluetooth 5.0 and AAC support, so Apple iPhone users are catered for. The Touch even uses Qualcomm’s tech for enhancing the clarity of voice calls, so while Cambridge Audio is something of a traditional British audiophile company, it’s had the sense to try and utilise expertise from available tech to make these ‘buds convenient for the day-to-day user who will want to use them for calls.
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However, we did struggle at times with the wireless connectivity. It started with the initial setup, where we struggled with pairing and for the ‘buds to be discoverable – to the point where we went through the factory reset guide. Even then we could only get one ‘buds to pair – something that a firmware fix attempt couldn’t sort.
Given that all controls, including the reset process, are activated using that shiny touch-sensitive surface no physical feedback, it’s not exactly easy to perform such tasks. We’d much rather the Touch adopted a similar approach to the companies that have a single physical pairing button on the case itself, rather than trying to press-and-hold a touch-sensitive area on two earbuds simultaneously that’s curved and naturally slippery and may or may not respond as it’s supposed to. It’s finicky to say the least.
So we ended up seeking a replacement pair of the Melomania Touch just to make sure everything checked out. Which, generally speaking, has been the case. Once paired with replacement ‘buds, our connection has been reliable during our testing. With music playing, we’ve had no issues with the audio cutting out once it’s got going.
But connectivity didn’t seem to be quite as on the ball in all areas: upon initial connection, having removed the ‘buds from the case, the music would start in one ear before the other by a second or so. That wait isn’t the norm these days.
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Battery life is strong, even in its normal usage mode. Up to seven hours out of the case at a time is more than enough for anyone, even if you’re taking a long journey. Cambridge Audio says you can get up to 50 hours total battery time if you’re happy switching to low power mode, but the process on how to do that isn’t exactly obvious or easy within the app, and really we’re just not sure it’s worth the hassle.
Getting up to 33 hours of total battery – including the charges in the case – is more than the average from most true wireless buds, so that’ll do just fine in our. Plus, you don’t have to put up with the lower quality sound you get from low power mode, which is actually this pair of ‘buds biggest plus point.
Sound quality
7mm drivers
Melomania app for EQ
As we’ve mentioned, the sound is highly dependent on the fit. For instance, if you have too snug a fit the bass will get a little too ‘boomy’ – particularly in songs where there’s some significant bass or bass drum powering the rhythm. As examples, the bass in Hoping by X Ambassadors or the kick drum in Dopeness by Black Eyed Peas. Some people might really like that high impact bass though. In a lot of songs it is highly enjoyable, but in others it just gets a tiny bit too much for our taste.
Best USB-C headphones for Android phones 2021
By Dan Grabham
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Thankfully, there’s a manual equaliser (EQ) to adjust the sound to your own preference. This is found within the app, where you can also enable and adjust the transparency mode to let in external audio, so that you’re not completely blocked off from the world.
Use a fit that’s less pressured and the sound changes a little to become a lot more natural and less bass heavy. Bass is still quite prominent, but it doesn’t detract from the rest of the frequencies. In fact, the 7mm drivers in these ‘buds are some of the most detailed you’ll hear at this price point.
So with the right fit you get loud and prominent bass, but also all of the subtleties elsewhere in the mix Jangly piano is still bright and clear, as is subtle guitar string plucking, while vocals are delivered with clarity. Nothing is ever drowned out by those punchy bass notes. So all in all, it’s a dynamic sound that’s impressive at this end of the earbud market. And that’s what really matters.
Verdict
After loving the sound that came from the original Cambridge Audio Melomania 1, we had high hopes for the follow-up pair. And there’s no denying, the audio from the Melomania Touch is super – vibrant, punchy and hugely enjoyable.
But the earbuds suffer from connection issues and a design that’s just not hugely practical. Whether it’s the frustrating pairing process, or the fact that – at times – the connection to one of the ‘buds failed or was delayed, the experience lacked the polish we’d come to expect given the success of the first outing.
Still, once you have the Melomania Touch in our ears and are listening to music – and not touching them, because that touch-sensitive panel is easy to hit by accident – the music is so good.
In this price range you’re unlikely to find anything that sounds as dynamic and clear as these. We’re just wary given the connectivity ups and downs.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Jabra Elite 75t
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As reliable a pair of true wireless ‘buds as you’ll find. These in-ears are small, comfortable to wear and deliver a sound solid.
Read our review
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Sony WF-SP800N
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These sporty in-ears offer a lot of Sony’s smart ambient sound control and the noise-cancellation tech is the real star. Battery life is only average though, which is surprising given the (massive) size of the case. Overall these ‘buds sound great and offer plenty of customisation.
If you’re shopping for 144 Hz and 25 inches, the BenQ EX2510 is one of the best IPS panels we’ve seen for under $300. There’s no extended color, but it delivers top-notch gaming and surprisingly good HDR. Users seeking a high performance-to-price ratio should definitely check it out.
For
Good contrast and color accuracy
Decent HDR
Good gaming performance
Strong build quality
Against
No extended color
No dynamic contrast in HDR
Features and Specifications
The price of a good gaming monitor is generally dictated by screen size, resolution and refresh rate. Other gaming features, like Adaptive-Sync, are pretty much a given for any display marketed to enthusiasts. And color accuracy and build quality do not necessarily go hand-in-hand with cost.
BenQ may not be as well known for its gaming screens as brands like Asus or Acer, but it offers products that deliver performance, quality and value. Lately, it has brought out new models with interesting names like Zowie and Mobiuz. But these creative monikers don’t attempt to make up for any shortfall. The new Mobiuz EX2510 is a great example. It’s a 25-inch, 1080p resolution IPS panel with a 144 Hz refresh rate, FreeSync and G-Sync compatibility and HDR with BenQ’s HDRi emulation mode. At publication time, it’s selling for around $250, making it much more affordable than many of the market’s best gaming monitors.
BenQ Mobiuz EX2510 Specs
Panel Type / Backlight
IPS / W-LED, edge array
Screen Size / Aspect Ratio
24.5 inches / 16:9
Max Resolution & Refresh Rate
1920 x 1080 @ 144 Hz
FreeSync: 48-144 Hz
Native Color Depth & Gamut
8-bit / sRGB; HDR10
Response Time (GTG)
2ms
Brightness
400 nits
Contrast
1,000:1
Speakers
2x 2.5w treVolo audio w/DSP
Video Inputs
1x DisplayPort 1.2
2x HDMI 2.0
Audio
3.5mm headphone output
USB 3.0
None
Power Consumption
15.8w, brightness @ 200 nits
Panel Dimensions WxHxD w/base
22 x 15.5-20.5 x 8.5 inches (559 x 394-521 x 216mm)
Panel Thickness
2 inches (51mm)
Bezel Width
Top/sides: 0.3 inch (7mm)
Bottom: 0.8 inch (21mm)
Weight
12.4 pounds (5.6kg)
Warranty
3 years
The 25-inch gaming monitor category is filled with super-fast 1080p resolution models running above 240 Hz and priced at the premium level. The 360 Hz Asus ROG Swift PG259QN is a perfect example. It’s a 25-inch, 1080p IPS monitor that costs an eye-watering $700. But if you’re OK with 144 Hz, you can save quite a bit of money. In fact, the BenQ EX2510 is a great alternative to 27-inch 1080p and 1440p monitors that typically cost about $75-100 more.
The EX2510’s 144 Hz refresh rate is achieved without overclock. The monitor’s AMD FreeSync-certified, and we were also able to run Nvidia G-Sync on it, even though it’s not certified (to do this yourself, check out our How to Run G-Sync on a FreeSync Monitor tutorial).
Though it’s compatible with HDR10 signals, the EX2510 does not include an extended color gamut. Color depth is a true 8 bits achieved without Frame Rate Compensation, and the backlight is flicker-free.
Assembly and Accessories of BenQ Mobiuz EX2510
The EX2510’s build quality is apparent when you unpack its three parts. The base is nicely finished in silver with an orange rubber accent across the front. The upright is quite heavy and solid. Just attach it to the base with a captive bolt. The panel then snaps in place. A 100mm VESA mount is included for aftermarket hardware.
In the box, you’ll find an HDMI cable and IEC power cord for the internal power supply. There’s also a snap-on cover for the input panel. You can pass the cables through a hole in the upright for a tidier look.
BenQ Mobiuz EX2510: Product 360
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The BenQ EX2510’s styling is somewhat blocky and understated for a gaming monitor., but it’s all about function. Straight lines dominate its shape with the only curve being a smooth taper across the back. The bezel is flush and free of physical framing, but you can see a thin 7mm border when the power’s on. The bottom trim is 21mm wide and features the BenQ logo and an HDRi button (more on that later). The front anti-glare layer is free of grain and presents a sharp image without reflecting any room light.
The stand features 5 inches of height adjustment plus 20-degree swivel each way and -5/20 degrees of tilt. There is no portrait mode. Movements are very firm and solid with no play at all. Even if you shake up your desk during intense frag sessions the EX2510 will stay put.
In addition to the HDRi button on the front, there are two more keys in the back-right corner, plus a joystick for menu navigation. One key toggles power, its status indicated by a white LED, and the other changes the signal source. The controls click firmly and respond quickly to user input.
In the bezel’s center, you can see a small protrusion that houses the sensor for BenQ’s Brightness Intelligence Plus (BI+) feature. It works with two of the HDRi modes to adjust brightness and color temperature to the environment. It responds quickly to changes and, in most cases, you won’t see it working.
The input panel includes two HDMI 2.0 ports and a DisplayPort version 1.2 (for help picking one, check out our HDMI vs DisplayPort article). You also get a 3.5mm audio jack for headphones or powered speakers.
OSD Features of BenQ Mobiuz EX2510
The on-screen display (OSD) appears when you press the joystick button and scroll down to the menu option. You can configure the quick menu to the user to allow easy access to commonly used options like brightness or picture mode.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The EX2510 includes three HDR and seven SDR presets. Standard is the default and most accurate choice with good out-of-box color and access to all picture options, like gamma and color temp. Other features include Light Tuner, which changes highlight and shadow detail levels. You can also access a low blue light mode from the Eye Care menu, along with the aforementioned BI+ feature, which engages the light sensor to change brightness and color temp automatically for different ambient lighting conditions.
There are five gamma options and three preset color temps, plus a very precise user mode, which we used to calibrate the EX2510 to a high standard. Also here is AMA, BenQ’s term for overdrive. It worked well on the highest of three settings to curb motion blur without ghosting artifacts. If you want to try the backlight strobe for blur reduction, you’ll have to turn off FreeSync.
For HDR content, the EX2510 will automatically switch to its default HDR mode, which is the best of the three. Cinema and Game turn the color temp quite blue, though the effect varies if you use the BI+ sensor. For testing purposes, we left these automatic enhancements off.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
To engage the bezel’s light sensor, turn it on in the Eye Care menu. It can vary brightness and color temp in the HDRi modes, as well as adjust itself over time to prevent eye fatigue. BenQ also includes red and green filters with 20 steps each to compensate for varying levels of user color blindness.
BenQ Mobiuz EX2510 Calibration Settings
In its Standard picture mode, the EX2510 is very accurate in the sRGB color space with no need for calibration. But a few gains are possible with adjustment of the RGB sliders in the user color temp mode. Gamma is spot-on with no adjustment necessary. Other picture modes are less accurate but may appeal to users playing specific game types. Using the HDRi emulations makes SDR content punchier but at the expense of some clarity in shadow and highlight areas. On page four, we’ll show you its effect with a few measurement charts.
Below are our recommended calibration settings for the BenQ Mobiuz EX2510 and SDR content. They produce perfect gamma with very accurate grayscale and color tracking.
Picture Mode
Standard
Brightness 200 nits
56
Brightness 120 nits
25
Brightness 100 nits
18
Brightness 80 nits
10 (min. 53 nits)
Contrast
50
Gamma
3
Color Temp User
Red 97, Green 99, Blue 100
For HDR, the best picture comes in the default mode.
Gaming and Hands-on with BenQ Mobiuz EX2510
One of the EX2510’s most unique features is its HDRi HDR emulation mode. It’s accessed by a button on the front panel and can give an HDR look to SDR content. HDRi works by manipulating gamma to increase perceived contrast. While not strictly accurate, it may appeal to some.
BenQ simplified the EX2510’s image options by eliminating any sort of dynamic contrast feature and leaving the HDRi modes the task of altering contrast for SDR content. We tested the three HDRi modes — HDR, Game HDRi and Cinema HDRi — with Windows apps and various games. It’s also possible to use the Cinema and Game modes with HDR-encoded content.
In SDR mode, we booted up Tomb Raider, and all three HDRi modes degraded the image to varying degrees. HDR was the least offensive but darkened the picture too much overall. Brighter scenes looked about the same, but dimly lit indoor areas were too hard to make out. Game and Cinema HDRi made the effect worse and created a blue tint over everything. With these observations in mind, we recommend avoiding the HDRi HDR emulations unless the content is predominantly bright, like a sports game or animated movie.
Turning on HDR in the Windows Control Panel had a positive effect. Very few HDR monitors actually look good running things like word processors and spreadsheets, but the EX2510 is an exception. By default, the monitor is set to 100% brightness with HDR content. That isn’t as harsh as you might think, given that it’s peaking at around 450 nits. Small highlights in photos and YouTube videos popped nicely, but the overall picture was very pleasing to look at.
Our only complaint is elevated black levels. Though perceived contrast is very good, dark material looked a bit too gray and washed out. A Harry Potter film, for example, looked murky. You’re better off watching your HDR movies in SDR mode. Since there’s no extended color gamut, you won’t see any difference in saturation between SDR and HDR. But in terms of color overall, the monitor has very accurate color tracking, so we didn’t miss the DCI-P3 color space too much.
With Windows HDR on, we played a few rounds of Call of Duty: WWII. This title makes great use of HDR, which is why we use it for testing. Bright cutscenes looked incredibly lifelike with sharp highlights and loads of detail on the EX2510. Darker areas were a bit gray, but detail was still easy to see.
In all cases, we had no trouble with video processing. You can set overdrive to its highest value without ghosting, and blur was a non-issue. Adaptive-Sync worked perfectly on both AMD and Nvidia platforms (even though it’s not G-Sync-certified) with or without HDR. Frame rates stayed maxed at 144 frames per second (fps) in all the games we played. Input lag was also a non-issue with snappy control response and no stuttering or flicker. At this price, it’s hard to imagine finding superior gaming performance.
BenQ put extra effort into its audio by tuning the built-in speakers with a technology called TreVolo. It’s a digital signal processor (DSP) devoted to tweaking the frequency response and phase of the speakers. There are three sound modes, and though they don’t deliver thumping bass at ear-bleeding levels, they sounded better than the average monitor speakers.
Another bonus feature is in the ability to engage a sensor to alter brightness and color temperature to better suit the room’s lighting. This is also something that will deviate from accepted imaging parameters but won’t degrade the picture.
Fans are remastering the soundtrack to Super Mario World, creating uncompressed versions of the original tracks that were never possible on the Super Nintendo hardware. The Super Mario World Restored project is ongoing, but you can already listen to nine tracks from the original game over on The Brickster’s YouTube channel.
As The Brickster explains on Twitter, this isn’t simply a case of taking the tracks from the original game and cleaning them up. Instead, creators like Moola, michael02022, and unknown are tracking down the original samples used to produce the tracks and rebuilding the songs, without having to compress them to fit into the SNES console’s piddly 64kb of audio RAM.
For anyone curious as to how these findings were done, its actually rather simple. Know how the Gigaleak had source code for Super Mario Advanced? That game reuses samples from Super Mario World. Those samples had names we didn’t have, which is how we were able to find them. pic.twitter.com/qWFTG1YdYW
— The Brickster (@lebrickster) February 3, 2021
Actually tracking down these samples was helped by last year’s Nintendo gigaleak, which contained the original source code to Super Mario Advance, The Brickster explains. Since that Game Boy game reused samples from Super Mario World, the team was able to use it to track down the uncompressed samples used in the original SNES title.
Listen to the new tracks side by side with the originals, and the difference in quality is stark. The new tracks sound brighter and more lively, and although the music is still obviously synthesized, it almost feels like real instruments are playing each sound, rather than a computer. But there’s also something about them that feels distinctly weird. This music was originally composed with very specific hardware in mind, and there’s something odd about hearing them in this high quality. It’s like playing an SNES game on a modern TV without scan lines.
Regardless of whether you prefer these tracks or the originals, it’s still an excellent project. The Brickster says the team is still working on putting out more tracks, meaning this is unlikely to be the last we’ll hear from the Super Mario World Restored project. In the meantime, Nerdwriter1’s video from 2018 offers a nice overview of how the Super Nintendo’s music worked.
Along with news, features, opinions, and tech reviews, video has become an increasingly important part of The Verge’s content. But to make great, involving videos, you’ve got to have staff with the expertise to create that video — along with the tools that allow those staff members to let their imaginations soar.
Alix Diaconis is one of the directors who helps make video magic for The Verge. We talked to Alix about what she does and what tools she uses.
Alix, what do you do for The Verge?
I’m one of the video directors for The Verge. I get to work every day with my three co-workers (but really, friends) to create the videos on The Verge’s YouTube channel. Sometimes deadlines are fast because tech and news are fast, but our team has been working together for years, so even live events feel seamless and fun. We each shoot, take photos, and edit; then the video gets treated by our sound and graphics wizards. Then bam, on to the next one!
What hardware and software tools are needed to produce a video for a site like The Verge?
It really varies video to video. For some videos, we’ll pull out all the stops, while for others, we need to do quick and light. Heck, I think we’ve shot videos with just a GoPro.
When we go to a press event, we’ll keep it very light with a monopod, lavalier microphone, and a camera we feel most comfortable with. And then I’ll edit at the event on my MacBook Pro.
But most of the time when we’re shooting on location, we’ll bring a bigger kit with an HD monitor, a slider (which helps you do tracking shots), maybe a drone. And when we’re making the big stuff, like a flagship phone review, we like to bring out everything, including a probe lens like the Venus Optics Laowa to make intro shots like this.
The opening shot on this video was created using a probe lens.
Since we’re uploading videos for our job, good internet upload speeds make life a lot easier. We also have a shared server so we have access to our terabytes and terabytes of footage at all times.
Oh, and also teamwork. Lots and lots of teamwork.
What specific hardware tools do you use for your work?
For shooting, I prefer to use the Canon EOS C200 — I think it looks really cinematic — and my preferred lens is the Canon EF 70-200mm (for B-roll at least). Sometimes I’ll use the Sony A7S II or III, which looks extra crisp, but I’m not a big fan of Sony menus. For sound, I’ll typically use a Sennheiser G3 lavalier or a Zoom H6 recorder. For photos, I use the Canon 50D.
For post-production in The Verge offices, I would edit on a 27-inch iMac, which is due for an upgrade. At home, though, I have a more powerful editing PC that my producer built for me. It has an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core processor, 2TB NVMe drive, a Radeon RX 580 series video card, 32GB RAM, and an Asus 28-inch 4K display. Of course, there are always technical issues — it’s part of editing — but the PC is the best editing machine I’ve personally owned. (Thank you, Phil!) I do miss the beautiful iMac display though.
Also, since video takes up a lot of space, I’ll sometimes use an additional SSD for projects. And as for headphones, I use the Sony MDR-7506, which are the only headphones I can wear comfortably all day.
And then there’s the fun, random gear: a GoPro Hero 8, an Insta360 panoramic video camera (which we recently used for this e-bike video), a Zhiyun Crane, a DJI Mavic Pro drone… and whatever else we can get our hands on.
This video was created using an Insta360 panoramic video camera.
What software tools do you use for your work?
All Adobe everything. Premiere Pro for editing, After Effects for basic graphics, and Photoshop for the video thumbnails. You can do a lot in Premiere, but it does have its bugs, and it’s not always optimized for Apple’s hardware.
What tools do you use for your own projects?
I’ve been teaching myself DaVinci Resolve to color footage. I still barely understand the program, but it makes footage look 100x better than coloring it in Premiere. And purely for fun, I shoot 35mm film on my dad’s old Minolta camera.
What hardware and software tools would you recommend for somebody just starting out?
Premiere is very common for editing. But if you want to try something free and you have an iPhone or iPad, there’s the Splice app. It’s really intuitive, but you’re limited to clips you have on your device. There’s also DaVinci Resolve, which is free and as advanced as most paid editing softwares.
As for cameras, just get one that you feel comfortable using! And for a computer, invest in a good one if you see yourself editing for a long time; iMacs and Windows PCs are both good, and the specs will just depend on how big your projects will be. I haven’t had a chance to use Apple’s new M1 MacBook Air or Pro yet, but both seem like good choices if you’d prefer a laptop.
The Razer Huntsman V2 Analog keyboard is premium in its feature set, design and price; although, dedicated macro keys would’ve been nice. Pressure-sensitive keys bring a fine level of control in supported PC games, and they’re highly programmable, from their sensitivity to their reset point and functionality. For those who can put Razer’s new analog optical switches to work, this is as swanky as it gets.
For
Highly customizable analog mechanical switches
Satisfying typing experience
Comfortably padded RGB wrist rest
Handy media controls
Against
Wildly expensive
No macro keys
Customizable actuation could go lower
Limited PC support for analog control
The best gaming keyboards can come in flashy colors, offer high levels of programmability and different typing feels, but they still haven’t ousted controllers or become the cemented leader in gaming control. A big reason for that is the joystick. Not only do joysticks provide a fun, assertive and even nostalgic way to play games, but they also provide a type of input keyboards typically can’t offer: analog input.
It’s been a slow movement, but mechanical keyboard makers have been introducing keyboards with analog input, with keys that are sensitive to how much pressure is applied. Some, like the Wooting lineup, use optical mechanical switches to achieve this. With that in mind, it’s not too surprising to see Razer enter the analog race (crawl?). As one of the leaders in optical mechanical switches, the introduction of the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog with new Razer Analog Optical switches almost makes complete sense. That is, until you see the $250 price tag.
Razer Huntsman V2 Analog Specs
Switches
Razer Analog Optical
Lighting
Per-key RGB
Onboard Storage
4 profiles (no RGB)
Media Keys
Yes
Interface
USB
Cable
USB Type-C, plus USB Type-A for USB passthrough
Additional Ports
1x USB 3.0 passthrough port
Key Caps
Doubleshot PBT
Software
Razer Synapse
Dimensions (LxWxH without wrist rest)
17.53 x 5.52 x 1.71 inches
Extra
USB-C to USB-A Adapter
Razer Analog Optical Switches
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The big difference between analog mechanical switches and standard mechanical switches is how they read key presses. Most keyboards have digital input, meaning that they read either a 0 value (not depressed) or 1 value (depressed). Analog switches can get more specific. They work like a controller joystick in that they’re able to tell how hard you’re pressing a key and report the input appropriately. In a driving game, for example, this could mean a slight left turn when tapping A or a sharp turn when pressing it hard and bottoming out. Or in a FPS game, it could be the difference between creeping forward into a dark room cautiously or sprinting full force ahead.
With Razer’s Synapse software, you can set any of the keyboard’s keys to work like the functions offered via an Xbox controller’s left and right analog joysticks. It’s easy to set W,A,S and D, for example as left joystick up, left down and right, respectively. Afterward, pressing W lightly in a racing game might move your car forward a bit, while pressing it all the way down will rev you up to max speed.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
In this way, the Huntsman V2 Analog can let you play supported games with the same type of control you’d have with a controller with joysticks. But Synapse even offers more customization, letting you select one of its preset configurations or choose what point in key travel represents what analog input value from 0-255.
We’ve seen analog mechanical keyboards before, but the tech isn’t all the same. For example, the Cooler Master MK850 uses Aimpad tech that essentially takes standard Cherry MX Red mechanical switches and applies infrared (IR) tech to a select cluster of keys to give them analog functionality. The Huntsman V2 Analog is more like the Wooting Two in that every switch is analog and also optical mechanical (or optical for short). In general, optical switches activate when their stem crosses a light beam, differing from standard mechanical switches, which actuate via metallic contact.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
With Razer’s analog optical switches, light travels down a triangular opening in the switch’s stem. That opening widens as you press a key. A photosensor in the switch reads how much light is going through that triangle and makes an analog signal in line with how much light is detected.
Adjustable Actuation Points
The Huntsman V2 Analog’s switches also offer adjustable actuation points. If you download Synapse, you can set individual keys actuation points anywhere from 1.5-3.6mm in 0.1mm increments, as well as the reset point. The amount of force required to actuate an input will also change, starting at 54g if set to 1.5mm actuation and reaching a heavy 74g at 3.6mm.
Customizable actuation (not customizable reset) is something we’ve seen in other analog keyboards, like the Wooting Two. You can also find this feature on the SteelSeries Apex Pro OLED, but its SteelSeries OmniPoint switches aren’t pressure-sensitive.
Synapse makes setting your preferred actuation points simple and even offers a real-time pressure gauge. You can press a button as light or hard as you want, and a meter will visually show you your proximity to the 1.5mm actuation minimum or 3.6mm maximum. It’d be nice if the meter also told you how many millimeters you were at with that press (instead of just a representative green bar), but you can also set actuation points by entering a specific number.
One Keystroke, Two Inputs
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
And for the advanced gamer, Razer’s Analog Optical switches also allow for two inputs in one press if you program the feature via software. In the image above, Q works as Q until I bottom out, when it turns into E, letting me to quickly use two of Ashe’s special moves in Overwatch with rapid ease but still allowing me to just stick with just the Q move if desired.
To use any of these features on your PC, you’ll need to play a game with analog input support. The Huntsman V2 Analog’s namesake switch features are only available in PC games that support both mouse/keyboard and controller input if you set a key to a joystick function and try to use it without such a game, that key will do nothing when pressed). We’ll see how much those requirements limit our analog gameplay and how well the switches fare on the battlefield in the Gaming Experience section below.
Design of Razer Huntsman V2 Analog
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Razer’s Huntsman lineup is always pricey, partially due to the optical switches. The Huntsman V2 Analog is on the upper echelon of the upper-tier and carries a very similar design to what it’s replacing as the brand’s most expensive keyboard, the Razer Huntsman Elite. That includes pleasing media keys and a lavish RGB wrist rest. The design here has some legs up on the Huntsman Elite’s design though and, believe it or not, one of its biggest advantages is its wrist rest.
The Huntsman V2 Analog has a fake leather wrist rest that’s also RGB-ready. To set it aglow, all you have to do is plug in the keyboard and magnetically attach the wrist rest to the keyboard. It’ll metallically snap on securely, and thankfully, doesn’t require plugging in an extra cable to light up (like the Huntsman Elite does).
Wrist rests feel like an odd place for RGB because you’ll rarely see it. From my typical seated positions, I couldn’t usually see the RGB running along the wrist rest’s bottom lip or on the left and right sides. Nor could I see the RGB framing the actual keyboard’s on the bottom lip (if the wrist rest’s not attached) and left and right sides and bottom lip (if the wrist rest’s not attached). Sometimes it’d peek out from the bottom lip, especially if I was sitting lower, but I could never see it on the slides.
But with RGB brightness boosted up to about 40%, I got an impactful glow on my desk — even in a sunny room. And from afar or on a stream, the Huntsman V2 Analog’s RGB is definitely impressive. Whether on the deck, wrist rest or keys, the lighting shines with brilliance, clarity and accuracy with what’s programmed via software. Speaking of, you can set effects or colors to individual keys, and the deck and wrist rest carry 40 individual lighting zones total.
But who cares about RGB under your wrists when there’s so much comfort there too? The wrist rest here is Razer’s plushest yet and provides a clean, natural look with its bezel-less design. The filling has a good amount of density but isn’t quite in the firm category. It’s also not as plush and doesn’t have the same squishy, cooling gel feel of our favorite standalone wrist rest, the HyperX Wrist Rest. But in terms of comfort, this is one of the few pack-in wrist rests I’d consider using with other keyboards.
Razer’s Huntsman V2 Analog has two non-detachable USB cables coming out of it. The second one is for the USB 3.0 passthrough port on the left side of the clacker’s deck. These are thick, braided fiber cables, but we’ve encountered bulkier. Cable management is on you, but one nice touch is that this is a USB-C keyboard natively. (The USB passthrough port cable is USB-A). If you don’t have a USB-C port, Razer includes a USB-C to USB-A adapter in the box.
Media controls work wonders on a keyboard, and Razer has nearly perfectly nailed it with the rewind, play/pause, fast forward and volume wheel/mute button. The volume wheel is the real star. It has a tactile scroll with a healthy amount of resistance, so there won’t be accidental spins. There’s a premium feel that makes the wheel seem like it can take a lot of spinning — which is great because playing with this thing makes me feel like a DJ.
Razer even gave the media buttons customizable RGB. The problem is that the inscriptions are hard to read, so you’ll have to memorize them or get the right angle to read the black-on-black writing. This is also the case with the indicator light south of the navigational buttons.
Premium design touches come in the form of an aluminum top plate sitting atop the plastic bottom and doubleshot PBT keycaps that look as good as they feel. If you look very closely, there’s a subtle finish to the top plate that provides a mild shimmer that matches the effect brought on by the keycaps’ visible texture. The keyboard’s overall finish is clean but not fingerprint-proof.
The keycaps specifically, however, fight off fingerprints well, since Razer opted for the pricer PBT plastic option. They’re also doubleshot, or made with two layers of plastic injection mold, ensuring durability and that the writing never fades. The writing is less striking than other gaming keyboards with loud fonts; although the lower-case lettering on some keys adds playfulness.
Razer claims its manufacturing methods allow for the “thinnest font possible on a doubleshot PBT keycap.” There’s light bleed in between the keys and a lot of light reflecting on the button of the FN row particularly at max brightness. But you can curb this by reducing RGB brightness.
Analog Gaming Experience
The Huntsman V2 Analog’s customizable actuation points and double inputs work with any game or app, but for the keys to be pressure-sensitive like a joystick, you’ll need a supported game. Razer told me this is any game that allows for both game/mouse inputs and controllers. Inconveniently, the brand’s yet to share a list of supported games, but a similar tech, Aimpad, has its own list of supported games, which will also likely work with the Razer keyboard’s analog features too. We’ll update this review if Razer shares a list of supported games.
To try out the switches’ pressure sensitivity, I turned to Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V), hoping to get the same amount of vehicular control I get when playing the game on-console. Have you ever tried to drive like a sane person in GTA V? It’s a game in itself, and with pressure-sensitive input, I was able to get the fine level of control needed to do this successfully.
With the WASD cluster set to control navigation, I was able to tap A to make a light turn instead of one that sharply veered me offroad into local prostitutes. With the A and D keys set to turn my heisted vehicles left and right, a light tap helped me slowly accelerate to the left, and I can hold the key at that level to maintain speed. If I needed to swerve or turn sharply, bottoming out quickly got the wheels turned as far as possible.
Feeling natural and comfortable while keeping a key pressed, say, halfway, will take some getting used to though. Since these switches are linear, at first it felt challenging to maintain just the right amount of pressure to achieve the amount of acceleration I wanted with my car.
Linear switches are great for fast, interruption-free input, but I’d love to see an analog mechanical switch with tactile feedback. It may be easier to keep the key half-pressed (or so) comfortably if there’s a bump along the travel that can serve as a resting point. Full disclosure: I generally prefer tactile switches over linear ones.
General Gaming Experience on Razer Huntsman V2 Analog
Even if you’re not playing a game that supports our review focus’ analog features, there’s a potential advantage to be had in the Huntsman V2 Analog’s customizable actuation points. The most popular linear switch, Cherry MX Reds, have a 2mm actuation point, 4mm total travel and require 45g. Since you can set the Huntsman V2 Analog’s switches to have an actuation point as low as 1.5mm, your fingers can have 0.5mm less to travel to register an input. On top of that, the reset point is also customizable, so you can really get the feel you want. Actuation force is greater than Cherry Reds though, with the Razer switches ranging from 54g with 1.5mm actuation and maxing at 74g.
But in terms of keyboards with customizable actuation points, we’ve seen shorter. The Apex Pro OLED’s OmniPoint switches can actuate at 0.4-3.6mm. And the hard-to-find Wooting Two can actuate from 0.1-4mm with 65g of force. At 0.1mm you’d have to be careful not to accidentally brush up on a key and add accidental pressure, but for very skilled and quick gamers, it’d be nice to have 0.1-1.5mm actuation points be an option.
In general, the keyboard’s well-spaced layout and premium keycaps with their pleasant sound and slip-0resistant texture made long hours of game a breeze.
One of the keyboard’s most unique features is the ability to assign two functions to one key press. With the right execution, this can be fun and efficient and let you complete your two tasks quicker.
I used this trick in Overwatch with the E key. I set the keyboard so that pressing the E key down 1.5mm served as pressing E, which makes Ashe throw dynamite. Then, if I continued pressing E down to 3.6mm, the input would change to Q, which fires Ashe’s shotgun. Being able to hit E and Q in one stroke let me throw dynamite and then quickly shoot it, so it’d instantly explode in an enemy’s face. I could set a macro like this on many mechanical gaming keyboards, but then I wouldn’t have the option to not use the shotgun if, for instance, my aim was off, and I, therefore, didn’t want to waste a shot making it explode.
Again, I’d like to see how tactile, instead of linear switches, might make this feature easier to leverage. With a tactile switch, I could set the secondary input to a point after the bump, which would bring a clearer distinction between input 1 and input 2.
Typing Experience on Razer Huntsman V2 Analog
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Huntsman V2 Analog debuts Razer’s Analog Optical mechanical switches, which have a lot of tricks to them, as we detailed above. But in their simplest form, they’re linear switches. One of the best parts is that the typing experience is, somewhat, up to you. No matter what, you’ll have linear presses that go down smoothly with no bump or clicking noise along the way. But with the ability to set each switch’s actuation point from 1.5-3.6mm, you can decide if an input requires a light press or nearly bottoming out. Lighter actuation points can make for quicker input, while requiring a harder press may help avoid accidental inputs.
Linear switches are known to have zero clickiness, but the doubleshot PBT keycaps make a delightful noise that reminds me of someone writing with chalk. The spacebar is especially loud with a slightly higher and more hollow noise to it.
The switches are also specced for 4mm total travel and actuate with 54-74g of force. For comparison, the linear analog optical switches found in the Wooting Two, Flaretech Linear55 Reds, can also have a 1.5-3.6mm actuation point, have 4mm total travel and require 55g of force to actuate.
To see how different actuation points can affect my typing performance, I tried the 10fastfingers.com typing test at the lowest and highest actuation settings With a 1.5mm actuation point, my best time was 126 words per minute (wpm) and my accuracy about 1% shy of my average. With actuation set to 3.6mm, my best time was also 126 wpm, with less than a 1% drop in accuracy.
I’m an aggressive typer, so when typing a lot, I’m usually bottoming out. As a result, bringing up the actuation point didn’t make a big difference for me, since I probably continued bottoming out anyway. That said, I have experienced speed boosts with a more dramatic drop in actuation point, specifically with the SteelSeries Apex Pro, which can drop to 0.4mm. But if you’re someone who types lightly and isn’t frequently bottoming out, you may be able to pick up speed by reducing the actuation point.
In general use, using the higher actuation point was noticeably different. Sometimes I’d try to tap something like backspace or an arrow key, and it wouldn’t register. I’m used to bottoming out when typing, but having keys like the function row and navigation keys also require this much fore felt unnatural. Thankfully, Razer’s Synapse software lets you set actuation points for each key, allowing me to bring some down to a lighter 1.5mm. With only a light tap required to make actions like take a screenshot, I felt more productive.
With Synapse, it’s easy to set up different profiles and settings for different uses. For example, my work profile has typing keys set to 2mm, with navigational keys, the FN row and numpad at a lighter 1.5mm. I love firmly asserting a space or enter, so those keys are at 3.6mm.
Features and Software on Razer Huntsman V2 Analog
Razer’s Synapse software is essential for adjusting the Huntsman V2 Analog switches’ actuation point but also offers other customization options.
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The Customize menu lets you assign different functions to each key and even the media controls. The scroll wheel even has three programmable functions (scroll up, down or press in). There’s a massive range of options, from launching programs and switching profiles or RGB, to macros. You can even assign mouse functions to the keyboard. And if you assign a button as the Razer HyperShift key, every key will offer an additional function when you’re holding down that key. This all equates to a massive amount of input customization, even without the analog features.
You can turn off or change RGB brightness without software, but to toggle presets or make your own effects, you’ll need Synapse. If you open Synapse’s Chroma Studio add-in, you get a complex UI that lets you make advanced per-key RGB effects after you get the hang of it.
Considering the Huntsman V2 Analog’s high price, we’re happy to see Razer include 5 onboard memory profiles. Once set up in Synapse, you can plug the keyboard into another PC, and it’ll remember up to 4 profiles without having to download Synapse again. You can toggle through the profiles quickly by pressing FN and menu, and the keyboard will flash the profile’s color to let you know where you’re at. Unfortunately, these profiles won’t remember your RGB settings.
If you do download Synapse, you can save as many profiles as you want and set them to automatically launch with specific games or other apps.
Bottom Line
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
At $250, the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog is one of the most expensive gaming keyboards you can get. And it does a lot to try to earn that title. With premium keycaps, a wrist rest with RGB and comfort to match,a delicious typing experience and advanced gaming features, like onboard memory, it leaves out very little.
A big part of the cost is the analog switches. These are immediately useful in letting you set actuation points, allowing for a more customized experience that may aid in productivity. But you’ll be limited to PC games that take both keyboard / mouse and controller input, making this investment a bit harder.
Unlike some other analog keyboards, such as the $160 Cooler Master MK850, Razer thoughtfully included analog keys in every switch. But we would’ve sacrificed that to get a more attainable price. There’s also a cheaper full-keyboard analog alternative in the Wooting Two, which is $160 as of writing and hot-swappable with either linear or clicky switches.
The SteelSeries Apex Pro, meanwhile, isn’t a true analog keyboard, nor is it optical (if that matters to you). But it does offer arguably the most frequently usable feature of the Huntsman V2 Analog switches: customizable actuation points across the board. It’s also cheaper (currently $180).
In the $200 range alone, there’s also, naturally, tough competition. If you’re willing to spend that much, the Corsair K100 RGB may have more usable bonuses, like a control wheel and macro keys. There’s no analog input or customizable actuation, but the linear switches are optical.
So, unless you know how you’ll put the Huntsman V2 Analog’s pricey switches to good use, there are probably other keyboards that’ll give you more use for your money.
But ultimately, as both an analog keyboard and premium gaming peripheral, the Huntsman V2 Analog checks off nearly every box. We just wish it’d check the ‘expensive’ box a little less hard.
Lego is announcing a new video game-themed set featuring Sonic the Hedgehog and characters from Sonic Mania. (If you could have told six-year-old me that someday there would be a Sonic-themed Lego set, he’d cry tears of joy.)
You can get a look at a concept design for the set, which is themed around Sonic’s classic Green Hill Zone stage, at the top of this post. I love how ridiculous Sonic looks in Lego form, and Doctor Eggman’s towering Death Egg Robot is just awesome.
The concept for the set was submitted to Lego by Viv Grannell, a Sonic fan based in the UK, through the Lego Ideas program. Submissions need to receive 10,000 votes before Lego will consider making them an actual Lego set, so it’s no small feat that Grannell was able to get the necessary support for the idea to become a reality. If you want to see more pictures of the concept, check out Grannell’s page for the project on the Lego Ideas site.
Lego says the set is now entering the “product development phase,” so it seems like we might be a ways away from actually being able to buy it.
Last year, Lego dipped its toes into video game crossovers with its Mario-themed sets. Those have an interactive element to them. The Lego Mario figure will play a sound when it is placed in a pipe or when you made it jump on a Goomba, for example. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like Lego Sonic will be able to make any noises, so don’t expect to hear any of his snarky quips. Maybe Lego can add those in a future set.
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