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Our review

While there are some small, niggling annoyances with the Razer Hammerhead X, for its price and what it can do it is a great purchase if you want a pair of reliable earbuds that will cover the majority of your audio needs.

Pros

  • Strong battery life
  • Good sound quality
  • Picks up speech well
  • Comfortable to wear
  • Supports the AAC format

Cons

  • The Bluetooth connection did drop out a couple of times for no apparent reason
  • The lack of a charge indicator on the earpiece is a mild annoyance

Razer has some really exciting products on sale at the moment, from the Razer Opus X headset to these nifty little earbuds that may be tiny, but they get the job done in most of the important areas, and they won't require you to sell an organ to be able to afford them - always a bonus.

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But while the sound is good, what about all the other features that the Razer Hammerhead X has at its disposal. Do they make it an even more worthy investment, or do they leave a lot to be desired?

Well, we have answered that and more in our full Razer Hammerhead X review!

Want to see how these compare to other models? Read our HyperX Cloud II Wireless Gaming Headset review and LucidSound LS50X Gaming Headset review.

Razer Hammerhead X review: summary

razer hammerhead earbuds

Decent sound and impressive battery life, complete with a case that charges for you, make the Razer Hammerhead X earbuds a worthy purchase that does not cost an arm and a leg to buy. Reasonably priced and effective, there is every chance you will be delighted with these from the moment you see them packed in their stylish box to the moment you have a song blasting out of them for the first time.

What are the Razer Hammerhead X earbuds?

The Razer Hammerhead X earbuds are Bluetooth headphones designed with gaming in mind, which means they would be ideal for playing on your iPhone or Android device of choice. You could also use them with Nintendo Switch, now that Bluetooth support for the Switch has been added to the console. They wouldn't work natively with PlayStation or Xbox consoles, though, unless you have a Bluetooth adapter.

How much are the Razer Hammerhead X earbuds?

Headphones are not as cheap as they once were, and you could literally spend several hundred on a decent pair. We're telling you that so you know the price here of around £75.50 really is on the cheap end - particularly for a pair of headphones that deliver such great sound.

Razer Hammerhead X earbuds design

Interestingly, whereas most earbuds are designed to sit in the ear canal, these ones are not and instead, the aim here is to have them sit loosely in the ear cup. This does not do much to impact the sound but has been done with safety in mind so that you can still hear your surroundings to a degree - this may be irritating to some, but it is not something that we will be complaining about.

For wearing out and about, they do the job well and manage to stay in place for the most part - even if you're out for a run, you shouldn't have them annoyingly drop out of your ear - although they almost certainly will if you are doing anything too strenuous.

Razer Hammerhead X earbuds features

The actual buds themselves have controls on them that we didn't even know about until we accidentally pushed it further into our ear and paused the song we were playing. You can skip tracks and restart tracks with the simple touch of a finger, too, and while it can get muddled and do the wrong thing on occasion, it mostly does the job as well as we would have hoped. The controls are on both earbuds so take your pick, which is your go-to for this!

Game mode is also controllable this way, so you can turn it on and off and control the volume, although if we are completely honest, it can be fiddly to get this to work. The buds turn on and light up the moment you flip open the case for them, which is a nice touch and, as expected, will turn off as soon as you put them back in and close the lid.

You also get access to a mobile app if you are one of the more technologically-minded among us, and in there, you can do all sorts to adjust many aspects of the audio to your personal preferences. It's a nice touch, but after playing around with it, we found that the original sound we had was just as good and there was not much need to explore it more fully.

Razer Hammerhead X earbuds performance

Let's start with the battery life here, and we are pleased to report that ours did not die with our volume cranked up until around 6 hours after we started using them - a decent length of time for any powerful pair of earbuds. That being said, if you activate the illuminated touch surfaces, then you will see that battery length drop a tad which is something to keep in mind if heading out with them for a long journey.

While in this case, you get three charges out of the headphones, which does mean you should be fine without completely running out of juice. That being said, there is no indicator on the case itself to tell you how charged they are, which is an irritating oversight that should have been factored into the design - you get a USB-C cable in the box for charging, and it normally takes around 60 minutes to get one full charge.

Sound is great here, if not as loud as we had expected, but then that makes sense given that they are designed to still let you hear what is going on around you while enjoying what you're listening to at the same time, and we can't say that outside noise ever became too much of a problem. Same too with speech, and we were able to hear the person on the other end of the line perfectly when we gave it a go.

The bass is not the best we have heard, but it is far from the worst, and we tried this with lots of different songs from lots of different genres to see if there were any issues we found, and we were pleased with the results - from hip hop to classical to hard rock, they all sounded brilliant blasting out of these tiny earbuds.

Razer Hammerhead X earbuds setup

hammerhead x earbuds

Getting these set up took no effort at all. In fact, as soon as we opened up the box, our phone alerted us to the fact they were detected and then they ran instantly - if only everything was as easy as this.

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Our verdict: Should you buy the Razer Hammerhead X earbuds?

In short, if you prefer your headphones to be of the bud variety and you don't want to break the bank in finding a decent pair, then the Razer Hammerhead X earbuds are ones that you should give some serious thought to. The sound may not be as loud and all-consuming as it can be with other models, but we were impressed with this overall, and it is a great pair to have with you when out and about.

Review scores:

  • Set-up: 5 /5
  • Design: 4 / 5
  • Features: 4 / 5
  • Performance: 4 / 5
  • Value for money: 4 / 5
  • Overall star rating: 4.5 / 5

Where to buy the Razer Hammerhead X earbuds

The Razer Hammerhead X earbuds are out now, so you should be able to find them at most major retailers, including the likes of Amazon. If you're looking to save a few quid, check out our handy deals widget below, which should compile the best prices it can find from around the web. If our review has convinced you to make a purchase, click away and grab one of these while they last.

Follow Radio Times Gaming on Twitter for all the latest insights, or visit our video game release schedule for all upcoming games on consoles.

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If you’re looking for more audio reviews, don’t miss our best soundbar and best wireless earbuds round-ups.

Authors

Joe JuliansEntertainment Journalist
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