Razer Moray

Razer hasn’t made many IEMs over the years and the last ones I remember had neon green cables, but now with the Moray they want to make a more professional product and have moved to IEMs, in-ear monitors, which mostly have a much more anatomically correct design, some might even call it ergonomic, and sits further inside the ear than traditional in-ears – but the price is definitely also a factor when you call something a “monitor”.

It is more than what I consider the most important for this type of product:

It is wired, and combined with in-ears it provides better sound quality for passive noise reduction. It has a dual construction where a traditional unit takes care of the bass, while a more sophisticated Balanced Armature Driver takes care of the treble and midrange. The BA unit is somewhat more expensive to manufacture than a traditional dynamic unit, so the price makes sense, but it can still be made much cheaper.

It has a cast housing, a cable with a braided screen (to prevent noise radiation) and the conductors in the cable are made of pure copper.

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In addition, Razer has received a THX certification, which means… er… a lot of testing. I’m having a hard time working out what this means concretely, other than that it meets certain requirements for frequency response and distortion, but what those requirements are is apparently a secret – but they hold high standards, and a lot of testing is done, we see .

Razer’s marketing suggests it’s for streaming use and that makes sense, the passive noise reduction is plenty even with a noisy colleague, you avoid bacterial growth when using headphones for a long time, there’s a wired connection so you have better sound quality and never go out of battery – and it’s just significantly more discreet than a pair of large headphones with cat ears. In addition, the small hook on the cable near the ear makes it sit very well.

Price is £130 but has been seen slightly cheaper elsewhere.

The quality is surprisingly high, not only does it follow the usual MMCX standards for connectivity, but the unit itself is also classically molded and actually sits well. The tips that come with it are also good, both foam and silicone, and it also comes with a nice little case. I believe I read somewhere that the foam plugs dampen up to 36dB, making them better than even the loudest active noise canceling gaming headphones on the market.

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The impedance is 32 ohms, so you have to strongly assume that Razer has had them manufactured in an existing factory somewhere, otherwise it would be a disproportionately high cost, and the fit, finish and such are very much in line with many of the IEMs that already available on the market. In my opinion, therefore, it is more fair to treat it as a real HIFI product than a gaming product, and during the test a HIFI Audio iDSD Black Label was used, which is a combined headphone amplifier and DAC for desktop setups.

Generally speaking, I am very satisfied with the sound, it is very open, airy and well resolved compared to what you are used to with game sound, but you can also hear that it is not super linear, there is at least a 10 dB difference between the highest and lowest part of the frequency curve, and the treble is clearly manipulated. There is very clear speech, which makes me suspect that it is turned up well from 1500-2000Hz and beyond, but it is as if the treble has an overemphasis when it meets the midrange, then “fades out”, and even if it provides good speech recognition, it also makes the sound bright, but without the natural overtones. It is perhaps not surprising that speech is favored in this way, and that Razer can claim that listening fatigue does not occur, a phenomenon that typically occurs when one is exposed to distorted treble for a long time. But it also means that while they are very good for their purpose, namely streaming, they are less impressive for music, as violins and other high-frequency instruments are not reproduced optimally.

It’s a fun product, not bad, but maybe a little lower price point, as it’s an extremely crowded market, and a more HIFI-friendly profile would have been more optimal.