Razer has long been one of the leaders in gaming headsets and, well, gamingeverything. Today the company’s relentless course lands at a $US200 soundbar that’s aimed at making your frags boom so powerfully the neighbours will know which Call of Duty you’re playing.
The new Razer Leviathan is a soundbar and subwoofer combo package. It’s really a 2.1 channel design (two 2.5-inch full range drivers, two .74-inch tweeters, plus the sub), but in keeping with Razer’s history, the system has a Dolby 5.1 channel mode that uses virtualisation algorithms to simulate surround sound. In general, these algorithms work decently well, but I wouldn’t necessarily trust them to reveal the exact location of the opponent that’s shooting at you.
Because this is Razer, the Leviathan is very much positioned for gaming, but at its heart it’s really just a regular old soundbar system. The Leviathan’s 30W bar and 30W sub really don’t pack too punch, even if the system is cheap. You’ll get more raw power from a cheap Vizio system. Still, Razer’s known for good quality, and admittedly, the company’s hardware is way better looking than anything Vizio makes at a competitive price point. It’s also got Bluetooth 4.0 with support for high-quality aptX encoding, so you can bust out the jams a post-gaming after party.
If anything, the Leviathan seems to be a play to where the audio market it these days: Soundbars are an increasingly popular category, especially amongst people who don’t have a lot of space or money. They’re pretty much perfectly suited for a console gamer’s setup.
The Razer Leviathan is available for pre-order now. It ships next month. [Razer]