Razer Nommo Chroma - Review 2022

Intended as much for gaming as for listening to music or watching movies, the $149.95 Razer Nommo Chroma are wired stereo computer speakers with alluring LED light effects. The design is sleek and sylish, and sound functioning is solid, with the ability to adjust bass levels to your liking. We would've liked to meet angled drivers to straight sound toward your ears, and either USB-C or wireless connectivity for the sake of versatility. Razer fans volition still find plenty to like, though audiophiles tin exercise ameliorate for the price.

Blueprint

Available in brushed black that almost looks similar aluminum, but is plastic, the Nommo Chroma speakers nonetheless look quite absurd. The right speaker houses the controls and connections (described beneath), while the left speaker merely connects to the right. Unfortunately, the connecting cable is semi-hardwired—you can unplug information technology from the left, but not the right speaker. But to make up for it, the cable is almost excessively long, which is much meliorate than being too short to identify the speakers where you want to. At that place'due south a non-Chroma version that sells for $99.99, to give you a sense of what the cool LED effects do to the pricing.

Razer employs a 3-inch total-range driver in each cylindrically shaped speaker. The dorsum houses a bass port, allowing air moved by the drivers to menses more freely, for better bass depth. It's a little perplexing that the speakers are congenital onto mini stands, just not angled upward. Unless you are really slouching and/or your desk summit is abnormally high, these drivers aren't going to line up with your ears, which means you'll be missing out on the clarity they tin offer. You tin stack them on books or something else to bring them more in line with your ears, just that isn't platonic.

Each speaker has a circular base with a rubberized bottom console to forestall motion. The base of operations is where the LEDS are, which nosotros'll get to in the next section. The base of the right speaker houses the bass level dial (with no visual indicator, which is a bummer), as well as the volume dial (which too acts equally a ability button). Both of these dials are detented for precise adjustments. The dorsum console of the right speaker houses a 3.5mm aux input, a quarter-inch headphone jack, and the connexion for the included power adapter.

A hardwired USB cable connects to Macs or PCs and delivers digital sound, free of any digital-to-analog conversion. If you have a new Macbook, or whatsoever other system that'south USB-C only, y'all'll need an adapter, but it'll work. And of course, there's e'er the old-fashioned analog route using the included 3.5mm sound cablevision.

Lighting

By default, the LEDs look quite cool, spinning a prismatic array of colors in a ring at the base of operations, under each stand up. In a well-lit room, their output is subtle; with dimmed lights, they become more impressive. They also project calorie-free—you don't look at the LED rings themselves, so a reflective tabular array elevation will make for a more exciting effect than, say, a non-reflective or carpeted material.

You tin customize the lighting using the costless downloadble Razer Synapse 3 software. Information technology's surprisingly powerful, offer a variety of preset settings similar fire effect, colored lights that "breathe" on and off, and random sparkling. You can as well make your own custom lighting profiles based on these behaviors, individually programming each of the 24 light zones on either speaker's ring. You lot tin can take a few sections with flickering burn effects, a few more randomly irresolute colors, and the unabridged back one-half of one breathe on and off with light-green and the back half of the other exercise the same with blueish. Information technology'due south a lot of flexibility for accent lighting.

The speakers can as well utilise Chroma Apps, plug-ins that permit certain games command the speaker's lights directly. In Overwatch, for example, the lights will change color to reverberate the character you're playing. The lights besides sync with other Razer devices with Chroma lighting, like keyboards and mice.

Operation

It'southward difficult to know what level you're at with the bass knob, only with it situated at roughly halfway, you get some decent deep bass. On tracks with intense sub-bass content, similar The Pocketknife's "Silent Shout," the speakers evangelize less sub-bass than some big low cease fans might want. Even at maximum bass levels, the bass output is relatively minor. For $150, we've tested 2.i systems like the Harman Kardon SoundStick III that put the Nommo Chroma to shame in the bass depth department—only they take no LED wizardry.

Pecker Callahan'southward "Drover," a track with far less deep bass in the mix, betters showcases the speakers' strengths. The drums on this track lack the thunder that many bass-frontwards pairs glaze them in, but they accept a pleasant depth. It's Callahan's baritone vocals that have the virtually bass prominence, with a rich depression and low-mid presence that is well-matched by high-mids and highs that keep the vocals, guitars, and percussive hits crisp and bright. However, there's a marked deviation betwixt how the speakers audio when yous're able to line the drivers upward with your ears. If you lot're non into setting them on higher shelving to achieve this, endeavour placing them a little farther away from y'all, if your setup allows. The crispness and clarity of the drivers comes through far more than clearly from a trivial distance (or when the drivers align with your head).

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church building in the Wild," the kick drum loop gets enough high-mid presence to cutting through the layers of the mix, only again, it sounds far more crisp when aligned with your ears, and a lilliputian muffled when not. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the trounce are more than implied than delivered—we go their raspy superlative notes and a niggling of their bass depth, simply almost none of their sub-bass.

Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams' The Gospel Co-ordinate to the Other Mary, sound excellent. The speakers accentuates the crisp, bright presence of the college register brass, strings, and vocals nicely, and button the lower register instrumentation slightly forward in the mix. It's a full sound that honors the mix nicely.

Conclusions

Those wanting solid audio operation and a cool LED lite show will savor the Razer Nommo Chroma. If it's great audio you're later on, the aforementioned SoundSticks III remain affordable wired classics in the $150 range. The more than expensive Audioengine 2+ delivers impressive performance in line with its price, while the Edifier R1280T offers slightly better sound quality than the Nommo Blush for a little less money. The JBL Pulse 3, meanwhile, is a fun, portable Bluetooth speaker with LED lite capabilities.

Volition Greenwald contributed to this review.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/review/20003/razer-nommo-chroma

Posted by: alexanderhaverm.blogspot.com

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