Razer's new Leviathan V2 Pro soundbar was unveiled at CES 2023, bringing an AI-powered head-tracking beamforming audio solution to the desktop, which sounds pretty advanced technology, thank goodness! I've had the opportunity to try it out at home over the past few weeks to see if it's the real deal.

For those of you who don't already know, beamforming is the practice of directing a signal toward something in order to improve the strength and quality of the signal. This is not limited to audio, there are many uses for beamforming with respect to wireless signals, but this is what Razer is using in the new Leviathan V2 Pro. Basically, the system determines where you are and, through neural network computing, beams the audio signal directly to your ears.

To do this, the Leviathan V2 Pro has a small infrared sensor array that is placed in the center of the unit. The data is sent to a neural network processor, which senses where the user is, and more specifically, where their ears are, to create better spatial audio. That data is "instantly discarded" and never transferred to a PC or the cloud, Razer says (opens in new tab).

The soundbar has five 2-inch speakers that operate in different interference patterns to keep the user in the audio sweet spot.

So is it worth all this? I will write a detailed review of this product soon, but I am quite impressed with how seamless the audio shifts when I move my head at my desk. If I sit in the middle of the desk, the audio fires off to the right. If I move to the left, the audio fires off to the right. If you move it to the right, the audio fires off to the right.

You get the idea.

There are several modes onboard that work best in different scenarios: the THX Spatial Virtual Headset and the THX Spatial Audio Virtual Speakers.

I really like the THX Spatial Virtual Headset mode for listening to music. It provides the aforementioned beamforming effect, but is mostly a stereo, 2:1 listening experience.

Virtual Speakers, however, is a bit more complicated, as it attempts to recreate a surround sound speaker setup without any hardware. While I am usually quite skeptical of these types of features, and often don't think the degradation in sound quality is worth the gain in positional audio, I have to admit that Leviathan's virtual speakers are quite impressive. I tested the 5.1 speakers locally on my machine, and the positional audio is much better than the standard stereo output. Rear left and right are a little smaller, but the quality is not bad either. I would definitely avoid listening to music with this mode enabled, but it would be useful for gaming.

First impressions were pretty good; $400 (open in new tab). This is $150 more than the Razer Leviathan V2 (open in new tab), which I reviewed earlier this year, much less than regular computer speakers (open in new tab). This leads to my biggest concern so far: it's a neat feature, but definitely not a must-have, and for that kind of money, it's likely to be a tough sell for most people.

I have more testing to do with this soundbar before I draw any conclusions; the Leviathan V2 Pro will ship starting January 31, so I'll have plenty of time to draw conclusions before then. Enjoy.