When I first saw the Woojer vest about seven or eight years ago on Kickstarter, I remember thinking that it sounded fun, but maybe a little gimmicky. Either way, I wanted to try it. So when Woojer recently reached out and asked if I wanted to review it, I said, “Heck yeah, send it over!” Now that I have it and have spent many hours using it in various scenarios, I think I’ve concluded whether it’s worth the ~US$350 price of admission for a vest fitted with bass-thumping transducers.
First and foremost, it’s just flat-out fun. It’s completely unnecessary, but it really adds a layer of physical in a way that would be otherwise pretty hard to accomplish while gaming, listening to music, or even just watching TV.
The best way I can describe it is like watching Top Gun Maverick at home on your 40-inch TV with your cute little sound bar versus watching it at an IMAX theater with 12-channel audio and 40-plus dual 15-inch 1,000+ watt woofers absolutely blasting you with sound that hits so hard you can feel it in your tum-tum every time they “Break right, splash one!“
JS @ New Atlas
Because that’s exactly what the six Osci TRX2 transducers do: they thump you. A haptic transducer vibrates mass to create vibrations you can feel, similar to how a speaker moves air so you can hear sound. And in Woojer’s case, it’s taking low frequency bass, like bombs, bullets, beats, and brawls to fwump-wump your body. More specifically, between 1 and 250 Hz in the Vest 4.
When it comes to gaming, I’m a first-person shooter type of fella. At one point in time, nearly thirty years ago, I was ranked 26th in the entire world playing Capture the Flag in 1999’s GOTY Unreal Tournament. And Destiny? Get outta here! I was a merc’in-machine with a 4.75 KD in the Crucible. Red Dead Redemption 2: it was so good I did it twice. Same with GTA V.
So yeah, the Woojer Vest 4 seemed like a pretty cool idea, adding a kinetic layer to games (like a shotgun blast to the chest), movies (like a shotgun blast to the chest), and music (like … uhh … Nirvana’s Greatest Hits?). I was pretty excited to try it out when it arrived.
The Good, Bad, and the Ugly (but not in that order):
It’s not perfect. There are a few things that are absolutely annoying, even to a pretty forgiving dude like myself.
When using a Bluetooth connection, there are a fair few audio dropouts that’ll last ~5 seconds or so before the audio cuts back in. I don’t mean going out of sync, I mean full dead dropouts … while the bass is still thumping from every direction on your torso. So it’s happening from the vest –> headphones, regardless if you’re wired or wireless with your headphones.
JS @ New Atlas
When I’ve run USB-C audio, plugged directly into my laptop, same deal, just less often. I’d blame it on my rig, but it also happens when using my phone while simply listening to tunes on Spotify, so there’s something going on in the vest itself. It happens once or twice an hour, so it’s not super bad, but it 100% takes you from “BAP! BAP! BAP!” of LMG fire to “Where the hell did that shot just come from?!?” in an instant, often at the most inopportune times. Not to mention, the hits aren’t directional on the vest – a hit is simply a hit – so you won’t know if you’ve been shot in the chest or the back without hearing where the shot came from.
So if you’re a professional playing in online tournaments, it might be slightly detrimental to your take-home purse when you get 360-no-scoped by some 14-year-old because you couldn’t hear what direction the shots were coming from.
And of course, there’s the ubiquitous BT latency delay, so you’re going to be a few milliseconds behind the curve no matter what.
Yes, hardwiring will eliminate latency issues, but then comes a series of rather complex problems, depending on your setup. Mine, for example, is that I run OXS Thunder Duo X gaming speakers via USB-C. So, unless I ran some sort of virtual audio router like Voicemeeter, I can’t get sound to both the Woojer Vest and my speakers at the same time.
JS @ New Atlas
The Woojer is very much built to daisy chain BT audio from the source, then to your headphones via BT or hardwired. Which means I could loop hardwired audio back to my speaker setup – like a crazy person! – but suddenly, it’s starting to feel more like a chore, rather than simply chuckin’ on a vest for a few minutes of fun.
Perhaps that doesn’t even matter to you, as you prefer to play games with your favorite set of cans on. But me personally, I wear various headphones every single day, for hours per day, and sometimes I just don’t want to wear ’em.
Part of why I don’t VR game as much as I want to is the setup. I haven’t beat Half-Life: Alyx yet, though it’s definitely the most epic VR game I’ve ever experienced. I find the 15 mins it takes me to get going somewhat daunting, and I lose interest. That being said, I did it anyway for the review … and dang. DANG! The jump scares alone are absolutely insane with the Woojer on. Incoming Striders almost make me irrationally panic as I feel every footstep drawing closer. Woojer has taken a 10/10 game and turned it into an 11/10 game, without a doubt, and without Valve ever having to lift a finger.
Half-Life: Alyx Announcement Trailer
I’m genuinely afraid of playing Dead Space with it.
But Beat Saber? Oi! Close your eyes and imagine what it would be like to play Beat Saber while actually in a hoppin’ club, standing next to the DJ booth, slashing blocks and untz’ing the night away. Because that’s what it feels like. Except even more sweaty, if you can believe it.
Though the vest is about as minimal as it can be and made mostly of breathable mesh, it runs warm. Well, I run warm too, but so does the vest itself. The battery sits squarely between your shoulder blades and does what batteries do when discharging: create heat.
Woojer says the Vest 4 can run up to 10 hours on a charge. I’ll take their word for it, because there’s no way I’m wearing it for 10 hours straight. At least, not on purpose – I did fall asleep with it on once. I was listening – or maybe I should say, I was experiencing – Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon one evening. When I woke up a few hours later, I was sweaty and confused by the rhythmic thumping on my torso as the song Mother, from The Wall, had just hit its crescendo. As I was asleep on my back, the battery was hot hot. Almost concerningly hot.
JS @ New Atlas
And it’s not like you can just “machine wash cold, tumble dry” … I imagine, that over time, it’s going to start smelling like my hockey gloves (that’s not a good thing, in case you’re unfamiliar with the smell of hockey equipment).
Fitment isn’t perfect either. It’s a one-size-fits-all kind of rig, with adjustable chest, waist, and shoulder straps – but even so, I can’t get a perfect fit on my XL body, nor that of the wife’s, who wears a medium women’s shirt. It’s not uncomfortable (outside of the schweaty-Betty part) per se, it’s mostly just the chest transducers fall in a weird spot, in my opinion.
So is the Woojer Vest 4 worth it?
That’s a tough call. It’s not cheap (and I am). Even on the used market, they’re still $200+. I wouldn’t say that it’s an essential piece of gear for your gaming addiction, but it is a game-changer, without a doubt. It adds a haptic layer of immersion to your virtual worlds that you’re really not going to get in any other way, making the experience even better.
It’s awesome. I love using it. It absolutely improves the experience. But at ~US$350, it’s simply too rich for my blood. Put it this way, I’m still using the first-gen Xbox One that I chucked a $60 1-TB SSD in after I got red-ring-of-death’d. If I were more baller, I’d 100% buy one. And a new Xbox Series X.
Product Page: Woojer or Amazon
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