[section_title title=”Conclusion”]
So it’s been a bit of mixed bag testing the Rage V2s, what are my lasting impressions?
Well if I’m brutally honest from a comfort point of view the design is simply not good enough, the headband padding is far too hard/not wide enough and the ear pads are a bit on the small side with the comfort damaging effects of this being accentuated by firm padding and a lack of room in the cups. For users with larger ears (or those who wear glasses with chunky frames) the Rage V2s are a no go if you ask me, and really the rock hard headband should be enough to put everyone else off too.
Aesthetically the headset looks dated compared to notably more elegant competition like the Kingston HyperX Clouds, with the aluminium touches of the Clouds making a mockery of the cheap plastics used in the Rage V2s.
In contrast to the flawed aesthetics and poor ergonomics the Creative sound engineers have given the Rage V2s a reasonably solid set of drivers considering the cost of the unit, they are fairly well balanced and driven well by the built-in USB sound processor; they just can’t match what the competition has to offer. The mic does the job well enough, with the voice changer also providing some humorous relief. Indeed, from a technical point of view the headset is actually fairly good for the money; whoever did the rest of it has done the audio engineers a real disservice.
Finally when we consider value it’s a hard one to call because despite looking cheap the headset is quite solid in hand and as mentioned does well enough from a performance point of view; if I was awarding the value rating on performance alone it would be more favourable, but I have to consider the whole package here and it just isn’t a well-rounded product.
In its current form I would struggle to recommend the headset to anyone despite the respectable performance due to poor comfort levels and naff looks compared to the competition. A future revision with nicer feeling plastics, larger ear cup pads and more generous (and softer) padding could be a fairly respectable bit of kit for this price though so it’s over to Creative there.
I’d like to say a big thank you to Creative for providing today’s sample, I hope to see more from them in the future.
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Performance
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Design
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Value
Summary
Pros:
– Performance is ‘good enough’ for the money
– Plenty of customization in the software
– PS4 compatibility is a definite value add
Cons:
– Comfort levels are poor
– The design looks dated and the plastics feel cheap
– The red USB cable is tacky
– Eclipsed by the competition
