Razer’s second iteration of the Seiren Pro, its “professional-grade” USB microphone designed for streamers, is packed with a lot of impressive sounding features. This thing’s got everything: a high pass filter, built-in shock absorber, analog gain limiter, and a vibranium condenser. I made that last one up, but even still it’s as meaningful to me as any of the other techno-jargon on the side of the box. What matters to me as a content creator is how easy it is to use and how good it sounds, and the Razer Seiren V2 Pro - after a fair amount of tweaking - is definitely the kind of high-quality mic you would expect a streamer, YouTuber, or podcaster to have. It has its quirks, and it’s not quite as feature rich as some of the competition, but if you’re already invested in the Razer Synapse ecosystem - or simply trust the Razer brand - this is a quality mic at an affordable price.
The Seiren V2 Pro is a compact USB mic you can use either standing on a table with the included base or hanging from an adjustable microphone arm (not included). It also includes a corded ten-foot USB-C cable, making it easy to plug in to your PC no matter what your setup is. The USB-C end of the cable has a unique shape that fits snuggly into the back of the mic to prevent accidental disconnects. Unfortunately, any other USB cable I tried fell out of the mic really easily, so you’ll want to make sure you keep this cable safe because I can only imagine that replacing it would be a huge pain.
The mic has an incredibly simple I/O. Besides the USB port, you’ll also find a 3.5mm headphone jack for audio monitoring, a mute button, a volume dial, and a gain control. The audio jack is pretty inconvenient for PC players who typically use USB headsets, but this seems to be an industry standard so I won’t complain about it too much. Make sure you have a nice pair of quality earbuds or a gaming headset with a 3.5 connection if you intend to monitor yourself. The mute button lights up so you can easily see when you’re muted, but unfortunately it makes a loud click when you turn it on and off that will definitely get picked up by the mic. A lot of other brands are using soft-touch mute buttons, so I’m not sure why this one has such a clicky one.
I also have an issue with the volume and gain knobs, which have no hard stops at minimum and maximum. This means you have no way of knowing when your volume or gain is turned all the way up or all the way down because the knobs just spin infinitely in each direction. This isn’t a huge problem for volume since you’ll just turn it to a comfortable level either way, but it is an issue for gain since there’s no way to just turn it to your desired level without also monitoring it. I was unable to hear the gain reflected in the sidetone until I changed some settings in the Razer Synapse software, so I had to rely on the audio monitor on OBS to tell how much gain I was adding. Ultimately I would recommend leaving the on-mic gain control alone and just adjusting it through your recording software unless you just need to increase or decrease your gain slightly in a pinch.
That wasn’t the only software adjustment I had to make to the Seiren V2. While it’s advertised as a plug-and-play mic, I found that the audio quality wasn’t particularly good until I added some filters and adjusted some settings in OBS and Razer Synapse. The Razer Synapse controls are fairly limited, so I would recommend familiarizing yourself with the filter options in OBS, because the Seiren V2 definitely needs some tuning in order to sound crisp and full, and to filter out background noise.
I was not impressed by the high pass filter and built-in shock absorber. Even with gain at a minimum and the mic pointed directly at my mouth, it picked up tons of ambient noise like traffic outside, the low din of my apartment’s heating system, and a TV downstairs. The shock absorber is similarly ineffective. Even the lightest tap to the arm that holds my mic gets picked up in the recording. There are ways to make this microphone sound fantastic through filters, but included technology that supposedly makes it an ideal plug-and-play mic just aren’t up to snuff.
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I’m a sucker for digital ecosystems, and if you’re already bought into the Razer brand I certainly wouldn’t talk you out of using the Seiren V2 Pro. It’s a great-sounding mic with a little tuning, and it’s fairly easy to use. It’s also much smaller than a lot of the other streamer mics I’ve tested, if the form factor is important to you. For my money, there are streaming mics that are just better right out of the box and offer better features - like soft-touch mute buttons and actual shock absorbers - that are in the same price range as the Seiren V2 Pro. I’m happy to see Razer’s stable of microphones continue to grow and improve, but unless you’re a Razer diehard, there are better options for streamers.