Razer Hooligan review

Pros: Circumaural earcups, velour earpads  

Cons: very bad and unrefined sound, especially bass which lacks refinement and depth. Looks like a satellite dish on my head.

     Recently, I had the opportunity to review the Razer Hooligan headphones. Razer is generally known as a "fashion bling-bling" brand which produces headphones of good design but bad sound quality. Can they overcome this with the limited edition Razer Hooligan? Let's find out.

     In one word, they look good, feel good and have good portablility and foldability, and the velour earpads help in relieving heat during really hot days. Now onto sound quality.

     The sound quality is really lousy. The mids and treble is lacking in overall clarity, and the treble is also very grainy. soundstaging and neutrality are totally absent, and the bass lacks depth and definition. Individual bass notes are barely hinted at. They do not sound much better than an MDR-ZX300, or an even cheaper MDR-ZX100, for that matter. These cost nearly 4 times the price of an MDR-ZX100.

     The cans, although being circumaural, are uncomfortable as the earpads are hard, despite having velour earpads, and the headphone clamps to your ear quite a bit, creating a very tight pressure point. Also, the velour pads are very small in thickness, so the pressure point is even smaller and thus the listener will experience fatigue around the ears where the earcups clamp over long periods of time. Some supraaural headphones are more comfortable in my opinion. I wonder why my friend bought these pair of cans when previously he was using a fantastic Audio Technica ATH-SJ55.

     For the price, go and get a Sennheiser HD 229. They sound and look much better.