Razer Nari Ultimate Wireless HEADPHONES REVIEW

The Razer Nari Ultimate have a sleek, polished look even though they’re very bulky headphones. They have large, circular ear cups with thick, dense padding. Though they have a similar design, the Razer Nari Ultimate have a more premium look and feel than the Razer Man O’ War Wireless, even though the Nari are bulkier. They have an all-black design with gunmetal accents and feature the Razer logo with dynamic RGB lighting on the ear cups.

The Nari Ultimate are comfortable headphones for most people. They have large, soft ear cups with lots of thick padding that fit well around the ears. The headband is coated in a more breathable mesh material and has less padding than the ear cups, but is still comfortable. Although the Nari clamp down quite a bit and start to feel tight and heavy after a while, they were comfortable enough to wear for an hour of uninterrupted gaming and should be fine for a bit longer.

The Razer Nari have an unremarkable control scheme. It’s easy enough to use once you get the hang of it, but the power and mic muting buttons are very small and a bit challenging to locate at first. The volume and channel mixing dials are easy-to-use and fairly responsive, though, especially since the channel mixing dial has a notch in the middle to signal when the game and chat audio are at 50/50.

The Razer Nari Ultimate have poor breathability and will make your ears warm after wearing them for a while. They're a bit less breathable than typical closed back over-ear headphones, since they fit quite tightly on the head and have thick leatherette pads that block a lot of airflow. This means you may need to take some breaks now and then during long gaming sessions and they will not be suitable to wear while exercising.

The Razer Nari aren’t portable headphones. They are among the largest headphones we have measured so far and are very bulky. They will take up a lot of space in a bag and do not come with a carrying case. Although they don't support Bluetooth and require their own transmitter to be used wirelessly, they can be used wired with the included audio cable. They also have swiveling cups, so you can wear them around your neck if you don’t mind.

These headphones don't come with a case.

The Razer Nari Ultimate are well-built gaming headphones. They feel much better built than the Razer Man O’ War Wireless. They’re mostly made of plastic, but they don’t feel cheap. They have a metal headband frame that feels solid and the plastic used in the rest of their build feels dense and high-grade. However, they’re not very flexible, and the joint where the ear cups rotate feels like a potential weak point. They’re also quite heavy and might break if you drop them. The exposed audio cable shouldn’t be a problem, but could see some damage over time.

The Nari Ultimate have poor stability. They have an auto-adjusting headband that is quite comfortable but doesn’t provide enough stability for the headphones to rest securely on your head. The headphones swing around a lot when turning or tilting your head, even minimally. This is especially disruptive while gaming since you need to stop what you’re doing to readjust the headphones quite often.

The frequency response consistency of the Razer Nari Ultimate is poor. Their bass delivery is quite inconsistent across our human subjects, with a maximum of about 10dB of variation. Some subjects experienced more bass, while others experienced less. If you have a lot of hair between the headphones and your ear, or wear glasses, then you may experience a noticeable drop in bass. There’s also a fair amount of inconsistency in the treble range, depending on the position of the headphone on our dummy head. This means that your treble response may change as the headset moves around on your head.

The Nari Ultimate have decent bass. Low-frequency extension (LFE) is at 10Hz, which is excellent. Low-bass, responsible for the thump and rumble common to bass-heavy music and video game effects, is flat and follows our target quite tightly. However, there is a bump starting around 60Hz which raises mid-bass and high-bass up to about 6dB over, making these headphones sound boomy and muddy.

Also, their bass delivery varies noticeably across users, and is sensitive to the quality of fit, seal, and whether you wear glasses. The response here represents the average bass response and your experience may vary.

The mid-range is very good. The response is mostly flat but has an 8dB tilt favoring lower frequencies, which is a continuation of the bump in the bass-range. This makes their mid-range also a bit muddy and cluttered, while nudging vocals and leads to the back of the mix, making them sound slightly weak.

Their treble performance is good. Low-treble is relatively uneven, but dips around 2.5KHz and again at 4KHz, negatively affecting the articulation and detail of vocals and lead instruments. The rest of the treble range is mostly underemphasized, sometimes by up to 10dB, which lends a darker sound, especially on brighter tracks.

The imaging performance of the Nari Ultimate is great. Weighted group delay is at 0.35, which is quite good. The GD graph also shows that the entire group delay response is below the audibility threshold. This ensures a tight bass and a transparent treble. Additionally, the left and right drivers of our test unit were well-matched in amplitude, frequency and phase. This is important for the accurate localization and placement of object (voices, instruments, video game effects) in the stereo field. However, these results are only valid for our unit, and yours may perform differently.

The Razer Nari Ultimate have an okay soundstage. The PRTF graph shows a decent amount of activation and interaction with the pinna. There’s no notch present at 10KHz, which, coupled with the closed-back design, suggests a soundstage that is located inside the listener's head, rather than being very speaker-like.

The Razer Nari Ultimate have poor noise isolation performance. They don’t have active noise-cancelation (ANC), and do not produce a tight enough seal to isolate at all in the bass range. This means they will let in all the rumble of airplane and bus engines. In the mid-range, important for blocking out speech, they reduce outside noise by 10dB, which is passable. On the upside, they reduce the treble range, responsible for sharp “S” and “T” sounds and fan noises like A/C systems, by 32dB, which is good.

The Nari Ultimate have mediocre leakage performance. The significant portion of the leakage is spread from about 200Hz to 5KHz, which is a broad range. This makes the leakage relatively full sounding, compared to that of in-ears and earbuds. However, the overall level of the leakage is not very loud. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away averages at about 44dB SPL while peaking at 60dB SPL, which is just above the noise level of most offices.

The Razer Nari Ultimate have a microphone with decent recording quality. The LFE (low-frequency extension) of 522Hz suggests that speech recorded or transmitted with this mic will sound relatively thin and lacking in fullness. The HFE (high-frequency extension) is at 5.7KHz, which means that speech will have enough detail and clarity to be understandable but will lack a bit of airiness and brilliance.

The Nari Ultimate’s boom microphone has very good noise handling. It achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of 28dB SPL in our SpNR test, indicating it is able to fully separate speech from ambient noise in most situations. However, it may struggle a bit in very loud environments, like a gaming convention or party.

The Razer Nari Ultimate have disappointing battery performance. With haptic feedback set at level 50 and RGB lighting on, the headphones only lasted for slightly over 5 hours, which is far less than the 8 hours of battery life advertised by Razer. We do expect better performance with the haptic feedback and RGB lighting disabled. Fortunately, the Nari provide audio while charging, since they take nearly 3 hours to charge.

The Nari Ultimate are compatible with the Razer Synapse program, which offers many customization features. You can adjust the level of haptic feedback, customize the sound of the headphones with a graphic EQ or through various presets, set the Chroma lighting, and more. The only downside is you need to create an account and register with Razer to use their software.

The Razer Nari Ultimate are not Bluetooth compatible. If you want a gaming headset with Bluetooth support, check out the SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless or the Turtle Beach Stealth 700.

The Razer Nari Ultimate have only have 41ms of latency, which is excellent. This makes them a suitable option for gaming and even watching movies, since latency below 50ms is barely noticeable for most users.

The Nari Ultimate can be used wired with the included audio cable; however, they need to be powered on to work. When wired, they can be plugged into the controller of an Xbox One or a PS4, or directly into a PC to provide audio and mic compatibility. They do not have USB audio.

The Razer Nari Ultimate come with a small USB dongle that has no additional input options and does not charge the headphones. The dongle is compatible with PCs and the PS4 but not the Xbox One. If you’re looking for a gaming headset with a charging dock that’s compatible with the Xbox One, check out the Astro A50.