Software

The Patriot Viper V380 gaming headset can be configured through the official Windows driver software of the same name. While essentially functional, this app is ugly to look at and very frustrating to use.


The left side of the interface is split into three categories: Speaker, MIC, and LED. The right side is permanently reserved for headphone and microphone volume sliders and quick toggling between functions, like the equalizer, Xear Voice Clarity, Xear 3D (7.1 virtual surround sound), Xear Enc (microphone background noise filtering), Xear Magic Voice (voice changer), and Lighting (RGB lighting system). Clicking on the categories on the left won't put them into focus. Instead, related options will show up in a drop-down menu. For most available categories the only two options are "On" and "Off", so why they organized the interface like this when we already have the same toggles on the right is beyond me.


Sections of the driver you'll spend most of your time in are "Equalizer" and "LED". When expanding the Equalizer category, you'll see a "Default" button you have to press to actually access the 10-band system-wide equalizer. Here, you can fiddle with the frequency ranges 30, 60, 120, 250, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 4,000, 8,000, and 16,000 Hz, on a wide ±20 dB scale. Sadly, there's no way to save more than one equalizer setting, or even rename the oddly named "Default" button. I cannot fathom why they named it that. I was afraid to press it because my mind kept telling me that I'll just reset the EQ, while pressing it is in fact the only way to access the equalizer.


In the LED category of the driver you can select from among a few RGB effects (Constant, Breathe, Streamer, Neon, and Rhythm). Some of these allow you to adjust their brightness and speed. Of course, you can also pick the color of the first two effects (Constant and Breathe), either in a color wheel or by manually typing in the decimal code.