Razer Ferox Mobile Gaming and Music Speakers - Round Mound of Sound

The Performance

The Performance

The Ferox delivers on its promise of 360-degree omnidirectional sound and it renders a comprehensive soundstage. This obviously would obviously appeal to Razer’s core market, i.e. gamers who want to ensure other players do not get the jump on them while they shoot, slash, frag their way through the latest FPS title. But we found omnidirectional sound to also sound exceptional with the Pod Racing Scene from Phantom Menace, which gave the Ferox the opportunity to show the full extent of the benefits of the cylindrical design with respect to sound.

Generally speaking, the the pair of speakers' audio quality felt warm, rounded and full tone with a spacious atmosphere. Consistently through our testing process, they handled music, dialogue and sound effects with pleasurable ease and impressed us with the wide variety of sounds, tones and timbres it was able to replicate with integrity. The speakers, although designed for gamers, can also easily be used for the purposes of movie watching and music listening.

However, the Ferox seems to lack bite. When playing tracks with horns or wind instruments, such as Fanfare for Louis, the notes are warm and rounded but seemed to lack attack and were not as aggressive as one would expect. This can lead to percussion instruments, most visibly on Hotel California, to sound thin and flat. But we found the lack of attack to be surprisingly beneficial especially when playing Battlefield 2: Bad Company. The repetitive gun-shots and explosions were mellow on the ears, while retaining a certain punch, and every time someone shot off a burst of bullets our senses were not jarred, making it ideal for extended sessions of gaming.

Where the Ferox does falter is with bass and volume, an area where the X-mini Capsule II performed admirably. With just 30mm drivers though, this problem was to be expected. The T-Rex SFX were especially a let-down as the speakers did all the hard work by setting the mood and the atmosphere right, only to end with a weak payoff for the thumping entrance of the T-Rex. The worst performance from the Ferox came when testing with the Apollo 13 SFX, where the rocket launch sounded like a rickshaw sputtering along.

In the volume department, while the Ferox is by no means quiet, it does not go to ear splitting levels even when volume controls are maxed out. This may be a problem if you require them to provide sound for large spaces or have a proclivity for blasting music at high volumes. But for the most part of our usage, we never found them too soft to be heard over ambient noise and were fairly ideal for most applications.

Overall, a lot of our nitpicks are quite squarely a basic limitation of speakers of this small size; there's just only that much you can expect a small speaker to handle. As such, we can't be penalizing the audio scores too much as they are pretty much a norm for this price point and size.

Battery life is extremely robust and during trials, the Ferox lasted for approximately 9 hours of varied testing before we saw the red ring which meant that battery life was below 10 per cent.

The full audio report card after testing is as follows.