so razer just came out with a gaming sound bar it’s called the leviathan v2 now this is his successor to the popular leviathan that was launched back in 2015. that’s almost seven years ago and you might be asking ourselves why now well according to razer the global summer market has been accelerating in the past few years with people spending more time at home setting up their ideal gaming slash entertainment setup but if anything this video is going to be more about why simplifying a design might not be the right thing to do especially when it comes to a better user experience so here we are with the levithan v2 it’s priced at 250 u.s that’s 50 more than the original leviathan so what exactly are you getting for that price bump not to mention my go-to slash all-around gaming soundbar has been the sound blaster katana v2 by creative labs that’s priced at 330 dollars so while the leviathan v2 is cheaper can it actually give the katana v2 a run for its money man lots of v2s i hope it doesn’t get too confusing anyways let’s start with the exterior design and what razer has done here is simply refine the look of the v2 compared to the v1 the drivers are housed inside this matte black plastic chassis that honestly looks like just another sound bar the dimensions are almost identical except for the depth since they managed to pack two passive radiator drivers inside the v2 it’s certainly a lot more compact than the katana v2 so you shouldn’t have any issues
placing this underneath your monitor razer was pretty thoughtful to include an extra pair of interchangeable rubber feet that enables you to angle the sound bar so you get better directional audio output the v2 does come with a dedicated down firing subwoofer that’s also very compact compared to the one that comes with the katana v2 so overall for a compact space the leviathan v2 check marks the setup process the control buttons are located at the top they’re tactile and easy to get to as you can see there’s a source button a bluetooth button main power and volume adjustments unfortunately you do not get a remote control to adjust any settings on the fly and remember according to razer this is a gaming soundbar designed for your gaming pc and nothing else so if you want to adjust the volume or control the rgb lighting which i’ll get to shortly you would either have to use the volume adjust functions on your keyboard or through razer snaps or on the soundbar itself as for the i o you only get a single usbc port that plugs in directly to your pc power in and a proprietary port to connect the subwoofer and that’s it they’ve eliminated the optical connector there’s no hdmi arc support you don’t even get an aux input let alone a headphone jack to quickly plug in a pair of headphones to be honest i’m extremely disappointed with this i o setup i mean usb is okay but if you’re hooking this up to a laptop you’re taking up a usb port so having an aux input would have been nice not to mention if there’s something wrong with the source you’re limited to troubleshooting options other than using bluetooth to figure out if it’s either an issue with the unit itself or the port usb also comes with guess what driver issues so there’s no fall back to analog if you find some of those and let me tell you i found some more on that a little bit later the main problem with this is that it completely limits how and where you can use the leviton v2 want to use it with your tv as part of a home
theater system can’t do that what about just controlling the volume from a distance if you aren’t streaming audio over bluetooth from your phone or other device for 250 dollars i want all those options razer and you’re giving me none of them actually mike has some thoughts on this too his rent is coming in three two one go well guys mike here and i just needed to hop onto camera here because as an original levithion owner i’ve got a couple things to say and i just wanted to sort of like let out this rant because what razer is doing here with this new speaker is endemic of the industry they’re trying to simplify but maybe simplify it a little bit too much and what that is doing is it’s just removing usability for folks so good example is that lack of a 3.5 millimeter jack and i know it might sound old fogey and whatever but it is critical especially if something goes wrong with the software at least you have that analog backup the other thing that the original levithan had is that spdif or optical port and look this is not something from a bygone era because i look at something like this this motherboard here the z690 that i’m working on with the project and it has that optical interface it has the 3.5 millimeter this is not rocket science folks not only that is the usbc a lot of pcs especially when it comes to laptops they are not including a lot of usbc connectors so you have to use one of those very very valuable connectors to plug in to the new levithan unless you want to do bluetooth and we all know all of the problems that go on between a pc and bluetooth look that’s my rant as an original levithion owner i’m not happy with what razer is doing here but anyways i’m going to let you go back to your regular dose of eber speaking of bluetooth it does support the bluetooth 5.
2 protocol so you do get the benefit of low latency connection and you can pair up to eight devices which is kind of neat however keep in mind that there is no ldac support but instead you’re limited to aac and spc and that’s pretty much it now i didn’t experience any issues with range in my small 200 square foot studio then again if this is plugged into your pc at your desktop most of the time would you even consider using bluetooth let me
know in the comments down below also just to change things up a bit i’m going to sneak in and talk about today’s video sponsor keoxia did you know that this year marks the 35th anniversary of nan flash memory from the first use of flash memory until now keyx technologies have been there pushing the limit of what’s possible from the evolution of hard drives to ssds from cds to mp3 players and smartphones or from camera film to sd cards they’ve been there every step of the way and today’s qrcs ssds with bix 3d flash memory are some of the most exciting tech yeah there’s the bg5 that packs an incredible amount of space into one tiny and efficient footprint the cd7 pushes the absolute bleeding edge for data centers with a pci gen 5 interface that offers double the bandwidth when compared to a gen 4 drive and of course the xd6 is an ssd that might look like a regular m.2 drive but it’s completely hot-swappable if you want to know more about keoxia and how they’re continuing to offer some of the most exciting storage solutions around head to the link in the description down below okay back to the soundbar where do i continue oh wait actually let’s talk about rgb or the chroma lighting because it is a razer product and you should be expecting a little bit of that bling with the levithan v2 it’s a simple thin well diffused led strip that’s hidden underneath that looks absolutely gorgeous guys razer has some of the best lighting setups on their products and this will perfectly complement your gaming setup you can also choose to completely turn it off as well there are four lighting effects that you can also choose from which includes breathing spectrum cycling static and wave you can also use their advanced chroma studio to fine tune your style and remember you will absolutely need razer synapse to adjust these settings
aside from lighting controls you can switch between stereo or thx spatial audio and play around with eqs and that’s about it now if you want to use your smartphone to control the lighting razer offers the chroma rgb app for both ios and android and the process is pretty straightforward except if you want to adjust any audio settings you will need to download another app called audio now this is where you can either use it as a remote to control volume and play pause audio you can also use this to adjust the eqs or play around with different audio presets basically the same stuff that you can get to do with synapse and that’s pretty much it keep note that if you do switch the source to usb you won’t have access to the eqs my only issue here is i absolutely don’t understand what’s the point of having two separate apps to control the settings on the soundbar it’s so pointless in my opinion i was told that razer is working on a unified app but there is no official confirmation on when that’s going to be released i mean this is not what expected for a day one product launch now what about sound quality remember razer has upgraded the drivers on the v2 compared to the original leviathan so this time you’re getting two 95 mm full range drivers a couple of 20 millimeter tweeters passive radiator drivers that i mentioned earlier located at the back and then the subwoofer the output is very balanced with crispy details on the trebles with no distortion whatsoever i was really surprised by the amount of power packed inside this compact soundbar my comfort volume setting was around 25 and anything louder than that it actually gets way too loud especially for my tiny studio space so if you have a lot of room to fill the soundbar can easily handle that no problem the subwoofer gives you a nice little kick when you’re watching action-packed movies or when you’re even gaming specifically with fps titles it’s boomy and dynamic as you increase the power or the volume output the mid ranges are gentle but it’s not as emphasized as the katana
v2 i also felt like the overall body of the sound wasn’t as bright or focused as the katana but keep in mind that audio reviews are highly subjective you might not feel the same way when you get to listen to this in person but overall i honestly can’t find a reason to downplay the leviathan v2 in terms of actual audio performance because it’s really good for the compact size but it’s only really good when it works now before i get into this i do want to preface things by saying my experience here basically highlights why running exclusively on usb audio with all of its potential driver and software issues especially with synapse involved is a bad bad idea you see randomly all of a sudden the subwoofer on the v2 stopped working i tried to unplug and replug the usb cable i rebooted the soundbar but nothing really fixed that issue and then a few days later there was no audio output whatsoever i tried my macbook pro and things were back to normal except the sub was completely out then i tried my microsoft surface pro 8 and it was flawless but the interesting thing about all of this is that neither of those devices had razer synapse installed beforehand all the problems came up when using the leviathan on guess what it weighs a laptop yep you heard that right now you’d think with synapse already installed it would work flawlessly but it didn’t now i’m not sure if this is some software conflict or whatever but yeah these are the problems that happen when you rely on usb and some janky software to power an audio device um it was really frustrating guys and quite frankly not something that i expected for a brand new sound bar in 2022 but this only highlights how something that could and should have been simple can get so utterly and completely messed up by software i
mean when the leviathan v2 works it works really really well and it sounds great but when it doesn’t or when the software falls flat on its face you’re gonna be paying the price in frustration and time wasted and having to rely so heavily on software for what should have been a simple audio device is just a huge mistake i mean razer what happened here so is the leviathan v2 from razer really worth 250 dollars i don’t think so because it’s lacking so many features that you’d expect from a typical soundbar like flexible i o inputs a headphone output maybe a built-in microphone or even a small remote control to adjust the soundbar settings instead of relying on two separate apps on your smartphone personally i would spend an extra eighty dollars and just get the katana v2 because you’re getting so much and i mean so much for that price premium and it’s certainly worth every single penny the thing with razer is that they’re really trying too hard if it was 200 maybe because when it works well the sound quality is absolutely incredible on that note thank you so much for watching i hope you were able to take away everything that you needed to know about the razer leviathan v2 gaming soundbar let us know what you guys think about in the comments i’m eber with hardware canucks and i’ll talk to you guys in the next one spend responsibly
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