Razer Kraken Kitty V3 Pro review

Every once in a while a piece of hardware crosses my desk that is seemingly intent upon drilling through the layers of ice encasing my cold, black heart. After all, it's hard not to spread a little joy in the office, or at least to crack a smile yourself, when you're wearing cat ears.

Pink is far from my favourite colour, as I tend to sport a more pro-purple agenda, but I'm not eager to kick out Razer's latest iteration of the Kraken Kitty headset. Available in both white and black colourways alongside the aforementioned 'quartz', the Kraken Kitty V3 Pro headset offers more than the novelty of feline flair. Costing $180/£180, it had better.

As with every Kraken Kitty, the cat ears remain the crown jewel of this headset. To be clear, the charming interchangeable ears of the pricy V2 Pro are gone; we're now back to full-size animal ears rather than the V2 Pro's oddly diminutive accessories throwing off the proportions of what is an already bulky headset. The kitty ears here are sturdy, solidly anchored to the headband, and immediately eye-catching.

With all of that hardware on top, you may think the V3 Pro would be fatiguing to wear. Weighing 0.86 lbs/390 g, there's definitely some heft to it but I've found it to be consistently comfortable to wear all day. Both the headband and ear cups feature memory foam cushioning, with the latter of these the most generously plush feeling. Despite such bulky ear cups, my ears don't feel pinned back or otherwise inspire a painful horse blinder effect.

This perhaps pales next to the striking styling, but the ear cup cushions also feature a grey leatherette covering that is mercifully wipe-clean. This not only means it's easier to keep your pricey headset looking presentable, but those who wear make up no longer need fear the ear cushions slowly turning the same shade as their contour of choice. The inner part of the headband is still fabric though, so be wary of the potential for colour transfer if you're donning these atop freshly dyed locks.

No doubt contributing to this headset's well-balanced weight is a fairly robust battery too. Sure, it's not achieving the absolute witchcraft of the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless headset's battery life, but even with the RGB lights on and set to a reasonable amount of brightness, you still get about 30 hours of use out of this headset over 2.4 GHz mode. The main annoyance here is that the Kraken Kitty does not feature fast charge, so it will take some time to refill this cat's tank.

Alternatively, you can enjoy over twice as much battery life if you turn the headset's lights off. If this was any other RGB headset, that would seem a little pointless to me but at least here you're still rocking pink cat ears even if they aren't also glowing cat ears.

Besides such feline flair, there are also a number of smart design choices. Let's start with the on-ear buttons: for instance, the left ear cup is home to an always welcome onboard volume wheel, a mic mute button, and a power button that's differently textured so you can always find it by touch. The right ear then offers buttons for adjusting game/chat balance and for Razer SmartSwitch, which offers a number of sound profiles that you can tweak via the Razer Synapse app—but I'm going to put a cat claw in Razer's suite of software for the moment, though.

Another neat aspect of the Kraken Kitty V3 Pro is that you can both connect to your phone via Bluetooth, plus your PC via the 2.4 GHz dongle simultaneously. The practical reality of this is that the headset will pipe in the audio of, say, the podcast playing on your phone until it detects game audio from your PC, which will then supersede the previous audio output. While I appreciate this feature, I also would've liked the option to switch between audio connections with a button press.

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On the subject of connectivity, I ran into brief hiccups where sound would intermittently cut out over Bluetooth. These split second outages only occurred over Bluetooth, on both my phone and PC, whether I was simultaneously connected via the 2.4 GHz mode or not. I'm not sure what caused these oh so brief interruptions over Bluetooth—my best guess is perhaps the Kraken Kitty does not care for Glitter and Be Gay from the operetta Candide quite as much as I do.

The audio quality itself over a Bluetooth connection isn't half bad, but 2.4 GHz mode offers a distinct step up in clarity. Add to that the Kraken Kitty V3 Pro's support of THX Spatial audio, and this is easily my favourite way to play DOOM: The Dark Ages. The doomslayer's hefty footsteps have never sounded so crisp, but I definitely appreciate the added energy of "Let's rip and tear through the hordes of hell, uwu."

The Synapse software allows you to more finely tune the EQ across a number of profiles. The standard 'game' profile is a flat line, but the intuitive software welcomes audio noodling. The default 'movie' profile strongly de-emphasises bass and low mids while upping the upper mids, and 'music' slightly boosts sub bass alongside mid range tones, but all of these are easily adjusted too.

Anyway, one of the Pro-exclusive headset features is the very swish retractable Razer HyperClear Super Wideband Mic; rather than offering versatility by way of a detachable mic arm, this just spools back inside the left ear cup. In theory this makes the Kraken Kitty V3 Pro a versatile headset you could use for more things than just gaming—though I don't think I quite have the amount of aura necessary to pull off wearing cat ears more casually.

Besides such sartorial matters, the Kraken Kitty doesn't offer much in the way of water resistance either. If I was to feel brave and use it on my walk to work, I would've also appreciated onboard song skip and pause buttons too.

To return to my earlier point about the microphone arm, the spool-away design is very cool—so long as you never run into some sort of fault with this curly-wurly mic, I assume. My catastrophising aside, it feels like a robust bit of kit that should happily perform its party horn impression for many Discord sessions to come.

Listen to the microphone test here:

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As for audio quality, I was really impressed by this microphone. Even without any Synapse tinkering, my voice comes through exceptionally clearly. It's a level of audio precision you arguably don't need if you're just yelling at your friends over Discord, but as someone with a penchant for extended monologues even during my weekly catch up chats with pals, I definitely still appreciate it—and if you do find it lacking a certain something, it's easy enough to adjust the levels of the microphone equaliser in Synapse.

RGB is another, ahem, highlight, shining out from both the ersatz ears on top of the headband as well as from the cans either side of your head. You can either create custom lighting profiles or set the RGB to dynamically react to whatever you're playing or listening to via the Razer Chroma app. However, this is only if you're connected via the 2.4 GHz dongle or fully plugged in, as the software won't detect the headset over a Bluetooth connection.

Listen to the poetry reading microphone test here:

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Razer's Chroma Studio allows you to create fairly complex lighting profiles, with the potential for the ears to sport different lighting effects and colours independent of the various segments on the ear cups. I enjoyed and was oh so slightly overwhelmed by the wealth of lighting options available here, but it's easy enough to get the Kraken Kitty—not to mention whatever other Razer kit you may have—all working in concert for your tiny desk lightshow.

You can adjust the brightness of the Kraken Kitty's RGB lights on a slider in the Chroma app, with the headset offering striking luminosity even before you whack this all the way up to 100%. The kitty ears feature a translucent plastic for the RGB to shine through, dispersing the light evenly but slightly dialling down the vibrancy. The ear cup lights are arguably brighter but shine through pin pricks all over the pink plastic face of the ear cup as well as the Razer logo in the centre. Neither are going to hurt your eyes, but are perhaps better suited to a moodily lit gaming den rather than the well lit offices of PCG towers.

All around, the Kraken Kitty V3 Pro headset feels like the expensive bit of kit that it is. Thankfully, for everybody who wants to be a cat but on a budget, there's also the more affordable V3 X model, which costs about a third of what Razer is asking for the Pro. The cheaper model still offers kitty-eared charm, but it's not wireless and its mic arm isn't retractable. The X's cans also feature an older version of the Pro's Titanium Triforce 40 mm drivers. This means you're still likely to get crisp audio from the more budget-friendly version of the headset, though this comes sans support for THX spatial audio, offering 7.1 surround sound instead.

While I'm on the subject of more affordable audio alternatives, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my other new favourite headset, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3X in lilac. Costing around $70 less, you lose the cat ears, RGB lighting and, of course, the wipe-clean ear cups. However, for $110 you still get your pick of appealing colourways, alongside great audio, lots of EQ options, and also nine hours of battery life from only 15 minutes of time spent charging. The main sticking point—you know, besides the lack of cat ears—is the Arctis Nova 3X's microphone; though you can fully detach the microphone arm itself, the audio quality simply can't stack up against the V3 Pro's clarity.

What you're getting for the money from Razer is not only a head-turning bit of kit with heaps of style, but also no small amount of substance. All of my earlier praise aside, I also simply feel happier wearing these—yes, even though it's pink. You read it here first: friendship ended with the lilac SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3X headset, the Kraken Kitty V3 Pro is my best friend now.